And it didn’t look too rosy for Tall Group either, a company which had for 25 years specialised in a form of payment that dates back much longer: cheques have been in circulation since before the Great Fire of London in 1666.
The death of the cheque may have been greatly exaggerated but its decline has not. The runaway uptake of digital technology and e-commerce has led to a drop in popularity of the paper cheque by frightening double-digit percentages annually for several years.
This declining popularity has meant print companies that used to rely on cheques for the bulk of their business have had to shift gears and expand into new lines of business or burn. Tall Group set about the former to not only survive but thrive.
The challenge
Managing director Martin Ruda takes up the story of decline for all those cheque mates in the printing game: “The core legacy and market of our business came from cheques in the UK – printing standard cheque books and specially printed cheques for banks, corporations and business organisations. This market really peaked in the UK in the mid to late 1990s.”
And then it began to slide. Fast. According to industry stats Ruda is all too familiar with, the UK sees a 13% decline in volumes of cheques used per year, and the implications are even starker: “The ramification for an organisation that historically printed cheques is very significant. There aren’t many strategies a business in a niche – and a niche that’s in decline – can undertake.
“But we had to find one that included winning market share and generating value. We had to look at developing a range of value-added, technology-based solutions, systems or services that extended our opportunities, albeit in a sector where the market is in steady decline.
“We needed a maximisation strategy employed in the UK and one that also enabled us to diversify into international markets with both our traditional legacy cheque printing, but also other markets relevant to that core legacy.”
The Tall Group is just that, a group. Three companies, each founded some 25 years ago, comprising Tall Security Print, Checkprint and DLRT. With bases in Runcorn, Cheshire, Hinckley, Leicestershire, and Lisburn in Northern Ireland the business employs just under 150 people in secure print and a multitude of allied services that come under the heading ‘payments solutions’.
The group has become one of UK’s leading providers of special cheques, credits and secure encoded documents, producing millions of secure documents every month from fully accredited, secure production facilities and supplying super-safe, efficient cheque-printing software. It operates internationally and is recognised as a market leader, but repositioning the company took time and complex manoeuvring.
The method
“We worked with the major banks and hundreds of smaller institutions to understand the issues of the cheque as a payment method in a more holistic way,” explains Ruda. “We needed to gain a good grasp of the whole process, from generating and issuing of the cheque to the management of the receipt of the cheque.”
In contrast to the immediacy of this age of real-time payment and instant messaging, one of the keys to repositioning a company with such a complicated, niche offering as secure payments is “take your time”, cautions Ruda.
“The key is that this can happen over a reasonable, gradual and lengthy period of time. We spent a number of years through our communications with banks and other businesses to grow our understanding of each different opportunity. By taking our time we have been able to manage the declining requirements in the UK by adding value in an organic, step-by-step basis – it is not an all-for-one big-bang wrench, it is a gradually managed process over a number of years.”
Ruda likens this process to an archery target: “The bull is our core offering and we want to gradually extend our capability from the bull to the outer rings. But every new part of the target we capture is connected to the previous part – we are not making great leaps to the outer parts of the target, we are making steady progress extending our offering but making sure it is related to that core.”
From standard chequebooks. Tall Group added a raft of services and systems over around a decade that include integated payment management tools, automated cheque infilling software and hardware packages, fraud-prevention tools to secure variable data, cheque image-capture applications, third-party recognition software and a range of interconnected offerings such as bureau services enabling Tall Group to act as an outsourcing company for anything and everything involving secure documentation.
The result
Having extended the company’s service reach, Tall Group set about growing through acquisition and targeting international markets. The Tall Group now successfully exports to more than 20 countries, with products ranging from cheques to vouchers and from certificates to ballot papers for elections.
Two years ago it bought Lisburn-based DLRS (NI), now renamed DLRT, to consolidate its cheque printing capability. And last year it scooped a job to print a new standardised cheque for Ethiopia. It has also won jobs for ballot papers in Uganda and birth, marriage and death certificates for the Dominican Republic.
“We explored international markets and found a limited number of very specific, typically emerging, markets such as African countries and elsewhere where the cheque as an example of a paper payment instrument that is – unlike the UK – growing. It’s all about mindset and the realisation that everyone in the business especially those in marketing, administration and customer-facing roles are starting to deal with different customers with different requirements,” says Ruda.
“Even now we have regular staff updates to look at our successes and challenges. And we continually bang on about the changing nature of the market and new products and services we are making available and things that are still in development. So over a period of time people get the gist and then see the evidence in the factory and beyond.”
This year the cheque industry will undergo what Ruda calls the “biggest transformation of its long and illustrious history” with the introduction of the Future Clearing Model. Due to go live this year it will require all banks to clear every cheque based on just image and data files alone. No further paper cheques will be exchanged between banks.
“As a result, the time taken to irrevocably clear a cheque will be significantly reduced from the current six-day cycle, an archaic timescale more suited to our 17th-century forebears,” says Ruda who is more interested in the future and what it means for the Tall Group.
“For our 50th anniversary I would like to think we will still be recognised as a leader in its field and that that field will involve even more enhanced secure payment technology in the UK and internationally.”
VITAL STATISTICS: Tall Group
Location Runcorn, Cheshire; Hinckley, Leicestershire; and Lisburn, Northern Ireland
Inspection host Managing director Martin Ruda
Size Staff: 146; turnover: £14.6m
Established 1991
Products Cheques, statements, certificates, ballot papers, BACS payments, cheque imaging and integrated payment systems for clients such as Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking Group, Santander and HSBC, among others, and governments across the world
Kit Three Imer 500mm web presses for long-run work, an AMS X-Jet mono inkjet printer, Xerox Versant and a host of small presses for bespoke and special print work
Inspection focus Repositioning a company to better address changing markets
TOP TIPS
Clarity of direction “Know your customers and markets – unless you know what you are trying to achieve and have a clearly communicated strategy you are more likely to fail,” says Ruda.
Take your time Repositioning a niche product or brand is complex, should not be rushed and involves talking to existing and targeted customers.
Target new customers Tweak or add to existing products or services so they appeal to a new group of customers or new international markets.
Look after existing customers Take care when repositioning or diversifying your business to protect, rather than alienate, your existing customer base.
Align yourself with other brands and businesses An alliance or takeover can help your business target new areas or technologies and expand faster.
