Bowe Bell + Howell Reviews

Pros

Autonomy as a service tech

Cons

Lack of foresight in company focus

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to the customers

Pros

work life balance
wealth of knowledge to be obtained

Cons

not so great with the benefits

Advice to Senior Management

keep up the good work

Pros

Very challenging and satisfying work for which you will recieve a decent salary. As a field employee you must be very self suffient although many support resources are available.

Cons

Advancement opportunities for field based employees is limited. To advance you generally must work in one of the facilities in Durham NC, Bethlehem PA, or Wheeling IL.

Advice to Senior Management

Company need to develop new products for the US market and lower it price points to be competitive in the market place.

Pros

All of the workers are always great. Easy going, always willing to give a helping hand. Most of the people have over 10+ years with the company. A lot of experience and people willing to share it.

Good Benefits package. It is comparable with everyone. The pay could be better considering the locations.

Very low turnover in associates.

Cons

Good old boy networking at its best. The management located within the services division are all old buddies from the North East of USA. It is very difficult to change or suggest changing the way things are done. The customer comes first, but only if at last resort or "How much is it going to cost?"

This is one of 1st companies I ever have dealt with that does not keep track of project over-run or how much a decision from upper-management will actually impact them long term.

Advice to Senior Management

You need to clean house and get fresh eyes and ideas. When your managment is from within the industry and your competetion has more people in your own organization it is time to change the way they manage the talent and where they get it from.

You sit in the middle of a high-tech gold mind of talent, but rarely recruit from the area.

When was the last time you actually made money on a sale after you installed a product? You might considering what the cost of doing business is really going to cost you before giving away the house during a sale.

Pros

The company provides decent pay and benefits. In addition, they are committed to providing the necessary training to its employees. They emphasize professionalism and customer service.

Cons

Some of the national and regional senior leadership lacks formal management training and it shows. While there have been feeble attempts at encouraging employee recognition, the company fails to enforce the very standards they set for these awards, rendering them worthless. There is no consistency or objectivity in the promotion system, rather it is purely subjective. Of course, this is found in many other places, but there should be clear goals/guidelines that employees need to meet in order to advance. Career progression is slow and undefined.

Advice to Senior Management

Read the downsides above and implent improvements for each. Also, it needs to be understood that customer needs are a priority, but you cannot expect your employees to be available at all times.

Pros

BBH provides a dynamic work environment for Customer Service Engineers. Our products are among the best in their respective markets, and new technologies are incorporated and well leveraged in our products. BBH emphasizes a high level of service to our customers and usually tries to give us the tools to provide that service. BBH is implementing a new CRM that should, if properly implemented, streamline and energize our processes from manufacturing to sales to service. I love my job and look forward to each day of work.

Cons

BBH is a leading manufacturer of products that are in a declining overall market. We have struggled, and continue to struggle to develop products that are relevant to today's market. Our inserters and sorters have been our bread and butter for years, but the concept of putting paper into envelopes and depending on the USPS to actually deliver them is steadily becoming obsolete. Management seems to flail from one initiative to another, but hasn't been able to reverse the decline of our sales or profits. Financial benchmarks are routinely missed, and the company has been taken from public to private back to public in the past few years. Nothing has served to revitalize the company, and employees sense the inevitable decline of our company. Benefits are being cut in every way imaginable, from 401k matching changes, huge (34% two years ago) increases in medical insurance premiums, and pay increases that do not even match inflation, but company profits still decline and miss established targets. Acquisition of the company by Böwe Systec of Germany a few years back brought in new products, but this equipment is very expensive to sell and service, and alienated many of our older customers used to our older, cheaper, simpler, and easier to operate equipment. Bowe Systec still doesn't trust us here in America, claiming 'security concerns' in refusing to provide online documentation on the German products to us even though we are expected to service that equipment.

Advice to Senior Management

Find a relevant product to sell and service to our customers. Stop chasing the latest management fads and stick with something! Find better hardware tools than the slow clunky Blackberries and the interface from Hell that runs on them, SDA. Just about anything, even cell phones and pagers, would be an improvement in reliability and usability over the Blackberries and SDA. Figure out where the market is heading and come up with a revolutionary product to capture it - something like Pitney Bowes did with the Paragon/DM machines a few years ago. Stop the over-complication of our inserters - the customers hate our interfaces on them and just want to simply put paper into an envelope without requiring weeks of training and the constant presence of an engineer to keep the machine running as is the case with our Turbo products. Do not allow our benefits to be cut without telling us the truth about the cuts and the need for them. Trying to convince us that cuts are actually great diminishes your credibility with your workforce.