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The gap between early adopters and laggards continues to widen. Weighed down by the technical debt and disconnectedness of legacy systems, many print companies are investing precious capital and time in course-correcting their technology strategy. B2B customer expectations of user experience are increasingly blurred with the B2C ease of online shopping. Thus, the print service providers who can tightly align with emerging customer expectations will own the future. The answer to this growing problem is to establish a new agility within your operation.
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About Preston Herrin
Preston Herrin is a growth and performance consultant. He has enjoyed a successful leadership and executive management career spanning the manufacturing, e-commerce, software, and logistics sectors.
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Discussion
By Pete Basiliere on Apr 12, 2021
Good points, Preston, coupled with sound, actionable advice: Use data to know and rate what your customers want today while identifying and implementing the emerging trends and technologies that tomorrow they will want access to.
By Preston Herrin on Apr 12, 2021
Thanks, Pete. As an executive, what kept me awake at night was what I didn't know about market shifts, customer loyalty, competition, and emerging trends. Why? Because it's a full-time job to run a business and get caught up in the whirlwind of daily activity. When I built the playbooks to create more insight into these areas it was with the busy executive in mind. Insight/Action/Results is the HCG tagline!
By Cliff Hollingsworth on Apr 12, 2021
The best part of this article was the sub heading. We have been trying to solve the same problem for the last 15 years. The market has changed WAAAAAY past the print service providers. I see it as a leadership problem at the print shop level. Either it's important or it's not. 2020 put a lot more shops on the brink of disaster across the industry and 2021 is going to be all about catching up. We, as an industry are losing precious time. It's not about the tools, it's all about the culture and truly understanding how to meet the customer where they want to be met. The tools have been there and are improving every day. The cultures are what's not moving. We have lost almost 37,000 shops since the mid 90's. More to come and it won't be because they didn't automate. It will be the direct result of NOT managing the customer experience.
By Preston Herrin on Apr 14, 2021
Cliff: it's as if you are reading my playbook! You are absolutely correct in your assessment. In fact, my next article series is focusing on customer experience. This article completed the six-part "new agility" series which addressed practical ways to reshape stagnant culture. Next up is how to stay astride the customer expectations and deliver an amazing customer experience.