Build Teamwork in Six Steps

No matter what business you are in or your specific role, you rely on teamwork. Do you want the telephone answered professionally and the proper information conveyed? Does your website need to be updated to reflect new pricing? Is your computer acting up? Are parts needed from an outside supplier to meet a client deadline? Should billing be sped up so you can collect accounts receivables faster each month?

Whatever the requirement, you can’t achieve the goals of your function or for your company without inspiring and reinforcing teamwork constantly.

In the case of Affinity Express, we have to keep more than nine hundred employees, who are scattered across several different offices in three continents, feeling like they are part of the same team and pulling in the same direction.

As our CEO Ken Swanson pointed out, building teamwork is no easy task. And it is one that never ends. Based on our experience, here are some ways you can improve teamwork in your environment. Read more of this post

Happy Women’s Day

Sample Design: Woman in EmbroideryToday is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. To celebrate, we interviewed several executives at Affinity Express to find out what makes them successful and what advice they have for the rest of us. The participants are: Vice President of Global Finance and Accounting Andrea de Castro, Vice President of Operations Kristin Meidell, Vice President of Graphic Production and Support Services Joanna Grant, Vice President of Global Human Resources Tinna Hall, Vice President of Marketing Kelly Glass and Director of New Client Implementation Kellie Blaisdell.

It’s clear that, despite the variety of disciplines in which they work and the different backgrounds they bring to their roles at Affinity Express, these women share a common outlook.

They attribute their success to persistence and flexibility, while appreciating that their current environment allows them learn and exposes them to new opportunities. On a daily basis, they work so hard because they find contributing to larger goals and solving problems fulfilling. Their greatest accomplishments revolve around mentoring other team members; in essence, passing the torch onto others.

Whether you work for Affinity Express or not, I hope you’ll find their comments both insightful and helpful, regardless of where you might be in your career.

What is the one achievement in your career so far of which you are most proud? Read more of this post

Helping Underprivileged Youth: the Street Source Project

Earlier this year, we announced our participation in Street Source, an ongoing effort to help youth in poverty secure gainful employment and become productive citizens.  Street Source is a program initiated by Street Kids International (SKI).  Besides Affinity Express, companies such as Ayala Corporation, Virlanie and Cummins as well as the not-for-profit organization Project Concern International (PCI) have been involved in the program. Read more of this post

Go Red For Women Chicago Chapter Plans Big Event

As I wrote in another blog post, Affinity Express is thrilled to be a sponsor of the Chicago Go Red For Women chapter, as well as a provider of design services for this worthy cause.

Invitation designed by Affinity Express Read more of this post

CEO Insight: Looking Forward at 2011

Affinity Express Blog: FireworksAs we head into 2011 and our eleventh year in business, the Marketing Team asked me to provide a view of Affinity Express from my vantage point, give insight into my management approach and talk about what I see coming in the future.

Since 2008, when I first became CEO of Affinity Express, my vision was to develop a top-performing, global team with a burning desire to continually improve everything they do for clients and employees; a team who could work with me to build a fast-growing, early mover business process outsourcing (BPO) company in the media production industry. I realized at the time that this was no small task, but believed strongly in our potential.

A relatively short time later, in 2010, we received an indication that we are well on our way to realizing this vision. Affinity Express was named to the Global Services 100 list, which recognizes companies that define global outsourcing. Many major corporations in more established outsourcing categories were featured, yet Affinity Express was the only provider of advertising and marketing production solutions on the list. This is a wonderful honor and I consider it a testament to the passion and teamwork of all our talented people. Read more of this post

Designs of the Year: 2010

We asked our designers to submit their best work this year and awarded the winning entries.  Let me tell you, the judges did not have an easy job!

Embroidery Digitizing

Read more of this post

Meet Noel Bedayo, Managing Director of Philippines Operations

Noel Bedayo was recently promoted to managing director of Affinity Express Philippines Operations. In this role, he is responsible for building a high-performing team and overseeing day-to-day operations.  He will also work to expand our interactive, editorial and newspaper teams.  Noel has joined the Senior Business Team and reports directly to CEO Ken Swanson.

