NAVA Press: from 30 minutes to 2 per order, without losing its identity

How Volta helped NAVA Press: results at a glance

The back-office team went from 30 minutes to 2 to process an order, cutting the time spent on each order by 93%. Volta automatically classifies, prioritizes and assigns every incoming email the moment it arrives.

How a 100-year-old paper packaging maker transformed its B2B order management without losing its soul.

We sat down with Emanuele, CMO of NAVA Press, to understand how a company that has made craftsmanship its signature decided to innovate one of its most delicate business processes: order management.

The problem

Orders reached NAVA Press by email, often as attachments. An operator had to read every message, open the file and key the order into the system by hand. Meanwhile, urgent requests landed in the same inbox as routine messages, with nothing to set them apart.

What Volta changed

Volta’s agent recognizes the intent of each email, classifies it, sets its priority and assigns it to the right person. When it’s a purchase order, it analyzes both the message and the attachment and pre-fills the order in the system.

The operator only has to check the data and move it forward. The time saved can go to customers and higher-value work.

With Volta, what used to take hours of manual work now takes just minutes. But efficiency isn’t the goal: it’s the time we’ve won back, time we give back to our clients and to the details that define us.

Emanuele Bandecchi
Sales Director, NAVA Press

Identity: turning an idea into a luxury object

For 100 years, NAVA Press has been turning brands’ ideas into custom paper packaging. Its clients, in fashion and luxury, expect tailored solutions, even for large-scale production runs.

What does it mean today to be a standard-bearer of Italian craftsmanship in the luxury world?

“It means knowing how to read the tastes and habits of a highly demanding and diverse clientele. It means turning an abstract idea into a physical, tangible, finished product, with a deep understanding of the codes of luxury and fashion.”

It’s tailor-made work, even at high volumes. And that’s exactly where the challenge that led NAVA Press to rethink its processes began.

Luxury packaging is booming. How are you experiencing it?

“It means dealing with a global market and increasingly international distribution. These brands need to receive an extremely wide range of materials, very quickly and with uncompromising quality. The challenge wasn’t simply to grow, but to grow organically and in a non-standard way. Our clients expect tailor-made attention even on mass production, and we have to keep quality excellent without it weighing on day-to-day work.”

The problem: when the back office holds the company back

Orders came in by email and were entered into the system by hand, taking 30 minutes each. Urgent requests ended up in the same inbox as routine ones, and hiring more staff wasn’t economically viable.

What was the real bottleneck?

“Sales back office isn’t everyone’s favorite job, but it’s essential. It has to be done. The problem is that our people can’t spend too many hours a day on it: they need to focus on the real relationship with the customer.”

In practice, every order confirmation came from an external source and had to be copied by hand into the systems to kick off production.

“Handled manually, this work risks making the company rigid, slowing down production and creating inefficiencies, because sensitive data can get lost as information is passed along.”

On top of that came the overload of incoming email. “Email is a bit like a silo. Our employees are bombarded with customer requests, and everything comes in by email: orders and other requests, with no order of priority. That risks making us less responsive on exactly the replies that should go out fastest.”

Couldn’t you just hire more people?

“For us, growth has to be tied to the business, but we can’t expand our in-house staff to handle low-value tasks like order entry. It’s unthinkable, and it doesn’t make economic sense. Besides, in a creative environment like ours, repetitive, tedious tasks don’t live up to the expectations of people who choose to work at NAVA Press to grow professionally. I’m talking about a sustainable approach to business, with people who are truly engaged in the company’s goals.”

The solution: Volta as the link between two souls

Now each order takes just 2 minutes instead of 30. Requests are routed in real time between offices in Europe, the United States and China.

Where does Volta fit into all this?

“Volta handles exactly that piece. It works on incoming emails, categorizing and prioritizing them with an artificial intelligence system. It interprets the content of each email, which sometimes includes an attachment the operator would have had to read and mechanically copy into our system. Volta does that, and the operator finds the order already pre-filled: they just have to check it and send it on.”

The benefit, Emanuele explains, is twofold.

“Not only does it free up time that people can devote to higher-value work. It also changes the way the order is approached. Before, the focus was on the mechanical task, on transcription. Today the focus is on the order itself, on what it needs to become, with an approach that is already more attuned to the final production.”

From 30 minutes to 2 per order. But the number that matters most to NAVA is what happens with the time won back: it goes into the client relationship, the project, the quality.

The result: efficiency that scales with the business

NAVA Press was looking for a partner that could offer a tailored approach, just like its own work. Volta understood its needs from day one and rolled out the solution quickly.

What impact has it had on your international footprint?

“NAVA Press is an example of an Italian company that manages to combine craftsmanship with cutting-edge technology. We have state-of-the-art facilities run to exacting artisanal standards, on tailor-made projects. Volta fits in perfectly as the link between these two souls.”

“Today we have offices in Paris, Geneva, New York, Shanghai and Los Angeles. We work on corporate projects for major luxury houses that need a partner able to work with them on an international scale, regardless of time zones or geography. Volta helps us categorize incoming requests in real time, and that allows us to maintain the level of service our clients expect.”

The partnership: a tailor-made approach, on both sides

For Emanuele, craftsmanship and business processes are two separate things. Streamlining processes doesn’t mean compromising the quality of the craft: on the contrary, it benefits clients, managers and the whole team.

What kind of partner did you find in Volta?

“We found a reliable, professional partner that understood our needs from the start and enabled us to set up this solution very quickly, thanks to a team of seasoned experts. Just as we manage our projects in a tailor-made way, Volta supported us in a tailor-made way throughout the development, with both companies growing together.”

The takeaway: don’t be afraid to innovate your processes

What would you say to a company that fears innovation means losing its identity?

“They’re two different things. On one side there’s what makes a company unique: its expertise. On the other, there are its business processes. If there are solutions that make those processes leaner, more efficient and faster, everyone benefits: customers, the company, management and the people who work there.”

“I believe it’s more important than ever to have the tools to work on process innovation. Volta is a solution that goes in that direction: it lets you quickly bring about a real revolution in B2B order management.”