- Vince Tutino
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- November 22, 2016
You've launched and rolled out your system. Step back and take a look at what comes next. You will likely want to reach more customers, add capabilities, automate workflow more, or conduct other key initiatives to continue your growth and maintain relevancy.
Technology does not stand still. Your in-plant should not, either!
We've covered a lot of ground in our series. You can being to work on expanding your reach and influence by analyzing your Web to print data to identify trends and gaps. You may also have data from a previous system or process that you can look at. Ask some questions such as:
- How are jobs moving through the workflow?
- Are there any process bottlenecks?
- Is your marketing working?
- Are you adding more customers?
- What are customers ordering?
- What departments are NOT ordering from you?
7 Best Practices to Expand Your Reach and Influence
Here are seven best practices to help you expand your reach in the organization and to expand use of your Web to print software:
- Survey your customers to see how you are doing and learn their biggest print needs. WebCRD can be configured to add a survey link into each email sent to customers.
- Participate in industry groups and events where you can communicate with your peers about what they are doing. Associations like ACUP and IPMA are great places to start.
- Stay current with new versions of your Web to print software. Technology is moving fast. There are new features and new browser capabilities that can make things easier for your customers and will allow you to offer other products. While you can't update a printer without purchasing new equipment once it's delivered, you can update your Web to print software to stay current with technology. Security is also a very important concern today- while new releases include new features, they also include the most up-to-date security patches.
- What additional Web to print software modules or functionality are available that will help your user community, automate your workflow, reduce touches, or allow you to offer more services? Wide format, variable data templates for business cards, appointment cards, event tickets, Signage, 3D printing, inventoried items and more are examples. For example, look for our InfoTrends white paper, "Taking Web to Print to the Next Level" on our website soon for examples of two in-plants who have and continue to leverage their Web to print systems and investment in them to maximize the benefits to their operations and organizations.
- Consider integrating your Web to print with other systems that further streamline your processes, including: shipping, internal systems such as single sign-on, HR systems to pull user data into business cards; automatic deduction of chargebacks from campus cards and print allowances; real time budget center validation; eProcurement systems and account code validation.
- Identify other sources of print that don't come in through your Web to print software. You may be able to have those print steams automatically enter your workflow and then take advantage of your automation rules, with the added benefit of having these jobs automatically tracked in your Web to print reporting. For example, one of our University customers has Admission letters generated overnight and automatically show up as print-ready jobs (these used to come as email attachments). A manufacturing in-plant customer has a third party cloud portal for their dealer network to order custom catalogs. When the dealers complete their custom catalog order, it flows automatically into WebCRD's production workflow for printing, finishing and shipping.
- Adding additional workflow software such as QDirect output management or ReadyPrint make ready software may also allow you to be more efficient. For instance, grouping jobs for a single delivery run so they all print together, load balancing for higher throughput and better equipment utilization, or doing specialized impositions to increase sheet size.
