Digital Original: Production Efficiencies Provide Opportunity

Everyone is talking about the economy. Turn on the TV or pick up a newspaper and you find that the economic condition is the top topic. Businesses are closing. People are being laid off from their jobs. The stock market is crashing. With all the doom and gloom, will anyone survive in today's business climate?

Quick and small commercial printers have an advantage. Unlike larger printing companies, a smaller shop can quickly adapt to changing conditions. Studies show that most small print companies have 25 customers who provide the bulk of their business. While losing one can hurt, a printer has only to add one other top customer to replace the business. Printers can quickly change their focus and produce work that is more profitable or more in demand. Even in bad times, businesses need printing.

The challenge is that the new top customer you must get will already have a printer. You can take a competitor's customer a lot more easily if you have the technology and organization that will make the buying process easier. Finding new customers will also be a lot easier as the marginal printing competitors close their doors. Experts predict that the economic slowdown could last more than a year, and printing businesses with poor cash positions and falling sales won't last. Their customers will have to buy printing somewhere else once they go out of business.

Too often the only sales plan a printer has is to cut prices. Some printers believe if they have the lowest price in the market, buyers will flock to them to take advantage of the savings. Unless they can cut costs and still maintain profit margins, they are doomed.

Technology, backed by a stronger outbound sales effort, can help printers generate new sales and weather the economic storm. Today's technology makes it easier for customers to buy printing. They just have to be trained how to use it. Technology can also be used to cut costs. Using the right software and adopting the right workflow procedures can cut production time and speed deliveries.

A major trend over the last decade has been for customers to create their own files. For some printers, accepting customer files has been a nightmare. Those printers failed to use the technology available and held on to archaic procedures that added costs to the job. Some backed themselves into a corner because they refused to tell the customers exactly what was required when submitting files for print. Printers gave away prepress time because they could recoup the loss in other areas.

To succeed today, printers have to look for ways to save money at every step. Your very survival might depend on how much you can make or save in the prepress department. The days of paying a prepress person more than the department actually generates in revenue are over.

What are the practical steps to take to use technology to either cut costs or increase sales? The first is to develop a PDF workflow. This not only affects the customer created work coming into the shop, but it can improve the efficiencies of producing the work within the prepress department.

Customer Created Files

Trying to work with customers' native application files is very difficult. It is up to the printer to teach the customers how to prepare files for commercial printing. Printers have to teach their salespeople and CSRs what to tell customers about constructing a file. This includes how to include the fonts and handle bleeds, which color models to use, what graphic resolutions and formats to use, and how to use the file collection procedures for commercial printing in the page layout application programs.

A successful printer will take the instructions a step further. Once the customer understands fonts, color models, graphic formats and resolutions, and bleed requirements, the customer should be able to submit the finished file in a PDF format. If the customer has constructed the file properly, the PDF should be ready to print with little editing.