Our leadership have been in the school photography business for a while, and we've learned a whole lot as technology has evolved, in fact--that's why we just got involved with the company.
A few things that we learned about parents/customers:
- You want your product FAST
- You don't want to pay an arm and a leg
- You want to SEE your photos BEFORE you commit to pay
- You want the photos to be genuine of what your child looked like that day
A few things that we learned about schools:
- You want to provide an avenue for affordable photos
- You need the photos for your school information system
- You don't want the headaches that come along with missing photos, payments, etc.
A few things that we learned about our competition:
- You can be big national companies, but there's only 1 of you
- You are most likely a mom and pop shop run out of your home
- You rely on outside companies to host your images, which a security concern
- You don't have a centralized customer management system
- You don't print in-house with printers that you own
- Because of all of that, your prices are higher, and your turnaround slower
What our proprietary system real-time system does:
- Secures your information the best way possible
- We host your images on a series of servers WE own
- We integrate with your school's management system
- You can view, click, customize, all at once
- You can add your yearbook to your order
- Track your order in real-time
- Automatically get order notifications by email
- There's a ton of other features, but we don't want to give all our secrets away :)
Our system truly is UNMATCHED in the industry. Trust us, we looked. It would have been a whole lot less work and we've invested millions of hours and dollars into our portal. I'm sure if we really wanted to skate by--we would have used that money and time elsewhere. But we didn't. We wanted to do it right. Do it right for you. So it was easier. So it was more efficient. So you would get your product faster. Provide you more flexibility. Things that you don't really notice, until they are a problem.
Now, there have been some ups, and some downs. We have parties when we release new updates, and we cry when things go down and can't figure them out at 3am in the morning. It's our life, 24x7x365. But we do it for you.
There isn't another company that verifies and connects everything from the start of getting the kids information from the school, matching it on picture day, and providing a real-time update when it leaves one of our facilities.
In 2015, our error rate is well under 1%. In fact our error rate is .0012%
That means, for every 100,000 orders that we process, there is an issue with 112 of them.
If you are one of those 112, we really truly are sorry. We didn't mean to mess up your order. We didn't do it on purpose. It was an accident, we promise. And our developers and team are on it to fix whatever problem you had--so it won't happen again.
On the topic of our team, they're fantastic, they're amazing. They should be working on major projects like going to space, or working with robots.(not that school pictures isn't a cool thing to work on) Our development team is from all around the world from Spain to France to the Ukraine and China. In fact, most of our development team hold masters degrees and Ph D's! One in fact, is a neuroscientist when he has grant money for research :)
Our point is, that we're invested. We're invested in making your experience the best it possibly can be. And when we fall short, or you give suggestions--we listen. So speak up! Please!
- United Portraits
www.UnitedPortraits.com
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