What Printers Can Do To Make Their Businesses More Resilient And Profitable In 2021 – Africa Print Expo
Drew Sprague, President, Mary Ann Rowan, Chief Experience Officer and Jonathan Malone-McGrew, Senior Director of Engagement at
Data security is an extremely hot topic for print providers. Since 2016 and the adoption of GDPR in the EU, we have seen increasing regulations around the globe. These changes require more careful and precise handling of data that may be used to identify a person.
As a consequence, more printers are taking aggressive steps to track Personally and Identifiable Information (PII). In talking to customers, it can still be a surprise that accepting, handling and storing name and address information of a California resident is enough to trigger CCPA regulatory requirements. And this is independent of where the provider operates. More importantly, it is a familiar story globally due to the impacts of GDPR in the EU.
Mary Ann, Solimar Systems celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2021. What has changed over the years and makes workflow systems still so relevant and key to businesses today?
From conversations with our global network including Solimar Customer Advisory Council (CAC), customers, partners and industry analysts, it’s clear the idea of workflow is only increasing in relevance. From our customers’ perspective, the change in how work is being brought into their print and digital communications delivery environments continues to evolve.
Generally, when we talk about making the print production process more profitable, we look for areas where we can streamline processes, increase throughput and upgrade the entire performance of the production environment. When trying to impact profitability you can raise prices to create more margin, but that may not be successful in a competitive environment—a situation most print markets are in today or will be in the future.
More commonly, we see customers turn to look at cost centers, opportunities to grow new business and value-adds for the buyer or consumer. When we walk a workflow with a customer, we often uncover opportunities for improvement. These lead to better utilisation of staff, reduced costs and many times new revenue. I talk with clients and future clients about manual processes, legacy software and hardware that may not be performing well in today’s environment.
Additionally, we discuss pre-printed stocks and forms, transition to color and inkjet, archival costs and whether their print equipment is able to run at its best based on how files are fed to it. The key: a good workflow opens the door to new and better business.
Improving efficiency will bolster profit, but it shouldn’t be the only method your organisation looks at. In many cases, an investment in small, tactical solutions can deliver compelling short-term returns.
Taking advantage of value-added offerings for the consumer is also a way to improve profitability. An example of this in the U.S. is to leverage the United States Postal Service (USPS) promotional discounts for mailers. Web and app-based AR can be used to qualify for this and Solimar can enable it by enhancing the current printed piece, adding the required qualification messaging, personalising and connecting it to a dynamic AR experience. The result for the print provider is a 2% postal discount. In the industry, I have seen savings from R153 000 ($10,000) to more than R15.3 million ($1 million) by companies that print and mail marketing, transactional and other direct mail pieces.
Drew, what advice would you give to companies to streamline their business/optimise their workflow?
The first step is to know your workflow. That sounds like a buzz phrase or a sales pitch, but it is the most important thing before deciding how your organisation and teams should act to streamline and optimise. The best advice we can give organisations that have production print and electronic delivery environments is to know exactly how jobs come in (on-boarding), how they get reviewed or interrogated (pre-press processing activities), how they are modified or enhanced, how they are queued or scheduled for print or e-delivery, and also what happens when things go wrong like damaged pieces and interruptions in the middle of printing.
It is also important to look at all the manual tasks that are being performed as part of the processes to take a job or print file from receipt to delivery. Manual processes invite human error, production time variances and risk when employees are not able to work. Automation, visibility, and accounting are key to making sure workflow is streamlined. At Solimar, we offer help to clients and partners in the form of a ’walk your workflow’ assessment to help frame the information they need to know and define the plan for future improvement in their production print and electronic delivery environment.
Mary Ann, are there other opportunities that print providers can take advantage of to improve the resilience and profitability of their businesses in 2021?
As we look ahead there is no doubt in my mind that print and digital content providers will have the opportunity to accept outsourced work from large brands and organisations, see an uptick in demand for personalised content and be asked to deliver work both physically in print and across electronic distribution channels. These trends shine a positive light on the available opportunities heading into 2021.