Looking Ahead to 2010: Strategies In-Plants Should Consider In an Uncertain Economy

As of presstime, the jury is still out on what 2010 will look like for the printing industry. Economic prognosticators are touting conflicting forecasts for the state of the economy, as well as the health of the overall business environment. While things appear to be improving, many are concerned that real economic recovery will be a long, drawn out process. How this will affect in-plant capital budgets and new technology investments therefore remains an unknown. The fact remains that investments and ROI metrics will continue to be scrutinized remains a given. And yet, there are a wealth of opportunities and new strategies in-plant managers can investigate to help them thrive as we move into 2010.

If they aren’t already, “digital” is certainly the place in-plants want to be. It’s time to look for ways to increase efficiencies and broaden services by considering replacement or supplementing older offset presses and traditional methodologies with the latest generation of full color digital printers. The latest lower-cost hardware, RIPs and full systems available at relatively low price points bring a wealth of new capabilities that in-plants can turn into new services to offer their companies. These services can include full-color printing on a wide range of media and even envelopes, at little or no incremental cost. The advantages of an all digital workflow and digital printing also include the ability to develop on-demand, fast turnaround printing services, the ability to handle both short and long runs cost-effectively, and the flexibility to explore new activities like transactional promotional materials, web-to-print, variable data and personalized promotional materials and even book publishing on-demand.

According to Barbara Pellow, with Infotrends, digital color printing is expanding at a 25 percent CAGR. And the cost of digital printing and software solutions continues to drop. In-plants can now get into variable data and transpromo applications more affordably and in fact, while only 34 percent of in-plants handled variable data printing in 2004, that number grew to 54.8 percent in 2008 and is accelerating.

Going digital can also bring savings. In-plants that learn to leverage automation can streamline their operations and reduce staffing levels while maintaining or even increasing the volumes they handle. Likewise there are additional “green” savings to be considered. An in-plant printing and mailing services manager at one mid-western university that recently installed a digital envelope press and is planning to install a digital printer later, put it this way: “We no longer want to manage the hazardous waste streams associated with offset printing. And we no longer want to buy the chemicals, solvents, blankets, paste inks, plates and all of the other supplies that go along with offset.”

Another important step in-plants can take is to stop thinking of themselves as print shops and look seriously at the “value added” they can provide to their organizations. As corporate communications and marketing services departments continue to expand their communications beyond print, they will need marketing services providers to support them in these efforts. They can either go to outside providers or work with flexible in-house resources for an increasing percentage of their marketing services deliverables. To this end, in-plants may want to think about repositioning themselves as providers of a wider range of marketing services that include both print and other media. They should be able to call on their experience with digital workflows, scanning and imaging, graphics and design software and the like, to develop a broader range of multi-media services including designing and managing Web sites, providing electronic mailing and fulfillment as a companion to print fulfillment services, or even becoming the corporate digital image and digital content management resource.