Describe the particulars of BCC’s executive transition—the key people involved, and particularly the timing. What made you think this was the right time to do this?

K. JON RUNSTROM: There’s a myth that an entrepreneurial company depends on the founder, which creates the fear that things will fall apart once he leaves. I’ve announced that I plan to retire in July 2010, and that gives us an opportunity over the next 12 months to prove both internally and externally that BCC is stronger than ever. This company, as an entity, doesn’t depend on me; it depends on the people that are in place here at BCC. I think showing employees, customers and our parent company that things will continue on even to a greater level than they have before, is a reasonable and logical path. And a year to do that, I think, is a reasonable length of time in which to accomplish that goal.

I refer to Chris Lien and Jim Mann as the Dream Team. As our Executive Vice President, Chris—I say this sort of tongue in cheek—is kind of a celebrity in the mailing industry. He’s well known at virtually every level. He’s respected, he knows the issues, and he will be able to use that knowledge to the betterment of BCC and our customers. His leadership is part of an overall strategy that will ensure the long-term success of this company.

Jim has really grown up with BCC. Jim was one of our first hires, and he’s proven himself as he has moved through various parts of the company. He knows the workings of BCC. His title is now Senior Vice President, but in a larger company his new role would be comparable to that of a chief operating officer. He will manage the day-to-day operations of the company.

This shared relationship has the additional advantage of allowing us to continue our path of innovation and service, while still interacting with the industry at the very highest levels. For example, last week Chris was one of just a handful of individuals asked to consult with the Postmaster General. Of those in attendance, he was the only representative from a software company. And that sort of thing is really valuable to a company of any size, and particularly valuable to BCC to have that kind of respect and the ability to give input to the real decision makers in the industry.

CHRIS LIEN: I’m humbled by the idea of celebrity, Jon, so I’m going to hold you to that tongue-in-cheek comment! But I’m excited, and I think the industry is excited. In fact, as I’ve talked to professionals around the country, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the buzz right now—within the Postal Service, and the mailing industry as a whole—is about BCC, this exciting company and the legacy that you have built. Thirty years of solid proven foundation, of technology services and solutions, as well as a steadfast dedication to the industry. A lot of companies are excited, including, as you mentioned, Jon, all the way up to the Postmaster General. The mailing industry is looking at BCC to continue that legacy, continue the foundation that BCC has established over 30 years, and take our core "How Can We Help?" message to all aspects of the industry, including the Postal Service.

I’m also excited to be part of the team here. For 16 years I have been involved in different aspects of the industry, all the way from transportation and planning, through mail preparation and address quality. My tenure within MTAC, the Mailers’ Technical Advisory Committee, has been pretty well established and will continue. So I’m pleased with the structure that’s been put in place here that will allow BCC to continue to build an exciting and innovative future of mail preparation.

JIM MANN: I want to talk a little bit about the feedback that I’ve received so far regarding these changes. It’s been very positive. Everybody’s very excited about this transition. They think it’s a great team approach, with Chris and myself and you, Jon, staying on in an advisory role for the next year. Everyone here at BCC seems to be enthusiastic about the future opportunities, and being part of what’s in front of us, in the next generation of BCC Software.

BCC is already going through some growth and change as a company. How does this executive transition echo BCC’s ongoing evolution, and in what ways do these changes influence BCC’s role in the mail industry?

CHRIS LIEN: Well, let’s start with that core message, "How Can We Help?" which remains such a wonderful mantra for BCC. And that motto has made an impact on our customers—thousands of mailers who have depended and continue to depend on BCC to provide the solutions and services to help them grow their business. We’re inspired by that message to transform, enhance and evolve our technologies to provide increased innovation and services to all mailers.

One of the things that we’ve done is expand our core Mail Manager solution with enhanced address correction, throughput and automation capabilities, and created a solution set that can accommodate some of the largest, most sophisticated mailers. The success stories on our website offer a glimpse of the growth and innovation that’s coming out of BCC, and how new and longtime customers are putting those innovations to terrific use. The changes in this transition period give BCC an opportunity to continue expanding on that foundation, and allow us to take that core "How Can We Help?" message to all parts of the industry.

So that’s where the company is going. But BCC’s success has also involved constancy—bedrock principles upon which customers have come to rely: Things like best-in-class support, reliable product development and updates, and overall customer satisfaction. Is there anything about the company’s new direction that should give pause to current or future customers who have been drawn to those mainstay principles?

