FST Technologies - print solutions

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About FST

FST are based at our head office in Livingston on the M8 corridor, 15 minutes from Edinburgh airport and 30 minutes from Glasgow. Our custom built, 37,000 sq ft site, facilitates all company functions, including: business analysis & project management, development & technical support, client services, production & operations and warehousing. In addition to our Livingston site, FST operate a satellite office in Glasgow, housing our software development and disaster recovery functions, as well as a variety of secure 3rd party data centres for the hosting of client systems.

Client Services & Projects

Providing outstanding customer service is our top priority. All of our clients benefit from their own dedicated account manager. They act as an interface between our client services and production teams, assisting in the day-to-day running of the project and monitoring the process from start to finish. Strict adherence to Service Level Agreements ensures we meet our client's objectives, whilst quality is guaranteed by our ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems accreditation, with all Project Managers PRINCE2 accredited.

Technical Development

FST's communication and document composition developers can support almost any client requirement, from industry standard PReS and XSLT / XML development to legacy formats and direct Postscript programming. This is augmented by our business analysis team dedicated to helping our clients with their customer communication and document migration projects. Our approach has proven to be a truly invaluable service, assisting clients to migrate their legacy processes from 3rd party suppliers, putting them back in control of both their documents and their customer relationships.

Laser Room

Digital personalisation combines the richness of your customer data with the dynamic spectrum of FST's production output capabilities. Our combination of highlight and mono colour, high-speed Xerox sheet-fed printers give the potential to use up to 5 material stocks, while the printer-ready files are programmed to manage paper selection, pagination, -plex and print. Every aspect of production is controlled by the workflow engine allowing our highly skilled operators to manage the most complex of document requirements.

Data Processing

With an ever increasing importance being placed on data security, FST ensure that your customer data is being managed to the most exacting of standards. Every member of our team is subject to rigorous employment screening and all client data is utilised within a closed loop system, whereby access is restricted to staff responsible for managing each platform. All of this is backed up by our ISO 27001 Data Security accreditation. In addition to our outbound capabilities, FST offer a range of inbound capture processes, offering a full audit trail that can be tightly integrated with outbound channels to provide a seamless transaction process.

Machine Insertion

FST's dynamic collation and insertion systems can enclose the most complex of marketing packs. The utilisation of intelligent, automated insertion lines ensures 100% integrity on all projects. State-of-the-art Buhrs 6-station inserters, driven by barcode or OMR marks, are used operationally to process long-run or variable jobs, while Bowe & Kern technology enhance the opportunity for flexibility and capacity management. Any pack integrity issues are diverted from the process and manually checked by the operator, prior to sign-off from a supervisor.

Hand Insertion

FST provide a wide spectrum of manual fulfilment services for our clients. Hand insertion is utilised where an automated (machine) process is not feasible, due to minimum batch volume, non-machine-able inserts or additional operational processes being required. All personalised documents are lasered with insertion barcodes and accompanying eye readable representations, which allow our trained staff to manually insert irrespective of the complexity of variable pack content or intelligent collation requirements.

Despatch

As part of our robust workflow processes each pack can be barcoded for effective tracking and response handling with 100% despatch guaranteed. We work with all the major mail delivery companies, to give you access to the highest quality of service at the most competitive prices. In the Despatch area, the Warehouse Manager is sited at the exit/entrance point to monitor deliveries and collections. The Goods in/out doors are on a programmable timer mechanism where physical security of the building is of paramount importance.

Warehousing

FST have a current warehousing capacity of over 1,000 pallets with 20-25% available at any time, with an additional caged storage area for client projects requiring secure storage. Additionally, FST undertake a "Pick & Pack" service for several key clients (information requests, literature ordering), which necessitates a more dynamic stock management process. Our stock management application has been developed in-house to facilitate the robust reporting & management demanded by our clients. The application includes functionality developed specifically to meet the stock management obligations inherent in transactional communications with variable pack content.