Latest News
Eliminate extraneous services to boost profits
McDonalds knows where to reduce costs on extraneous services. If it went for a full-service model - with table service and cloth napkins - then it wouldn't be able to charge the same prices for food. According to Jennifer Matt at WhatTheyThink, this is a key fixture behind McDonald's ability to be a major leader in the food service industry. It does not charge for something people do not want. Similarly, printing companies should not offer services that a customer can't afford or doesn't need.
"Customers get exactly what they want."
Many printing companies have a dedicated sales and account representative for all orders. This model eats into the company's margins as the order are often very small. A better solution would be to offer a web-to-print store using SaaS print workflow automation. Through this self-service model, customers get exactly what they want, picking from the options available on a website that offers a great degree of customization, while helping printing companies keep their cost down.
For example, if a person wants business cards, for example, he or she can choose from a selection and find the best one. For something more complex, there are additional templates and room for many different options to choose as additions. Or, someone could for their own company reduce the price of the printing job and save themselves money. This won't affect the bottom line of the printers because everything was done web-to-print, so the overhead is essentially the price of the printing itself.
“Printing solutions via the internet make things easier for customer and client alike.”
An example of a company that used web-to-print
Web-to-print storefronts means offering a full-service printing center accessible online. Companies or individuals can interface with the web client to choose different options and make selections with very few touch points with the actual business. With the touch points reduced, businesses need fewer employees dedicated to client talk.
Midstates Group made the transition to a web-to-print business as part of its many solutions for different client needs. Obviously, web-to-print won't work for every solution, but for many companies it is exactly what they need. Midstates therefore created Quality Quick Print (QQP), an additional company that handles short-run, fast-turn digital and printing. This company has only 40 employees, but it produces $5 million in revenue.
"We did a study of our job flow and found that it took 11 touches to process an average job. In today's market that is simply unacceptable." Justin Feickert, Midstates' VP of Sales & Marketing, QQP
The solution was to use a quality web-to-print solution for print production automation. They applied this service to reduce their touch points from 11 to two or three. This is an improvement of 70 percent, which dramatically reduces costs for the company and boosts profits at the same time.
