Events are moving from online to hybrid, and in some cases, live. As we start to indulge in real face-to-face meetings and convivial after-hours gatherings, many of the conversations are turning to efficiency and automation. Some of the topic choices are driven by experiences over the last 18 months of managing continuing print business operations. In other cases, company owners and managers bring up the topic because they have done some work to build efficient workflows but know they can do better.

The live conversations have been expansive compared to the chat windows in online events, leading to repeated takeaways from the exchanges.

Post-mortems are essential when problems arise. Every shop experiences a problem now and then. Incorrect specifications lead to faulty execution of the project. The issues are often not caught until deep into the process or when the customer gets the work for review. Then, in a rush to fix the problems and get the job out the door to the customer's satisfaction, the workflow breaks. Everyone pitches in to get the work out the door, but the margins expected are now a dream. People and processes replace what should have been technology. The companies that have started to do deep-dive post-mortems when things go wrong indicate that they see fewer fire drills. Early reviews helped them identify gaps in their job capture process and even in their estimating and expectation-setting functions. In most cases, it led to standardizing the order entry and job capture tasks by requiring all orders to be entered the same way. By eliminating different processes for ad hoc orders, contract orders, those brought in by remote sales teams, and those sold via websites and web2print storefronts, gaps and mistakes were identified and solved at the start of the processes, not when it got into prepress or on to the press. Freeware and apps downloaded from the internet pose a real risk. Many shops don't have the resources to acquire complete automated workflows or even islands of automation. The cash outlay seems daunting, so they turn to downloadable freeware and low-cost apps to aid specific tasks. Often missing from the calculation is the cost of the people-power and time, plus the cost of the risk. Remember, when you download freeware, you are taking on the risk that starts with the fitness of the program code for your needs and continues to encompass issues that only begin with code maintenance and what happens if it breaks. Printers shared stories of well-meaning team members who downloaded code from the internet and installed it on their desktops and laptops, only to discover malware was embedded or worse. Many of you have protocols that wouldn't allow outside code to be installed, but we heard stories of code sneaking in even when management thought they were safe.

Then, when they started to send the staff home to work, the freeware and apps became more of a risk as people took machines home from the office or tried to work from home computers. The delicately balanced environments that those apps supported went out of balance, and there was no one to call for help. IT teams struggled to figure out why things stopped working as they tried to keep production moving. Sometimes it came down to a license key sitting deep in a directory on a specific machine or other delicate configuration requirements.

The best advice is to search your network for freeware and apps that are not part of a standard configuration. Look for software that sits on a single-devices and for software that may have made its way into your server configuration. You can ask the team if they are using freeware or unsanctioned apps, but not everyone admits to it. If you find any, you may not be able to simply delete it and move on. You should see how it is used, what may link to it, and what it may feed. Then see if you have other installed solutions that can meet the same goals. Often, the freeware came in to solve a specific problem and was never replaced as vendor-maintained solutions were installed that met the same needs.

Come back next time for more learnings from live events! Don't forget to let me know what you are doing to grow in 2021! Please send your thoughts or add them to the comments.