Business to Business Marketing Case Study
The Check's in the Mail: The Transformation of Deluxe Financial Services Is the Stuff of Business Legend
By Kevin J. Clancy and Kevin Hartley, January/February 2005
Ask the average case-bred business school student about revolutionary marketers, and you'll most likely hear about Amazon, Dell, and perhaps Saturn—all companies that turned industries on their ears by dumping the conventional business model and taking an entirely different approach. Some might mention IBM or Intel, two companies that transformed their businesses and successfully resuscitated their brands. But there's a new case on the block, one so inspiring it may match the popularity and instructional value found in these other notable examples.
In the Beginning
The story of Deluxe Financial Services (DFS) has humble beginnings. Founded in 1915 in St. Paul, Minn., in a one room print shop with $300 in start-up funds, DFS today is a division of Fortune 1000 Deluxe Corporation, serving some 8,000 banks, credit unions, and financial services companies across America. The division's all-consuming obsession and motto: printing paper checks "better, faster, and more economically than anyone else."
While commendable, Deluxe's focus on becoming the world's best check printer could not prevent growing consumer preference for electronic payment options. As it had done to hundreds of other industries before, advancing technology threatened the future of check printing. Consumers increasingly used ATM debit cards, online bill pay, wire transfers, and other electronic methods to pay for goods and services. The result: Demand for paper checks began to decline, shrinking at the rate of 3%-4% a year with no going back.
Though c ...