JIM MANN: Our commitment to the professional mailing community is as strong as ever. Take a look at what’s going on in the industry. There are companies out there today who are cutting back on things like customer service, and training. At BCC, we’re beefing that up, and adding to it. We’re continuing to develop and offer educational sessions and diverse training opportunities, all while enhancing our Support offerings. In our last Customer Support survey, we found that 96 percent of respondents would recommend BCC Software to their peers. We will continue to have a strong focus on Customer Support and satisfaction.

We have always wanted to be more than just a vendor to our customers. We want to be a true solutions partner. We want to make sure that our products are not only innovative, but reliable. We want to make sure that people can count on us meeting our USPS certification schedules. You might not see those things with other vendors right now in the industry.

CHRIS LIEN: Absolutely, Jim. There are other software vendors in the industry, but I think when you really look at the competitive landscape, you’re only going to find one true leader—one company that is truly focused on this industry, with steadfast focus, that provides real customer support with a genuine commitment to overall user satisfaction. Also, one of the things that BCC can continue to be proud of is the fact that our support team knows mail. We know mail. We are able to provide important guidance and education to our customers on how to prepare their mailings, and how to induct those mailings with the Postal Service.

Look at the PEAK (Postal Education and Knowledge) series that we started a year or so ago. This non-promotional series gives mailers the opportunity to hear directly from Postal Service leaders about initiatives such as Intelligent Mail and other vital issues. This is direct access, and we’re proud to be able to bring that to them.

Jim, you mentioned Support. Again, something to be really proud of is the fact that we have live support based right here in BCC’s Rochester headquarters. These are technical experts in software and postal issues who work right down the hall from our programmers. You’re not calling a foreign country, or talking to somebody who can’t understand your business. We understand mail. We know mail. We’re focused on mail. And the significance of that statement is not lost on our customers.

BCC’s 2005 merger with BÖWE BELL + HOWELL was certainly a milestone for everyone involved. Four years later, how has that strategic alignment benefited both companies? And moving forward, how do you see that relationship evolving?

K. JON RUNSTROM: Acquisitions of companies can often lead to a great deal of churn—in people and in policies—and it’s not unusual for the buying company to have to concern itself with financing the acquisition, which can lead to losing strategic focus and even letting employees go. What originally motivated me to entertain an offer from BÖWE BELL + HOWELL was the arrangement that dictated that I would continue here to run the company pretty much under its own brand name, which was well recognized within a segment of the industry. What was working here would continue to work. That was a big part of why they wanted to work with BCC in the first place, but it was an essential consideration for me.

Meanwhile, the advantages to BCC of working with BÖWE BELL + HOWELL were significant. They allowed us to move from being essentially a small player in a relatively large industry, to a point where we have been able to leverage our brand on a much larger scale while still maintaining our identity. Additionally, BÖWE BELL + HOWELL is a company entirely focused on mail, and they saw BCC as possessing a "missing piece" to complement their overall slate of offerings.

Going forward in the future, I don’t see any change to that. The BCC brand has a lot of equity in the postal community, and it’s simply not in BÖWE BELL + HOWELL’s best interests to make significant changes to that. Our two companies will probably work closely together, thanks to the array of coordinated opportunities that exist between our complementary offerings. And I know they are very enthusiastic about BCC’s potential, and that they have complete confidence in this transition team.

JIM MANN: I’d like to add that, despite our shared commitment to postal solutions, as two separate companies BCC and BÖWE BELL + HOWELL historically had different enough core competencies so as to make our partnership just that—a partnership, not simply an acquisition in the way that term is so often interpreted. They did buy the company, it’s true, but we work together and share ideas. There’s very little top-down direction that takes place, because there doesn’t have to be. We want to help BÖWE BELL + HOWELL become a better company, and they want us to become a better company. It’s really been mutually beneficial to everyone, and I expect it will stay that way.

CHRIS LIEN: I admit I have a little bit of a different perspective on this topic. At the time that Jon, was preparing for the BÖWE BELL + HOWELL acquisition, I myself was very closely involved with a different mailing software company that was going through its own merge with a larger organization. And looking back, Jon, there was just no denying the care you took in joining BCC to BÖWE BELL + HOWELL. It was definitely evident. You specifically chose a company that’s focused on mail, that had complementary solutions.

