Over the last 4 years The Northstar Group has introduced a lot of new technologies that have been geared toward better serving our clients. When we started we did not know if our efforts would be met with success or failure. I am proud to say that for the most part things have gone very well (after all, I'm still employed). But it was a learning experience and I feel that it is time to reflect on what these services have taught us and what they have meant for our clients.

• NorthStore (www.MyNorthStore.com) – This has been a resounding success. It is not often that one can say that about IT projects. But while the underlying technology it was built on was sound that was not the primary reason for its success. Instead it was our focus on the overall customer experience, providing them with in-depth training on the system, and being willing to work with them as they learned how to use the system. NorthStore provided a service that helped make our clients more productive, focusing less of their time on ordering printed and promotional products. We also recognized this as an investment in the long term relationships we have developed with our clients and as a result provided the initial set up and reasonable maintenance free of charge. This is a platform that continues to grow and for the foreseeable future will be the flagship project of The Northstar Group's IT Department.

• Northstar Upload (www.printnorthstar.com/upload-files) – One of the challenges of working in the printing industry is that we deal frequently with files that can quickly lock up an email client, such as Microsoft Outlook. Our first answer to this was to implement FTP accounts so that clients could quickly upload artwork. It because apparent rather quickly that this would not scale to the level that we wanted to use it at. So we went back to the drawing board. The result was the application currently in use. Now a client does not have to wait for us to create an account for them, we have removed compatibility issues that were being experienced on Mac OS X, and where able to make the our system even more secure. Just like NorthStore we where able to achieve success by remaining focused on our clients interests and needs.

• Personalized URL's – These were on the surface a good idea and for some clientele remain a good idea. The theory was to push users to a website and order a product or provide information to a client by sending out a direct mailing piece with a URL that was unique to them. For about a year it was really being pushed by many companies that served the printing industry. Unfortunately we where not receiving the results that we had hoped for and had to reexamine our efforts after a number of tries. What we had basically determined is it was a service that provided different rates of success to different industries. In addition we found one had to send out direct mail to a fairly large group of people in order a client would realize a return on their investment. This was a learning experiance and as a result The Northstar Group started offering email blast services for our clients at a lower rate than they could get if they where to send out these emails themselves. The Northstar Group still offers Personalized URL's, but it is only a service we will offer if it will fulfill a need.

Our team here at The Northstar Group is a very talented one. But what has proven to be the most important insight is that technology is a tool and must be used in the right way to achieve the best results. Even now Northstar is working on many technological innovations and in the coming months we will hopefully be able to unveil some of these that will focus on quickly providing accurate information allowing our clients to be more efficient.