The Client
Our Sunday Visitor is the largest English language Catholic publisher in the world, with over 1800
textbooks, parish resources and trade books in print. OSV is also the largest manufacturer of church
offering envelopes in the world, printing several hundred million offering envelopes a year. The
publisher has tripled in size in the last ten years.
The Unfulfilled Need
OSV became an Advantage client in 1990 for its subscription and book sales operations. Over the years,
an already positive relationship built on trust, confidence and integrity grew to be even stronger. When
OSV needed a completely new management and production system for their envelope division, they
went looking for a partner to develop it. However, since offering envelope manufacturing is not a
common operation, they couldn’t find a development partner experienced in creating such systems.
When they knew they would have to start from scratch, they wanted a company that they could depend
on, and one that did top-quality work. And they found it in their own backyard: AdvantageCS.
The Partnership
Although envelope manufacturing may seem to have little in common with subscription management
and book sales, AdvantageCS hit the ground running since they were already familiar with the OSV
organization and business methods. The massive project spanned 4 years, but as it progressed, the team
worked together more and more almost as one company.
The Result
It was a huge undertaking, but the result was an unqualified success. Today, the envelope system
continues to be reliable and provides significant efficiencies and flexibility over the previous system.
“We prize our relationship with AdvantageCS highly,” says Frank Thomas, Executive Director of IT.
“There is a deep level of trust and partnership there, and, after the envelope development project, a
confidence that we can depend on them for whatever we may need.”