Noel started with Affinity Express in April of 2008 and has built a strong rapport with colleagues locally and globally.  As the head of S.P.E.E.D. (Services and Products Engineered for Excellence and Development), Noel mentors and consults with our business leaders in the area of process planning, pricing, and metrics-driven strategies and improvements.

Noel is glad to have been part of the growth of our Manila office, and says: Read more of this post

Joanna Grant One of Industry’s Most Powerful People

I am very happy to announce that my colleague Joanna Grant, VP of Graphic Production and Support Services, has been included in Stitches magazine’s Power List. This makes her one of the most powerful people in the decorating industry, ”influencing the direction the industry will take in 2011 and beyond”.

According to Stitches, she’s on the list because: Read more of this post

Summing Up 2010

Affinity Express Accomplishments of 2010As we enter the last month of 2010, I have been thinking about what we have achieved this year and how we can do better next year. 2010 was particularly good for Affinity Express. I’d like to share with you some of what we have accomplished.

  1. We celebrated our ten-year anniversary. We have grown from a 125-person embroidery digitizing company to an 800-person advertising and marketing production company. This year, we celebrated our success, but also set our sights on what we want to achieve next.
  2. We added several of the largest clients in our history in the category of multi-media publishers and on-boarded them in record time. Read more of this post

All About IDEA

IDEA: Interactive Digital Entry AssistantWe all fancy ourselves creative folks here at Affinity Express, yet if you hear us talking about some “idea”, you might be surprised. The “idea” in question is less likely to be a creative concept and more likely to be the Interactive Digital Entry Assistant, our online ordering system that many of our clients use.

All you need to use IDEA is your log-in details (and you can register for free!).  Clients use IDEA not just for placing orders but also to submit quote requests, pick up finished work, store important customer files, check the status of their orders and communicate with the design team.

IDEA was developed way back in 2004, as a better way of sharing files, instructions, order status and other communications between clients and our teams. The use of IDEA served to dramatically improve communication and efficiency. It enabled clients to upload or access projects anytime from anywhere.  Last week, the one millionth order was uploaded to IDEA!  (By the way, we do have other workflows like the Affinity Express Service Bureau and also work in client systems–so we passed our one millionth order years ago.) Read more of this post

We Go Red for Women

Go Red for WomenI’ve been eager to get Affinity Express more involved in worthy causes to complement the activities of employees in the U.S., India and the Philippines.  When our client, the Chicago Sun-Times, told us about an opportunity we could be part of, I thought it was perfect because it is based near our headquarters and boasts of the most successful fundraising efforts in the city. Read more of this post

Nominated in Digital Magazine Awards 2010

Two of the publications we work on have been nominated in the Digital Magazine Awards 2010. The results will be announced on Wednesday, so we have our fingers crossed!

Team SuccessThe magazines under consideration are the 2010 Asheville Visitor Guide and the 2010 North Carolina Travel Guide, both from our client Journal Communications, a new-age media company. We produce the magazines through our Content Online solution, which allows clients to easily create content for the web or to transform existing print materials into online.

Congratulations to our team on the nomination!

Focusing on Interactive Services

Reflecting our increased focus on providing high-quality interactive services for clients, Affinity Express hired a new director of interaction and web design.

Self-portrait of Marisol Oberzauchner

Marisol Oberzauchner

Marisol Oberzauchner joined the Affinity Express team in September. She will oversee the delivery of interactive services and provide support for key clients.

Marisol is currently working closely with our interactive team in Manila, leading them to refine service levels, improve subject matter expertise and ensure high output quality. She is also working closely with David Kang on developing new products and services that we will offer under the interactive services umbrella.

I am very excited to announce that Marisol recently won two awards in the 2010 WebAward competition. The dDFCB website that she worked on won the award for the Best Interactive Services Website. And she was part of the team that won the award for Outstanding Website for the Brand Super Heroes Augmented Reality website. We are very proud to have someone so talented in our team!

