Rocky Hill, CT - Software Marketing Associates announced today that Karol Media, a leading full-service fulfillment provider, has selected its Pro-Mail suite of direct marketing and fulfillment software solutions to help the Wilkes-Barre, PA company offer broader and better fulfillment services for its customers.
Founded in 1981, Software Marketing Associates (SMA) is the purveyor of Pro-Mail, the nation's top custom-tailored fulfillment and management software for the commercial printing, direct-mail and fulfillment industries.

"Years back, when we began our company, we believed that over time, through hard work and focus, we could position and prove Pro-Mail to be the right choice for a business like Karol Media," said Denise Lunden, SMA president. "It is gratifying to be able to now include Karol among the number of companies that regard us as a business partner important to their overall success. We look forward to adapting Pro-Mail to help Karol meet its customers' ever-changing needs."

Established more than thirty years ago, Karol Media today offers customers a full range of fulfillment services that includes order fulfillment/pick and pack, kit assembly, e-retail, call center, duplication and replication, and ad specialties.

Yet, the company recognized, as Steve Lutz, vice president of IT, explained, "our industry, like many others, is changing in the blink of an eye. For Karol to remain competitive, for our customers to remain competitive, we needed to bring our fulfillment service to a new, higher level. And our mainframe system simply wasn't up to the task." The company had clear ideas on what would be required to do fulfillment better.

Its customer service/call center operation needed to have quicker access to data to answer questions and have better order management capability. To reduce internal IT resources the company would need to take advantage of "cloud computing." Because it works with many Internet retailers, Karol had to be able to set up customized storefronts, especially in the area of cloud computing capture and processing. To better market its back-end services, it had to have affordable and easy on-line access to clients, as well as Web store usage. And, the company needed "on-the-floor" functionality to capture billing information.

"We had our wish list, so to speak, of needed capabilities," said Rob Costello, vice president of Operations, "But equally critical for us was to team up with a company that has a strong record of helping companies like ours be successful in fulfillment. We decided to go with Pro-Mail because it met all of our requirements and it's backed by a group of professionals with invaluable experience. Karol is, thankfully, doing all right in this tough business environment. Indeed, we're growing. That wouldn't be the case if Pro-Mail and SMA weren't a part of what we can offer our customers."

Karol Media is one of more than 200 client companies that place their trust in SMA and Pro-mail. Every day they depend upon Pro-Mail to seamlessly handle literally thousands of distinct fulfillment programs managed on behalf of Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies, among others.