Sharp focus: Renee Miastkowski modernized her family business.
- United Camera & Binocular Repair Corp., based in Bensenville, Ill., used to manually update online repair and shipping status several times a day.
- The company reached out to its longtime shipping partner, UPS, to provide automated shipment and tracking information to United Camera's database.
- Now employees can spend less time updating the online information, and calls from customers have been cut in half.
Adapt to change, but stay true to your values. That formula has helped family-owned
United Camera & Binocular Repair Corp. thrive since 1969 in the camera-repair business. And as shipping and logistical efficiency have become ever more important to United Camera's success, UPS has been there every step of the way.
United Camera's founder, Frank Sciacca, collected, fixed and delivered cameras in person to dealers throughout the Chicago area. Sciacca died in 2001, but today, the business is burgeoning under the direction of his wife and co-founder, Antoinette, now vice president, and their daughter, Renee Miastkowski, president. Revenues for 2008 were projected at more than $8 million. United Camera's 81 employees provide factory-authorized warranty service not just for cameras but also for almost anything with a lens, including telescopes, binoculars and camcorders.
"We continue to drive new work by doing it cheaper, faster and better than our competitors," Miastkowski says. "We lead with price, but delivering on what we promise is a large part of our success."
Hands-on support
Automation has been key to United Camera's expansion. The company uses a sophisticated web portal,
camerarepaironline.com, to provide customers with access to information about their repairs. Customers can check the status of their orders and retrieve tracking numbers.
Until recently, that information had to be updated manually. A few times a day, an employee would have to spend about 15 minutes exporting data as a CSV file from
WorldShip and then running a command on Flex Account to get that information into a Microsoft SQL database for the portal, where it was accessible to both customers and employees.
"There was a lot of human interaction involved," says Gabe Ayala, director of United Camera's information technology department. "If no one could update it for a day, we'd be behind in posting tracking numbers, so customers wouldn't get the information. It was important for us to make it live and automatic."
United Camera's software also sent out daily status e-mails to customers, using information pulled from the database. If orders had been shipped but no one had had time to do the update, the e-mails didn't contain the most current information, and customers weren't notified of the actual progress on their repairs.
A technological development
Ayala asked for help from his UPS account representative, Mark Staszczak, who put Ayala in touch with WorldShip programmers. Through a remote connection, UPS experts integrated the system so that the moment a shipment is complete, that information is automatically posted to the database.
"Now when customers call us or check the web portal, all the information is up to the minute, and our e-mails have the most recent information," says Miastkowski.
By drastically reducing inquiries about shipping status, the new programming has cut the volume of calls from customers in half, and employees no longer make time-consuming manual updates.
"It cut our costs and improved our efficiencies at the same time," Miastkowski says.
This story was originally published under the headline "Snapping up growth" in the winter 2009 print edition of Compass
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