Oregon Screen Impressions Case Study

Established in 1984, Oregon Screen Impressions (OSI) is the largest screen printing and embroidery company in the Pacific Northwest. In keeping with its Northwest roots, the company is dedicated to doing business in an ecological, humanitarian fashion, and the company’s success is due not only to its commitment to excellence, but to its commitment to maintaining a team of talented, hardworking employees. The company’s high standards also extend to the infrastructure that supports its business.

So, when OSI became frustrated with its prior IT service firm’s lack of technical knowledge and reluctance to be pro-active in taking steps to prevent problems, they decided to make a change.

“We evaluated the option of hiring an IT employee versus contracting with a different outside firm to service our network with approximately 70 workstations and 4 servers,” said Carrie Hill, OSI’s Human Resources Manager. “The cost of an internal employee with Polar Systems’ experience would have been a lot more expensive to our company than contracting with Polar for the PolarStar service, and we really don’t have the need for a full-time IT person.”

“Polar’s network service is indispensable to us,” continued Hill. “Without the PolarStar service, we wouldn’t be able to keep current with our software and we would have a hard time maintaining functional backup systems.  Whereas our previous firm focused on letting problems happen and then fixing them, Polar Systems’ people try to project potential problems and work on preventive measures.”

“Recently, we had the need to obtain a particular software program that was required by one of our customers, and Polar Systems’ engineer researched the software we needed, installed it, and made sure that it worked,” said Carrie. “Our Polar Systems engineer makes regular visits to our site to help with things like adding new workstations or upgrading our backup capability, but they’re available to help whenever we have a special need – all that we need to do is call their help desk.”

“We know that we have saved money when we compare labor dollars with the cost of the service,” added Carrie. “The value of working with a group that has the integrity of Polar Systems is huge.”