Web-to-Print Benefits for Every Area of Your Print Shop (Part I – Operations Managers)

6 Reasons Operations Managers Love Web-to-Print

Guest post by Ayelet Szabo-Melamed, VP Marketing, XMPie. This article originally appeared on the XMPie blog. 

If you’re ready to open to the door to higher value services in your print shop, this is the blog post series for you! In the next few weeks, we’ll be breaking down the benefits of web-to-print (W2P) for all the different stakeholders – across operations, marketing and sales, management and the print buyers themselves.

Everyone will see the benefits from a different lens. If you’re in operations, you will want to know how the W2P portal will maximize order efficiencies and workflows; if you’re in marketing or sales, you will want to know how online storefronts can help add new revenue streams, make your business more prominent and create valuable and stickier customer relationships; if you’re the business owner, you will want to know the ROI and how it can help cut costs; and if you’re the print buyer you’ll want to know why working this way is better and easier than just picking up the phone.

At XMPie, our StoreFlow Web-to-Print (W2P) solutions help both small printers and large organizations to create and easily manage online stores and marketing portals for their B2B and B2C clients.  In our other posts, you can learn more details about our different offerings, or evaluate the different factors to consider before purchasing a Web-to-Print Solution.  But here we’re looking at the different user benefits and to kick off this series we’re going to break down the benefits of W2P for the Production or Operations Manager, who is responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of the print room.

W2P Benefits for the Operations Manager

1. Accessible Anytime, Anywhere

Your store can be open 24/7 to increase the productivity of your print shop and process a higher print volume.  Gone are the days of having to wait for Monday morning to roll around to receive an order. One of the greatest features of a W2P storefront is that it can be accessed by your customers from their computer or mobile device when it’s convenient for them.

For your business, that means you can accept and process jobs around the clock and drive even more print volume to your presses. There is no need to waste time on endless conversations back and forth with your clients to painstakingly process the print order and the production can be run when it’s convenient for the print room and not only when the client decides to order the job.

Stand out from the competition by letting your customers engage with your company in the same self-service manner that they expect for all their business transactions in the modern world. Let them easily view design proofs, approve the job, pay online and check on the status of their order. Online print ordering means that the ball is in the customer’s court.  And that means improved productivity and increased profits.

 2. Automated Workflow

With a few clicks, your customers can place their orders – from static collateral to personalized print documents. StoreFlow, comes with Xerox® FreeFlow® Core, so the system can queue up the job ticket for production and you can define multi-step workflows that preflight documents and automate imposition, and either submit jobs directly to your press or drop them in a hot folder.

This helps your shop streamline order acquisition, fulfillment and distribution, and improves the speed to market. And by removing the manual prepress steps, you can reduce your costs, reduce errors, and drive consistently higher quality output.  Like the major benefit of online ordering that I described above, automating the fulfillment process will also free up your resources from repetitive tasks so that your team can concentrate on the higher value jobs.

3. Centralized User Management

The operations manager can assign role-based user privileges, to enable different users to access different products or payment options. For instance, a university In-Plant might need different access privileges for students, staff and the wider public. Because this feature better matches your clients’ procedures, they will find it easier to work with it more and place more orders.

4. e-Procurement Integration

You can automate even more processes by setting up your W2P store as an ‘approved supplier’ to engage your enterprise clients and offer your services through your clients’ e-Procurement systems or add postal processing and data correction and validation directly into your web-to-print workflow. This will help you to win more enterprise business and longer-lasting ‘stickier’ clients.

5. MIS Integration

Consider integrating your W2P store with your MIS system to drive further efficiencies and report everything in a single system.  Your W2P store status and tracking information can always be up-to-date and you can retain tighter control of print production costs.

6. Expanded Service Offerings

These improved order acquisition and automation capabilities that come with W2P ultimately help drive quicker turnaround times for your customers and your business. They also give the Operations Manager the opportunity to diversify and offer other higher value applications such as omnichannel campaign ‘products’ in an easy-to-order format.  These can be added to your clients’ W2P stores with XMPie’s Campaigns-on-demand feature.  These campaign flows can be easily customized, personalized, used and reused and they can be easily processed by the print room and bring in another ongoing revenue stream to the business.

Stay tuned for the other posts in this blog series where we’ll be covering the benefits for management, the marketing/sales team members, and the print buyers.

Want to learn more about a W2P solution for your print shop? Send us a message below!