In-Plant Trends- Be Easier to Do Business with than a Local Office Supply Store

In our four-article series: "Corporate in-plant print centers – four trends to address for success in 2011 and beyond," we've talked about marketing the print center as a necessity and print center convergence.  This article focuses on what in-plants can do to make it as easy as possible to work with them.

Make Ordering and Delivery Easier than the Local Office Supply Store or Printer

Is your print center growing? Are you adding capabilities for your users as printer costs decrease and capabilities increase? Are you experiencing rapid growth in color printing?

A key requirement to saying "yes" for each of these questions is the need to making ordering and delivery easier than with your competitors. Today, the competition is FedEx Office, other overnight carriers and local delivery agents, national office supply superstores with local stores, as well as local and national printers.

How do you make it easier to do business with you than with any of the competition? The first step is using a Web to print solution designed for corporate in-plants. This is a business requirement today. Users demand the convenience to order forms, catalog items and submit ad hoc documents from their desktop or home 24 hours a day.

You have an advantage. You know your users. As noted in the first article of this series, on "Marketing the Print Center," you should meet with users on a regular basis to understand their needs.

Seven Key Ideas to Make it Easy to Do Business with Your Print Center

• Make it fast and easy for repeat users to place orders, by using features like defaults and single-screen job ticketing for users.
• For repeat workflows, offer pre-sets for the most common or popular workflows to make it easy for users.  Blue Valley Unified School District in Overland Park, KS, offers pre-sets for popular jobs, and even provided a flyer to users to promote the feature (see image).
• Take advantage of repeat jobs with pre-defined workflows to automate print production and enable faster turn-around times.
• Offer variable print and color to increase the value and effectiveness of users' documents.
• Improve customer communications by providing real time job status or adding other communications to your web site such as a chat feature like Rancho Santiago Community College District in Orange County, CA has done (see image) .
• Provide immediate on-line proofs to increase customer confidence, and reduce errors and turn-around times. RSA's WebCRD™ features like SurePreview™ enable users to view documents prior to printing, including all finishing options, covers, and tabs.
• Personalize your service. Instead of spending time tracking down job requirements, sending proofs and responding to status calls, you can use your time to build relationships and understand user needs.

Use Web-to-Print Software Tailored for In-Plants and Corporate Print Centers

If the web-to-print software you use for job submission is tailored to corporate print centers and in-plants, it should help you to be easy to do business with.  RSA's WebCRD is designed specifically for in-plants.  In addition to helping print centers in the above seven areas, our customers, who service hundreds of thousands of users, have experienced these results:

• Increased print volume without increasing staff—capture jobs that were going to outside print providers.  Automated workflows reduce operator "touches," enabling more volume without adding staff.
• Increased customer satisfaction— customers love 24-hour access, instant virtual proofs, and having order status right at their fingertips.
• Expanded capabilities—most companies experience an increase in color volume as well as in variable data printing.

Take advantage of your in-house position and make it even easier for users to use the corporate print center! Learn more about how other in-plants have improved their efficiency and made it easier for customers to do business with them by visiting our presentations page.

Our final article will discuss continually improving workflow to meet ever-increasing customer demands for shorter print runs and faster turn-around.