Friday, November 18, 2011

Increase Print Volume to Your Print Shop


In this economy print shops are trying to maximize the investment of their imaging systems.  Printers of all sizes from a local quick printer to a large commercial printer all share the same goal, keep the equipment running jobs so it will pay for itself and put money in their pockets. With the age of the light production equipment and the improved quality of digital, more and more of these printers are utilizing this technology.  Ways of keeping this equipment running rely on finding alternative ways of reaching the market and their customers. In this fast pace world, people don’t want to run down and drop off their information, submitting jobs in an easy and efficient method is becoming the most important need.

How can you do it?

Everyone has email… let’s have customers email us documents.  

That can work sometimes but how good are our customers at giving us accurate directions in an email about creating a finished document?  How large can the files be with our current mail system and will our mail provider allow us to receive those big files in our inboxes?  

What about FTP? Will that solve our problems?  

Who will manage that FTP server? We still have the issue of our customers filling out a form correctly, ensuring the job ticket is correct and requiring the operators to contact the customer to ensure proper imposition. 

What if the customer wants a 16-page brochure printed and saddle-stitch bound with a different cover and body media?  I work in the printing business so I could probably describe how I want this done; however most customers don’t speak the printing language.  What if I want the cover to be printed on 100lb gloss cover and the body to be 80lb gloss text?  Maybe you only have 80lb gloss cover in stock?  Do you make a special purchase for my job or call and ask if I will take the 80lb cover you have on hand? 

Enter Web Submission…

Web submission allows users to visit your website to order their particular job and given the exact choices available, they can make their selections on media, finishing and quantities through a simple “shopping cart” method that most people use every day. They simply upload their document through this new portal on your website and the job ticket options they just selected attaches to that document to be printed.  This makes getting things printed at your shop easy, efficient and your site will be perceived as being more professional with these capabilities.

Just like any software solution the market is full of choices.  Take some time and look into this option so that you can stay in the game and keep those printers producing for you.

-Troy: Production Specialist

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