Read more of this post

Tote Bag Contest: Winning Designs

Apart from the quarterly contests, we frequently have other design contests for employees. (That’s how our company logo was developed!) The most recent contest was for tote bag artwork. The idea was to present the message of eco-friendliness while staying true to our company brand: apt because the winning design is being used on reusable cloth tote bags that are meant to replace paper or plastic ones.

We gave away three cash prizes, but only one lucky winner–the one whose design the judges liked best–got to see her designs on the bags!

This design won third prize. Read more of this post

Annual Strategy Meeting in Pune, India

Our Senior Business Team has just returned from a great trip to India.  The purpose for us coming together from three different countries and many U.S. states was to participate in the Affinity Express annual strategy meeting.  Every September, we hold a series of sessions in which we share plans and opportunities and come to agreement about our direction for the next year and beyond.  In addition to segment leaders, the heads of production, finance, marketing, human resources and technology all play an important role.

Affinity Express Senior Management

The Senior Business Team and Board Members

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Designs of the Quarter: Email Design, Image Editing and Menu Design

Designs of the Quarter is a regular contest that celebrates the best work within our company in various categories of products. Last quarter’s categories were HTML emails, image editing, and menus. Take a look at the winning designs.

Read more of this post

Affinity Express Completes Ten Years

That’s right. Affinity Express was incorporated in 2000, which makes this our tenth anniversary year. There’s no doubt about it, this is an incredibly exciting time to be at Affinity Express.  

Embroidery Digitizing - Affinity Express Pune Office

Affinity Express Pune Office: in Embroidery

Let me take you down memory lane.  

Take off Your Shoes  

Way back in 2000, Affinity Express had around 125 people. We had one production location in an apartment complex in a residential suburb of Pune: a less-than-ideal spot for high-volume, fast production work. To avoid using unreliable landlines, a radio modem was installed on top of the building. Power outages were frequent, so the company bought a genset. To appease other occupants of the building for the noise of the genset, we provided reliable power to the building. Plus, all the employees took off their shoes to go up and down the stairs during shift changes.  

However, things improved quickly. Later in the year, the company took space at our current location in Pune (yes, that lovely building in the image on the right that our designers have digitized) and grew to 237 employees. Over time we have gone from 400 to 1,400 to 14,000 square feet.  

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Affinity Express on the Inside Business TV Show

Affinity Express was featured on the Inside Business TV show on Fox Business on June 26. You can watch the video here, or read the transcript below the fold.

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Affinity Express Recognized as One of 2010 Global Services 100

Global Services 100I am extremely proud to share with you that Affinity Express has been included in the 2010 Global Services 100. Go on, click on that link, we’re the fifth name on that list. (Then come back here.)

The Global Services 100 is compiled through an online survey using a scientific research methodology based on over 200 data points and several qualitative parameters. Rather than a list of the 100 largest outsourcing vendors, this list reflects the diversity and overall landscape of the service provider community in terms of company sizes, countries of origin and countries of delivery. The list includes organizations from 18 countries with operations in 30 countries. It’s extremely gratifying that Affinity Express, an 800-people company in a niche of the BPO industry, is  included along with large providers in established outsourcing segments such as Infosys Technologies Limited, HCL Technologies Limited and Tata Consultancy Services Limited. Read more of this post

What Clients Say About Us

Today, I want to share the results of the recent customer satisfaction survey we conducted for our graphic services customers.

We were overwhelmed by the number of responses we got:  by the many customers who took the time to tell us how much and why (or why not) they liked our services.

We got an overall score of 3.7 (5 being the best). We were rated 4 on quality of graphic work as well as price. 43% of respondents rated our quality of graphic work as 5!

My personal favorite is the response to the question “Over the next three months, how likely are you to use Affinity Express again?” We got rated 4.1 out of 5, and 59% respondents indicated they were “most likely” to use our services in the next three months.

Read more of this post

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