You can generally get the attention of any print business owner if you use the term “automation.” It is a good feeling term. Most print business owners imagine a world where repetitive, labor-intensive, error-prone tasks are done auto-magically. Automation is a good marketing term. Automation is a good sales term. Automation is a goal that requires process improvement to achieve. Process improvement isn’t as sexy—it’s in the weeds of your organization. Process improvement is time-consuming and frustrating because your current business processes “feel unique” in every way. How can you improve them other than throwing more smart people at them?

End-to-end process improvement is the actual magic. Automation occurs in discrete areas where processes have been defined and tools exist to execute certain tasks automatically. Here’s a very simple example. Your shipping software allows you to create the shipments, packing slips, etc., then when you tell it that the shipment has been made it automatically sends the customer an email. This sounds very easy and obvious, but it’s actually a powerful feature. Consider the steps that a human would have to take to construct an email to the right person with the right information at the right time (it’s not a trivial task and humans are prone to error and distraction). I like to think about automation at the task level, not at the process level. It’s not as sexy and it pulls you back from the delusion that a whole functional area of your business could be completely automated, but it’s based on reality. 

We’ve been working with a lot of labels and packaging printers lately. Like all printers, their prepress department is on “critical path” for most orders. We all know there are tools for prepress automation. I have found it very interesting to watch the decision-making process for when and how print business owners determine an automation toolset is worth the investment. I love talking about prepress to people who think there is nothing weird about custom print manufacturing. You know, those people who think that a print business can be run with a generic ecommerce platform and a generic ERP solution? Prepress is the weird part of the print business. You have a group of people in your organization that are in charge of making sure the customer’s product (artwork) is ready for manufacturing. I know that doesn’t sound weird to us (in the industry) but it’s freaking weird when compared to other business sectors. What is another business sector where the customer provides a critical part of the product during the purchasing process?