The mailing industry is very diverse, of course, and not all mail is prepared through methods and processes in which BCC clearly has core competency. The proven hardware competencies of BÖWE BELL + HOWELL, joined with our software and services expertise, together represent a best-practice approach to providing the full breadth of solutions for mail preparation. Where other companies saw mergers in which not only their core value propositions were damaged, but even basic fundamentals like dependable customer support were jeopardized, BCC and BÖWE BELL + HOWELL did it right.

The other important consideration behind that question is our customers, who know they can continue to rely upon BCC. With some of our competitors, mergers and acquisitions have inspired a lot of confusion, a lot of fear, a lot of uncertainty, and a lot of doubt as to what’s going to happen. Names changed. Web pages would appear or disappear. Support and updates would be there one day and gone the next. "Chaos" is probably the best way to describe what happened to those companies. BCC has never had that problem, and that dependability will continue to remain a core asset for BCC in the future.

BCC has been known over the years for its adaptive nature—an ability to anticipate industry shifts and respond to customer needs with deliberacy and speed. As any company grows, though, there’s always the risk of losing that nimble quality. What’s being done to manage BCC’s growth, and maintain the responsiveness that has proven so valuable to so many mailers?

JIM MANN: Well, first, I think it’s important to point out that we’re not rushing this transition. Jon has carefully put together a leadership team for the future, and together we’re making sure that we have the right people in place to manage growth, and continue to be responsive to customer needs and industry needs. A lot of companies will rush their succession plans, with consequences ranging from ineffectiveness to outright disaster.

Also, it’s pivotal that we have the right people in place to build and maintain stronger connections with our customers. That’s the key. We want to make it as easy as possible for them to contact us through our support environment, our forums, our web-based training sessions. We want to continue and build on strong representation in the industry, and in the industry workgroups, like MTAC and IDEAlliance. We want to continue to participate in USPS beta programs and testing programs. For all that to work, we understand we’ve got to have the mix of personnel. Too much growth too quickly is possibly worse than no growth at all.

K. JON RUNSTROM: From day one, BCC has been on a highly structured growth curve. We’ve never relied on debt to grow—unlike a lot of companies, and the U.S. government. {laughter}

I think that trend will continue. The people in this room right now are fundamental to our future success in a controlled, structured manner, which is what this transition is really all about. Since the acquisition by BÖWE BELL + HOWELL, we have been quite successful at serving current customers while moving up the ladder to reach out to new levels of clients. Again, it goes all the way up to the highest levels of the Postal Service, and to what BCC can provide the industry.

CHRIS LIEN: What’s really a tremendous opportunity to the industry, to BCC and our customers, is the chance we have now to work together through this transition, making astute investments that help to build, and really expand on our core competencies. We’re excited to have an opportunity to transition and grow in a structured way, as Jon said, and really continue to provide the innovative solutions that help to drive the industry’s needs.

What would you say are the key industry issues facing mailers today, and how is BCC positioned to deal with those issues?

CHRIS LIEN: Let’s start with probably the most significant, the Intelligent Mail Barcode. Here we have a new foundation for the Postal Service to improve its visibility, and accountability, in terms of compliance with the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. There’s also opportunity, for mailers to understand how the mail is processed and delivered. Opportunities for their customers to see where the mail is in the system, to enhance their direct marketing capabilities. Opportunities to know when the check is literally in the mail coming back—a crucial consideration for a lot of the laws related to compliance for credit card and financial institutions. We’re excited about the Intelligent Mail Barcode. BCC has been a pioneer with the Postal Service in the formation of the IMB, really since its inception. Many of our customers have been using IMB since the beginning, well over a year now. They’re leveraging it on their mailpieces and on their mail containers, all compliments of the innovative solutions that BCC provides. We’ve even gone further in assisting our customers in leveraging the Intelligent Mail Barcode, through our Track N Trace service.

In terms of address quality, the Postmaster General had called for the industry to reduce the Undeliverable As Addressed mail problem—a $2 billion problem—by 50 percent by the year 2010. BCC has been actively involved in that effort. Not only do we have CASS certified solutions that provide best-in-class address correction capabilities, we also supplement that by being a full-service NCOA^Link provider. That gives our customers access to the most complete data related to address changes that are occurring at a rate of more than 7,000 every hour in this country alone. That access means customers can make sure their addresses are not only complete and correct, but current. It’s a vital aspect of ensuring timely mail delivery—and of retaining postage discounts, now that Move Update is required for First-Class and Standard Mail.

