About Aiim
AIIM helps our customers drive revenue growth with recurring marketing communications across print, direct mail, email, and text. By collaborating on solutions designed to enable our clients to achieve their strategic goals, we use print, data, and integrated marketing to deliver highly effective campaigns that enrich customer relationships while providing measurable return on investment.
Position Summary
As Estimator, you will play a key role in how AIIM designs solutions, wins new business, and helps clients find better ways to produce and deliver their communications.
This is not a traditional estimating role. We are looking for someone who combines deep production knowledge with curiosity, technology, data, and a solutions mindset. You will work directly with Sales, Client Success, Production, Purchasing, and our clients to understand what they are trying to accomplish and determine the smartest way for AIIM to deliver it.
AIIM operates across digital print, direct mail, large format, finishing, fulfillment, data-driven communications, and integrated solutions. Strong large format estimating experience is required because it is an important capability for this role, but you will work across AIIM as One AIIM, not within a large format or legacy business silo.
You will also play an important role in the continued implementation and evolution of AIIM's new ERP platform, helping us build standardized estimating, costing, and production practices that are data-driven, scalable, and increasingly automated.
Key Responsibilities
Help Sales Win & Create Client Value
- Get involved early in opportunities - not simply when a quote is required
- Work with Sales and Client Success to understand what the client is trying to accomplish and help design the best solution
- Become a trusted resource to clients by helping them find better, smarter, and more efficient ways to produce and deliver their communications
- Challenge specifications and historical approaches when there is a better way
- Recommend alternative materials, formats, quantities, production methods, finishing, fulfillment, or workflows that improve the client outcome
- Participate in client meetings, RFPs, presentations, and significant opportunities where your expertise can help AIIM win
- Look across all of AIIM's capabilities rather than defaulting to how a job has historically been produced
Estimating & Production Solutions
- Prepare accurate, timely, competitive, and profitable estimates across AIIM's capabilities
- Bring strong expertise in large format estimating, while developing and applying knowledge across the broader AIIM platform
- Develop estimates across digital print, direct mail, large format, finishing, fulfillment, and related communication programs
- Determine the best production approach based on quality, timing, capacity, cost, scalability, and client requirements
- Evaluate materials, labour, equipment, finishing, fulfillment, outsourcing, freight, installation, and other requirements
- Identify opportunities to simplify production, reduce touchpoints, eliminate waste, and improve repeatability
- Evaluate outsourced production when it provides a better overall solution for AIIM and the client
ERP, Data & the Future of Estimating
- Become a power user and champion of AIIM's new ERP platform
- Help build the estimating standards, production rates, material costs, routings, and assumptions that will support AIIM's future operating model
- Use estimate-to-actual data to continuously improve costing and production decisions
- Help move AIIM away from spreadsheets, tribal knowledge, and individual estimating practices toward one standardized, system-driven approach
- Look for opportunities to use automation, data, and technology to make estimating faster, more accurate, and more scalable
- Question existing processes and actively contribute ideas for how AIIM can estimate and produce work differently
- Ensure estimates can flow effectively from opportunity through order entry, production, and final costing
- Support AIIM's broader objective of One AIIM. One system. One process.
Production & Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Maintain strong practical knowledge of digital print, direct mail, large format, finishing, fulfillment, and related production processes, with particular depth in large format
- Work directly with Production and Prepress to validate assumptions and develop efficient production approaches
- Partner with Purchasing to evaluate substrates, materials, suppliers, outsourced services, installation, and other cost components
- Work with Finance and Production to understand significant estimate-to-actual variances and improve future costing
- Share knowledge across the organization and help develop stronger estimating capabilities within AIIM
Qualifications & Experience
- Minimum 5 years of print/production estimating or related solutions experience
- Strong, demonstrated large format estimating experience is required
- Broad understanding of digital production, substrates, finishing, fulfillment, and related manufacturing processes
- Demonstrated experience using technology and ERP/MIS systems to improve estimating or production workflows
- Experience working directly with Sales and clients to develop solutions - not simply processing quote requests
- Strong analytical skills and ability to use production and costing data to make decisions
- Strong understanding of job-level profitability, cost-to-serve, and production efficiency
- Comfortable learning new technology and challenging established processes
- Ability and desire to work across AIIM's complete range of capabilities rather than specialize within a single production discipline
Who Will Thrive In This Role
You will likely thrive at AIIM if you:
- Are as interested in finding a better way as you are in getting the estimate right
- Enjoy talking to Sales and clients and understanding the problem behind the specification
- See ERP, automation, and data as tools that make an estimator better - not threats to the role
- Are comfortable saying, “That's how we've done it before, but here's a better way.” Want to understand capabilities outside your immediate area of expertise
- Think about scalability, repeatability, automation, and profitability when designing a solution
- Share knowledge and want to help build a stronger estimating function rather than protect individual knowledge
- Believe the best solution may combine several AIIM capabilities rather than simply putting ink on a substrate
Success in the Role
- Success will not be measured simply by how many estimates you complete.
- It will be measured by estimate accuracy, speed, profitable wins, client value created, improved estimate-to-actual performance, adoption of AIIM's ERP platform, and your contribution to building a more standardized and scalable estimating model across AIIM.
- The successful Estimator will become a trusted resource to our Sales team, our clients, and our operations - someone who consistently asks:
- “What is the client trying to accomplish, and is there a better way for AIIM to do it?”
- Other duties as assigned by the CEO or designate from time to time.
The Estimator role may require occasional travel or customer/site visits based on project requirements.
