Printers: How do you minimize costs, maximize profits and still deliver consistent quality?

Printers today all face the same challenge: How to grow in a highly competitive market with thinner margins, increased customer service demands and in many cases reduced staff. Current market conditions put incredible pressure on companies to try to find a way just to stay in business, much less increase profits.

So, how do you minimize costs, maximize profits and still deliver consistent quality? How can you affordably speed up turnaround times, increase capacity and throughput and maintain customer retention? It’s a vicious cycle and many companies are doing well to keep their businesses afloat.

Automation is the answer to ensure consistent quality, faster turnaround, better prices and to offer a wider variety of services. Without making changes to the way you do business, you won’t be able to stay competitive, much less grow your business. A change is needed in your current processes to be able to meet the criteria that will keep your current clients happy and allow greater job volume and diversification of your product offerings to stay relevant with market trends.

Here is a hypothetical example of a printer who made the changes necessary to increase profits and secure new business:

XYZ Printing — Investment in their future
If you are facing the challenges mentioned above, you can benefit from the same changes our example company — XYZ Printing — made. XYZ can now process up to eight times the order volume per day as they did previously. Read on to find out how they secured the future of their printing business…

XYZ is a digital printing company that offers a variety of printed products including brochures, print-on-demand books, business cards and stationery as well as custom print jobs. Since every job needed to be checked by staff before proceeding to press, XYZ had to hire adequate staff to be able to ensure all jobs were press-ready and this imposed not only a delay in print jobs being processed before they could be put on press, but a high cost for staff to spend time checking each job. This approach was definitely not scalable and prevented XYZ from increasing capacity or other products/services.

XYZ made the decision to invest in a solution — PitStop2Switch — that would cut costs for staff needed to check incoming jobs and in doing so they were able to better utilize the staff to handle customer service and to secure new clients. They were even able to hire more press operators to process the increase in the number of jobs being handled daily.

PitStop2Switch was tailored to their specific needs, improving the whole process from the time the jobs arrived until they were out the door with happy customers. Enfocus Switch linked their existing job reception systems and processes to each other, so it didn’t matter how a file was received, which format it was in or what type of output it required — everything became integrated into a single production workflow.

All incoming files are now automatically sorted and stored on networked volumes, organized by Switch into job directory structures by date, customer and job number. PDF files are checked by PitStop Server and XYZ’s customer service representatives are immediately notified when a job has been received and whether any issues have been found that could delay the job being made ready for press. XYZ has been able to dramatically decrease the amount of time between job receipt and delivery and the rapid turnover of jobs has more clients seeking their services as well.

How long before you see a return on your investment?
With XYZ’s initial investment in PitStop2Switch, they wondered how long it would be before they actually saw a return on their investment. They were able to use the Switch 13 ROI calculator to see that in less than a month they would recoup the entire cost of the automation investment AND implementation in time saved and reduced labor costs per job. They would be able to save more than $64,000 in the first year and more than $70,000 the following year, and these numbers were based on just the 35-40 jobs a day they were handling before they implemented PitStop2Switch*.

Their investment not only kept them in business, it grew their business and client-base, reduced errors that weren’t being caught with manual processes and allowed for more jobs to be taken on with the confidence that consistent quality wasn’t being sacrificed. Where XYZ had previously been able to manually accept and process a maximum of 35-40 jobs per day, they now process up to eight times the number of jobs per day and are confident those jobs are completed error-free. And they have room for additional capacity as their business continues to grow since the processes and procedures for handling their jobs are now clearly defined and automated.

PitStop2Switch brings robust quality control and automation features to your PDF production process by monitoring multiple file submission points including FTP/SFTP servers, email addresses and network hot folders to intelligently route your files to PitStop Server for PDF Preflight and Correction. PitStop2Switch can also fully automate delivery and archiving of production files, with notifications sent to all relevant parties that your jobs are ready to go.

So, how do you grow in the highly competitive market without slashing prices and reducing staff?
See what Enfocus Switch can do for you. Download our Switch ROI calculator, answer a few basic questions about your business, and see just how quickly Switch pays for itself in your own business environment. And remember, XChange offers a free, no-obligation consultation that will be specific to your processes and needs. Stay competitive. Stay in business. Contact XChange today.

*Total cost including implementation for PitStop2Switch was $6,694, with annual maintenance and support costs in future years of $1,176.