As a new administrative assistant, I was tasked with printing and shipping our new employee manuals as my first assignment.  Did I mention the approaching deadline? YIKES!  I had heard from friends in the industry about offset printing and how great and efficient it was, but what I do I know?

I knew this project wouldn’t be without its challenges. With the deadline looming, I needed to find a local company that had a proven track record of fast turnarounds. I also had my own agenda. I am a bit of an environmentalist so it was personally important to me to use a printing company that was eco- friendly / “green”, and I didn’t want to run all over town to different vendors.  I needed a one stop shop that offered offset printing (which I heard was the fastest process, best quality, and could be mass produced at a great price), binding and could also ship.. Who wants to scope multiple companies and then have to mange each company individually, knowing I’d have to submit tons of invoices when the job was complete?  What a nightmare!  Being new to the area I didn’t know where to get all these services in one place so I asked a friend of mine who owns an advertising firm in town who he thought I should call.  He highly recommended Cerqa.  As luck would have it they are close to our Austin office and easily accessible off the IH-35 highway.

I still wanted to research them before I called, so I went to the Cerqa website to look around and within two clicks I found all the services I needed and more ….

I navigated to their offset printing page and I was definitely happy with what I found. I read that Cerqa is committed to being a “green” Earth friendly company and conscientious on their imprint. Cerqa has a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certification, which means that they can utilize paper that comes from responsibly managed forests and they have access to post-consumer waste recycled paper. (Insert the sound of birds singing)  As if that wasn’t enough, Cerqa also uses eco-friendly inks that are soy based and eliminated the use of film in their printing process.  They also recycle all of their waste paper and aluminum printing plates! I loved how environmentally responsible they were. I also read that they have a very fast turnaround and can be extremely flexible because they utilize affiliated printing companies. Utilizing affiliated printing companies allows them to handle greater capacity, offer redundancy, and have lots of locations like Cerqa Tennessee & Cerqa North Carolina where our other offices are located too.  These are all the things that my boss and I wanted in a printing company!

A one-stop shop is what I really needed to get this task done quickly and without much hassle. Before I settled completely with using Cerqa I needed to find out if they also offered binding and mailing services Again, within two clicks I was able to find out that they did binding and mailing as well. What a score!  Once I saw that, I knew I’d struck gold!

I realized that Cerqa was the right company to help me get my task done affordably, professionally and on time. I uploaded our employee manuals and our mailing list for distribution to our nationwide offices. I told them that I needed them to be bound and that I needed them out fast. They did just that and more.  They even offered cost saving suggestions for binding and shipping services.

The moral to the story…. Cerqa make me a rock star employee getting the job done on time, under budget and without complications.  I got a wining grade in “Offset Printing 101″ and was spotlighted in our monthly company meeting because of Cerqa.