As we dive deeper into Web-to-Print, we are learning a lot along the way. The first thing I’ve learned is that there are a lot of “Experts” out there (the salespeople & technicians who help us behind the scenes) that can talk a lot about the benefits of Web-to-Print, but when it comes down to actually understanding the fine details and making it work, there’s a lot to be desired. In a lot of ways we are self taught because it is such a developing market.

Since Web-to-Print is a rather generic term, I’m going to talk about what it means in our world. Oregon’s Web-to-Print is an Internet store front for customers that order the same “products” that they tend to use a lot. Sometimes there are certain areas of these “products” that need to change, like names, titles & emails on business cards, but in many cases, the same products will be ordered again and again. That’s the real beauty here is that in these 2 cases, it takes a routine process and automates it. That’s where the accuracy and cost savings come from.

So, let’s describe a customer that uses our Web-to-Print system regularly and is what I would call a success story. This customer has facilities around Ohio (7 to be exact), so they all need supplies (Letterheads, 6 different envelopes, business cards + more) that are consistent with their brand, but have variable information for their specific location.

This customer will log into their catalog with their user name and password and then pull up their online catalog for the division they want to order for. On their business cards product, after naming the order and choosing the qty they want (price for each qty is listed) they will have an area to type in their variable information and then see a live proof. If it is OK, they press OK and the order automatically comes to us with the same print file they approved. This eliminates the going back and forth with proofs that sometimes can take days.

The ame thing applies with all of their other products some of which have no information that changes between locations. We call those products static. The great thing is we get an approved print file in PDF form right from the system, and the order is written up with pre-defined information. These 2 things alone eliminate so many mistakes and save so much time that this customer never wants tpo go anywhere else.

We have another customer that uses this system just to order forms on demand, so that they don’t have to inventory them there. This customer sets a good example of mixing Print-on-Demand and Web-to-Print technologies to reduce inventories and costs (see inventory reduction stratigies for more on this), which is very much what more people are doing. But going back to what I had originally said, we put a lot of work into figuring out how to apply this technology to different customers. And the great thing is that with every new customer we put onto the system, we can custom build a solution for them while automating more of the process.

The phrase “Print on Demand” can be a little intimidating (maybe demanding) to printers. Think about it, Print on Demand means people are demanding printing right now! Well, like it or not, thats what the way printing is today. And when you look a little closer it’s more than just producing quick printing, it’s a lot of things that have to happen just right to get a print job transferred, produced, delivered, and everything be right.

“Print on Demand” can be applied to various applications, from inventory reduction and remote ordering to just uploading files and getting them produced and finished very quickly. We’ll start by looking at the latter and move into other applications in future posts.

The nature of printing today is going through a big shift. Shorter print runs, higher print quality, quicker turnaround times and the introduction of variable data coupled with the ability to move electronic files over the internet, provide remote proofing and the need to get specific messages in front of specific people is reshaping the print world faster than most shops can keep up with. At Oregon, we’ve been pretty lucky for a few reasons. We’ve been doing small jobs (and small jobs usually need to be done quickly) for a long time, so we’re pretty good to it. We’ve also been lucky to have some great customers who have stuck with us and allowed us to keep moving (investing) into the Print on Demand arena.

So what have we been doing to strengthen our “Print on Demand” position? Well first, I think its got to be easy to get your files to the printer. An FTP (File Transfer Protocol) site has to be easy to use. No downloading software onto your computer, hard to use interfaces and passwords, or anything esle thats a hassle, you need to be able to pick out the file on your computer and upload it, that easy.

Now that you have the files to your printer, you need to be able to communicate with them what you want (and they need to understand). Part of the “Print on Demand” model means your print files will print on our system. We are all lucky that we live in the world of PDF’s today, so that in most cases if the customer can make a high quality PDF, we’ll make it print. That also means we need to be available to talk you through problems getting there. Fortunately though, through email, voice mail and cell phones we seem to always be able to get the help people need.

Now comes the fun part, getting it printed. I wish I could say that there was one workflow that could handle everything, but every small job has its own personality and needs.One of the first questions is are we going to print digitally or on an offset press. Each has its merits, but the bottom line is we have to have the right equipment in place and ready to run. We’ve worked hard and invested a lot of money in what’s turned out to be a great mix for the work we do. 2 and 5 color presses, Cannon and Xerox digital, and I still am just amazed with what we put out every day. We love to give tours and show people our shop, plus it helps puts us and our customers be on the same page when it comes to how we are going to get stuff done. The bottom line is that we’ll get it printed quickly.

