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Your Church, Sept/Nov 2000
Office Solutions
Smart products for mass mailings, color bulletins, copy jams, and other stressors
by Jennifer Schuchmann
Our receptionist is on the phone eight hours a day. How can we ease the difficulty of that work?
If you haven't done so yet, invest in a quality headset. Long gone are the earmuffs of recording studios. Today's headsets are small, sleek, lightweight, and definitely cool, according to an article on Ahern Communication's Web page, which lists Janet Jackson, Tom Cruise, and the staff of your local Old Navy store as some of the cool people you can catch wearing headsets. Plantronics, a major manufacturer of headsets, recently began running ads on prime-time television to encourage people to use headsets even at home.
The benefits of a headset, according to Ahern, include less discomfort from nerves pinched by scrunching a phone receiver between neck and shoulder; reduced tension in the back, neck, and shoulder area; and increased productivity. A study by H.B. Maynard Company (cited on Ahern's Web page) said that workers using Plantronics headsets showed a 43 percent productivity increase over people who answered the phone the old-fashioned way.
With a headset, a worker's hands are free for typing, so calls that require information checking can be done more quickly. Most importantly, workers with headsets report higher morale, lower fatigue levels, and fewer phone-related physical complaints.
Headsets range in price from $40 to $250. Look for features like long cords (or no cords), quick disconnect, noise canceling microphones, adjustable earpieces that fit over the top of the ear, and, of course, compatibility with existing phone equipment. Ahern also offers headsets for PCs, conference telephones, music on hold, caller ID, and other telecom products.
Ergonomic products will also ease the strain of office work. Consider up grading the receptionist's computer keyboard to an ergonomic keyboard, or offer her a wrist pad to increase comfort and work output. Foot rests, document holders, and ergonomically correct chairs are also helpful. They're also inexpensive ways to decrease the medical costs associated with repetitive motion tasks or eyestrain-related problems.
Perhaps the best way to jumpstart productivity in the office is to offer a great cup of coffee. Check out Coffee Wholesale USA, which offers everything from small office coffeepots to medium-sized brewers that can make three pots of coffee, keep them warm, and automatically shut off after four hours so there are no nasty baked coffeepots to clean.
Coffee Wholesale USA also offers flavored coffees, such as Banana Foster, Amaretto Supreme, or Southern Pecan. To reward the entire staff with a gift that keeps on giving, consider purchasing an espresso or cappuccino machine with a combination grinder and brewer. Coffee prices from this company start at about $6 a pound. Small commercial coffee machines are available for less than $100.
We currently send our bulletin out for printing. Is there a way we can save money by producing it ourselves?
First Baptist Church of Austin, Texas, had the same question. Increasing costs from outsourcing the church newsletter persuaded Judy Davis at the church to find a better solution. The church bought a RISO duplicator (model 3750). Not only does the duplicator save the church a lot of money by not having to pay an outside printer, but it's also used in other ways to enhance ministry efforts.
"We use it to do a lot of color work," Davis says. For example, the children's minister at the church uses the duplicator to copy children's art work onto a calendar that she sends to parents. Recently, the youth minister also used the RISO to create a booklet for the choir trip. "The booklets had pictures, diagrams, and schedules with lots of graphics," Davis says.
Eye-catching materials are more likely to be read and retained, and using a digital duplicator to do them in-house can make them affordable for almost every church. The model Davis chose is approximately $13,000. RISO duplicator prices range from $5,400 to $18,000.
Our members seem to forget everything—committee meetings, rehearsals, prayer requests—you name it, and they forget it! We send out reminder postcards, but we just don't have time to call everyone. Can you help?
Imagine recording a message once in your own voice, then pushing a button and going back to work while everyone on your list is called.
PhoneTree will do that. Your church can include up to 256 different users on a list. PhoneTree will call each person on the list and play your message. If the call is intercepted by an answering machine or voicemail system, PhoneTree will leave a message.
PhoneTree can track responses. It will even print a log, telling you who was called and how they responded. Using a single telephone line, the system can deliver up to 60 messages an hour. Or, by using 32 phone lines, 60 messages can be delivered in two minutes.
Imagine, no more I-didn't-know-about-the-meeting excuses. With PhoneTree you can be assured that everyone was informed.
The most recent version of PhoneTree (the MVP) offers a USB connection for faster performance and plug-and-play installation. It also includes an increased number of phone lines, digital sound quality, advanced voice recognition, and updated software. Remote access with voice prompts and the ability for callers to leave touch-tone responses or voice messages for individual mailboxes makes the system easy for anyone on staff to use.
By the time you read this, PhoneTree will have announced a network version of PhoneTree that will allow users to access everything from their own desktops.
Prices for a PhoneTree system range from $499 for older models to $1,299 for the MVP model.
I'm tired of picking little pieces of paper out of my copier every time something gets stuck. I've completely given up on using card stock for special projects. Help!