The last issue involves electronic data. Despite the fact that mail is still about ink on paper and physical delivery, the electronic element is continuing to grow. The Postal Service’s new Business Customer Gateway has contained within it, the PostalOne! Initiative. And there again, BCC continues to be an innovative leader. Our Mail.dat support, which is the industry standard for electronically communicating mailing information, is prepared by IDEAlliance, the association that manages that standard. Incidentally, Bob Schimek, our newest Vice President, is a co-chair on that particular standard. So we’re excited to be involved at that level, as well. But the Mail.dat specification available in our Mail Manager and cQuencer solutions enables customers to communicate directly with the Postal Service electronically. This gives them an opportunity to not only participate in Full Service Intelligent Mail Barcode capabilities, but also gain better insight into their mail preparation.

JIM MANN: Another key BCC initiative is in education. As Chris mentioned, the Post Office is implementing many different major changes in the industry. These new changes have created a lot of confusion among our customers and, from what I understand, the industry as a whole. That’s why BCC is beefing up our efforts to provide every kind of educational opportunity possible for our users—online, on-site, classroom-based, whatever they need. In addition to basic training on our own software and products, we’re helping mailers get up to speed on IMB issues and PostalOne! advances and how to take advantage of the Post Office’s Customer Gateway. We’ve seen a lot of success with those initiatives recently, and I envision BCC continuing to offer those types of educational sessions moving forward.

CHRIS LIEN: Absolutely. That’s what differentiates BCC as the industry thought leader, amongst a landscape of vendors that are providing just software-based assistance. Mailers today need more than that, and more is exactly what we’re prepared to provide.

This executive transition will conclude at the five-year anniversary with BCC’s merger with BÖWE BELL + HOWELL. Where do you see the company five years after that?

CHRIS LIEN: Well, I see BCC continuing its 30-year record of dedication to the mailing industry, without becoming distracted by other ventures like the industry has seen with other companies. I see the Postal Service continuing to partner with BCC, and expand Intelligent Mail and other initiatives I’ve talked about. I’m also excited about working more with BÖWE BELL + HOWELL. As I said earlier, BCC is certainly a leader in mail preparation technology, and BÖWE BELL + HOWELL is a leader in terms of sorting and hardware solutions. We’re excited about looking at leveraging that complementary technology, to serving the entire industry, not just specific segments or pockets, and to really provide the solutions that fulfill that core "How Can We Help?" message.

JIM MANN: I agree, Chris. In fact, I can envision many other opportunities in working together with BÖWE BELL + HOWELL. There’s a lot we can accomplish as a team over the next five years.

K. JON RUNSTROM: I would just add that no other company in the country is paying as much attention and communicating with the Postal Service to the same level as BCC. That attention is so critical to the solutions we provide. The Postal Service itself, as we all know, is in a state of financial crisis. There are trends going on that are frightening a lot of people—but to us, those trends, while occasionally troubling, are opportunities. And the only way to take advantage of those opportunities is to almost be inside their heads. In doing that, there’s really nothing but promise for BCC going forward.

A strong leadership team isn’t dependent on one individual, but rather a group of dedicated people well beyond this room—people that have come to BCC because they believe in what BCC offers and represents. In my mind, there’s no way that BCC will do anything other than continue to elevate itself, to be the undisputed leader in this industry.

Finally, Jon, on a more personal note, what are your plans after July of next year? How will you spend your retirement?

K. JON RUNSTROM: I anticipate continuing a relationship with the family that I’ve come to know here and other places within the industry. I started in this industry as a programmer: I wrote code, and I enjoyed doing that, but I haven’t been able to do that for almost 10 years, just because there are too many other things to do when you’re running a company. Recently, in my off hours, I’ve been doing more programming for myself, in the area of home automation, and I do anticipate spending a good deal of time making my home as "smart" as it can possibly be. I enjoy the immediate feedback with things like that. The thing about programming is, there’s always a solution. With company management, and people management, sometimes the solutions aren’t as straightforward. So that there is that good feeling you get by solving a problem.

I hope to relearn how to play golf. I blame BCC that my golf game has just gone to pot. {laughter}

I anticipate that I’ll do some traveling. Probably get out of Rochester for the winter. As much as I like Rochester, it’s a great place, fantastic summers usually. But I plan on doing those things that people dream about doing when they retire. I’m in a position that I can do that.

Thank you all very much.