I had the opportunity to make a presentation at the IPMA show last week. It is a privilege to work with the IPMA and speak to the inplant managers. Many in the commercial market space don’t realize that inplants struggle with many of the same issues as commercial printers when the economy declines. Fittingly the title of my presentation was, “Only the Strong Will Survive: 3 Steps to Become World-Class.”

I was a little late in the game when I proposed my seminar and therefore got the clean up spot at the end of the program. Although I cried like a baby to poor Deb from the IPMA about being the last presentation on the last day, she assured me that people would come and she was right. I was pleasantly surprised to see about 40 hard-core attendees in the audience. My presentation focused on three critical success factors in printing today: Sales/Marketing efforts, Financial metrics, and Operational excellence.

Attendance to my seminar may have been helped by a great presentation right before mine by Tricia Bhattacharya from Xerox. Tricia talked about the new Xerox workbook called, “The Guide to Operational Excellence.” This workbook is designed for small companies to help them implement processes from Lean Six Sigma. Tricia did a great job explaining tools and set up my conversation about operational measurements and tools perfectly.

Today’s operational focus includes increasing productivity to reduce costs and turnaround times. Increasing operational productivity has become one of the never ending mantras and battles in print production today. The benefits include driving down the cost of manufacturing, speeding turnaround times, and more competitive prices.

Today’s marketing and sales efforts have to include listening to your customer’s changing needs and responding before someone else can create a competitive advantage. There are 2 components to listening and being responsive to your customers. First, you have to understand how well you are meeting your customer’s existing needs, and second, you need to learn how your customer’s needs are changing. We have two unique tools that we have created that help monitor the competitiveness of your services and show you how your customer’s needs are changing.

Few phrases scare an inplant manager more than cost justification. But I tell my inplant clients “I would rather gather data that was never needed than to be faced with questions I can’t answer because I don’t have the right data.” Every day there is an inplant manager somewhere who is asked how they justify their existence. If they are lucky it is just a question, but sometimes it means that someone is considering outsourcing or has been approached and is considering a facilities management strategy. Therefore, I recommend that all companies monitor their cost competitiveness, break even point, and sales, and create a list of cost-cutting strategies to use whenever demand falls.

In summary, both commercial and inplant printers need to master the three business pillars to become a leader: Sales/Marketing efforts, Financial metrics, and Operational excellence. First, it’s a given that the best companies constantly improve productivity and drive down costs. Financially you need to measure and compare your operational and financial numbers to industry leaders. And last but not least, if you want to increase your value, you have to start listening and being responsive to your customer’s changing needs.

I find that most companies master one or two of these critical success factors and only a very few master all three. What do you think? Do you think you master 2 out of 3 and struggle with one?

Howard Fenton is a Senior Consultant at NAPL. Howie advises commercial printers, in-plants, and manufacturers on workflow management, operations, digital services, and customer research.