The digital printing systems offered by Duplo USA have a straight feed-and-receive paper path that ensures that paper makes it through the machine in one piece. They also will feed and receive paper stocks from 13 to 110 pounds, which is something you can't expect of a copier, says Shen Liao, marketing coordinator for Duplo.
St. Andrew's Lutheran Church in San Diego has increased the amount of card stock it uses since purchasing a Duplo digital duplicator (model DP-43S) for $13,995 (other models range from $5,995 to $19,995). "We use it to do our own letterhead and envelopes," says Beverly Smith, secretary at the church.
Smith appreciates no longer having to pick paper out of the copier. In addition, she says there is no static electricity on the paper so that when it finishes duplicating, it can go straight to the paper folder without jamming that machine.
"The paper tray holds 1,000 pieces of paper, so I can put in two reams and just walk away from it," Smith says. Not having to monitor the equipment closely means that jobs can get done in less time.
The church didn't buy the machine because of its speed. Nonetheless, Smith was pleasantly surprised by how much the duplicator has decreased the amount of time she spends producing bulletins for the 330-member church. What used to take her two hours now takes 45 minutes.
In addition to duplicators, Duplo offers a complete line of collators, booklet makers, folders, combination folder/inserters, and perfect binders to complete most any project.
We'd like to begin printing our church bulletin and newsletter in color. Is there any way that we can do that ourselves? We are a small congregation and don't have a very large budget.
Formerly, using color meant that you had to use an outside printer. That is no longer true. Color copiers, color inkjet printers, and color laser printers are now producing such high-quality products that color printing is now affordable for most any size church. The proliferation of color also makes black-and-white graphics appealing. Furthermore, the decreased cost of desktop publishing software and systems means that churches can do more than ever internally.
"Because many churches farm out a lot of their work to either volunteers or outside print shops, they can improve their flexibility, costs, and time by taking back control with a digital duplicator," says Leslie Vaughan, product manager at Standard Duplicating Machines.
Churches have become very creative in how they use the machines. "We've heard many stories of duplicator applications that are different from what the church initially expected to do with the duplicator," Vaughn says. Churches are using duplicators to produce cookbooks, raffle tickets, yearbooks, posters—even Christmas cards, she says.
In the meantime, duplicators just keep improving. "They're easier to use and are producing better quality copies," Vaughn says. "We're even going to see a two-color-in-one-pass duplicator before the end of 2000." Standard Duplicators range from $6,195 to $16,995, depending on the model.
We're about to purchase a digital camera and color scanner, but we'd like to be able to use them in more than one area of the church with a minimum of fuss. Is this possible?
With USB technology, computer peripherals such as a mouse, CD-ROM, video camera, speakers, hard drive, or color scanner can be attached to the outside of a computer without having to install a new card inside. Since there is no configuration needed, USB is often referred to as plug-and-play technology because with it you can install hardware to your computer without rebooting it.
Some USB-enabled peripherals can be linked together to allow you to use more than one at a time. The benefit to a church is that a USB-enabled scanner, digital camera, or other device can be used with multiple USB-enabled computers in the church. No longer will you have to go to the youth minister's office to use the scanner. Instead, you can bring the scanner to your office and attach it to your computer while it is still running.
Jennifer Schuchmann is a management consultant in Marietta, Georgia. Her e-mail address is jschuchmann@mindspring.com.
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System Eases Load of Mailings
Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Georgia, does a lot of mass mailings. The church would like to do even more, but the mailings are so labor-intensive. They're also problem-prone. Envelopes get stuck in the printer. When labels are used, they have to be individually stuck on envelopes, which then must be sorted into ZIP codes for mailing.
Church workers eased the load of mass mailings by purchasing SmartMailer from Pitney Bowes. "It's a huge timesaver," says Tiffany Walters, assistant for the church's single adult ministry. A mailing for 2,000 that used to take her four to five hours can now be done in less than an hour.
Time is money, but wasted postage is also costly. SmartMailer helps save money by ensuring that each record on the database has a U.S. Postal Service deliverable address. That virtually eliminates returned or misdirected mail, says Tim Bates, vice president of marketing for Pitney Bowes. The system also helps organizations presort mail to take advantage of postage discounts. And the software has a duplicate detection feature that eliminates embarrassing and costly double mailings.
Johnson Ferry Baptist combined SmartMailer with a Pitney Bowes AddressRight Printer, which prints a bar code onto each piece of mail, thus ensuring faster delivery by the Post Office and eliminating the need for labels. It can also print graphics and color onto the mailing piece, which encourages people to open the envelope when it arrives.
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Contact Information
Ahern
800-451-5067
www.Aherncopr.com
Coffee Wholesale USA
512-388-9700
www.cw-usa.com
Duplo USA Corporation
800-255-1933
www.duplousa.com
Pitney Bowes
800-672-6937
www.pitneybowes.com
PhoneTree
800-951-8733
www.phonetree.com
Plantronics
800-544-4660
www.plantronics.com
RISO
800-876-RISO
www.riso.com
Standard Duplicating Machines
877-202-2260
www.sdmc.com
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