Lynchburg Business

RR Donnelley: A Local Representation of a Global Company

Issue: June 2010 by Jennifer Schmidt in Technology

The international influence of Lynchburg is more established than some residents may realize. The presence of an RR Donnelley operative within city limits is evidence that local work can have effects thousands of miles away.

“Our Lynchburg operation is an integrated part of RR Donnelley’s global platform,” Robert Leveque, Vice President of Manufacturing, said.

With over 60,000 global customers, RR Donnelley has an extensive but often times furtive existence. Evidence of the corporation’s work is easy to find, but the company logo is less obvious.

“Readers will probably have something in their home that RR Donnelley produced, though they might not realize it,” Leveque said.

He explains that RR Donnelley is a service provider for all types of companies and publishers, printing a wide range of materials including catalogues, menus, textbooks for graduate schools, reading materials for preschools, hard and soft cover books, magazines for colleges and consumer titles, phone directories, product labels and posters or signs. The scope of RR Donnelley’s work is immense, yet their name remains hidden due to the nature of the work.

“We are a producer, not a publisher,” Leveque clarified. “The materials that we produce do not ‘belong’ to us; they belong to the publishers that engage RR Donnelley.”

As a producer, RR Donnelley essentially helps clients move from concept to reality and the focus is on the final product received by consumers.

“What really sets RR Donnelley apart is our ability to work collaboratively with customers in order to create integrated communications solutions,” Leveque said. “One way to think about what we do is that we help prepare, produce, deliver and process communications. Our specialty is providing end-to-end solutions.”

The majority of that collaborative process comes about through the diverse portfolio of services offered to customers and the RR Donnelley representatives who work individually with clients.

“Our sales representatives are trained to understand a customer’s business and its underlying goals,” Leveque said.

In the modern business world, databases are becoming more diverse and versatile, and this is an area where RR Donnelley can help companies in a multitude of ways. Leveque explains that they generally work with existing lists provided by clients and use RR Donnelley tools and methods to utilize the information.

One way database information can be maximized is through the production of catalogs that “include digitally produced content that communicates with individual recipients,” according to Leveque. He adds that the company has also “developed digital printing presses that permit us to offer customers affordable, high-speed variable color printing. This has opened the door for more communications to be designed not only for a target audience, but for a target individual.”

An example of these targeted messages might be seen in college mailings.

“A college can use our digital printing capabilities to create communications that speak to an individual student’s interests,” Leveque said. “For example, if a student indicated that they’d like to play an instrument in college, write for the college paper and major in secondary education, they might receive information from a college that emphasizes the university’s concert and marching band, award-winning newspaper and success in helping to place graduates in area high schools.”

Another way that RR Donnelley helps businesses convey their messages is through TransPromo, which uses transactional documents like a billing statement to also carry an individual, targeted message to the consumer.

“The benefit of TransPromo is that the vast majority of recipients open and look at their online statements and other important transactional documents,” Leveque said. “It increases the likelihood that the marketer’s message will be seen.”

In addition to supplementing RR Donnelley’s global operations, the Lynchburg facility has been highly involved in strengthening the company’s safety priorities. Leveque identifies employee safety as an ongoing priority for the company, especially since RR Donnelley was recertified for STAR status in OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program. To put this honor in context, Leveque explains that “less than 1 percent of manufacturing facilities applies for and achieves STAR status.”

To be recertified for STAR, as the Lynchburg facility was, a company must improve on standards that are already very high. Admirably, the facility was awarded STAR status once again and some best practices noted were “innovations and excellence in employee safety awareness programs, fire brigade and medical response teams,” according to Leveque.

Leveque adds that having a Lynchburg facility is a great asset to the company for various reasons. Not only is Virginia routinely recognized as one of the best states in the nation for business locales, Region 2000 specifically offers “access to an excellent workforce, very good road and rail access, and is positioned centrally relative to the eastern seaboard,” Leveque said.

In addition, he says that RR Donnelley “strives to be a good neighbor in the communities in which employees live and work” and uses volunteer and charity efforts to do so.

From personalized, targeted mailings and invoices to giving back to the local community, RR Donnelly is a quiet but powerful force in Central Virginia that only seems destined to continue growth.

For information about RR Donnelley and the services they offer, visit www.rrd.com.