The final part of the equation is getting the final job where it needs to be. For years we depended on UPS, FedX and couriers alone, but late last year we purchased a delivery van. It had just gotten to be such a big job, and its really nice now with our own driver (Jim), as he gets to know our customers and their preferences. Another part of getting the delivery part right is to get the shipping information as early in the process as possible and getting it into the system. That allows Shannon (our logistics guy) to really plan out what’s being delivered and get it done as efficiently as possible. We still use couriers and UPS a lot, but I think that the whole logistics part of “Print on Demand” is more important than it’s ever been before;  because if you can’t get it where it’s supposed to be, its not “On Demand”.

So that’s where we’re at with “On Demand” printing. The more we talk to our customers, the more we learn what they need to accomplish in these new times, and the more ideas it gives us to keep doing it better. In one of the next posts, we’ll look at how Print on Demand has helped our reduce the amount of inventoryreduce the amount of inventory they need to carry.

I read an article the other day entitled “Are you ready for the Post-Recession printing industry?” and it made me think about what’s down the road. Actually, if you own a printing company you probably think a lot about what’s down the road. And while I don’t have an answer, I know things are changing quickly. Here are a few thoughts and ideas  about our changing industry.

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There seem to be people that still believe that things will return to “Normal”…in the printing industry. I think we are in the “New Normal” right now for printers (that doesn’t mean we’re not in an economic downturn, because we are; the printing industry just is’nt going back to where it was). The digital revolution has had and continues to have a huge effect on our industry, and if you embrace it (and have some guts), there’s some oppurtunities out there. I was reading a First Research industry profile on The Commercial Printing industry and this fact really stood out. “Historically, 40% of books and almost 60% of magazines were printed but not purchased. Excess copies are collected, shredded and land-filled”.   In the printing industry, it has always been true that if you order a higher quantity, your per unit cost will go down. That makes Print on Demand make more sense than ever; with digital printing platforms today, you can print just what you need (even add customization), and come back for another small quantity when you need more. This is having a huge effect on printers that have always survived on those long runs.

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Printing is transitioning to a service business. Commercial Printing has traditionally been a manufacturing industry, and while it maintains its manufacturing focus, it seems to be evolving into a service business. We are subject to shorter print runs, and customers are asking for more changes and edits later in the process and then faster turnarounds. All the growth in our industry is coming from the digital sector, and that growth seems to come from responding to customer’s changing needs. We all need to recognize this fact and act accordingly, its about listening to our customers needs and changing our business model to fit.

And what’s up with the Newspapers who seem to be pretty much in trouble all over the country. I was reading a piece in Dr. Joe Webb’s Blog (WhatTheyThink) and he pointed out that one of the papers (The Globe) had snubbed an offer to team up with Monster.com in 1995, and others missed the opportunities of starting communities like Craigslist, The Huffington Post and other success stories that have happened over the internet. It seems like there were a lot of opportunities to transition from print media to the internet, but they did not want to look outside of their comfort zone. They sure are trying to make that transition in a hurry now.

How about Social Media..I read a lot on how Social media can help our business. I’ve seen so many stories on Social Media marketing stratigies that it’s almost getting funny. Social Media is what it is, its another form of communication built around virtual communities. So I was reading an article about how printers can harness social media and make it work for them in their marketing efforts. And on this blog there were some pretty average responses about Twittering, blogging and using Facebook, and then Dr. Joe (Above) chimed in and said “it’s not that we should be using Social Media to market ourselves, but we should be teaching our customers how social media could work for them”. Now that’s thinking out of the box; it’s offering our customers a service, which is right in line with the transforming from a manufacturing industry to a service industry. With the changes taking place in this business, we should be doing anything we can to help our customers, its about them, not about us.

Thats todays thoughts. The printing industry is going through a lot of changes and we have to keep looking down the road, think pragmatically and listen to our customers. Because if we don’t follow the lead our customers are asking us to, we might just end up like the newspapers in a few years.