How well do you know your hardware and its capabilities? The you in that sentence means everyone in the business: management and front office, sales and marketing, and production. If you are assuming that everyone knows and understands, you may be missing opportunities and creating bottlenecks beginning at the point of sale and continuing through production and invoicing. Here’s why!

Everyone is busy doing their job. Management is looking at the business and involved in determining investments, keeping the lights on, and monitoring both sales and the cost of sales. The teams in the office who handle paying the bills and invoicing have their hands full keeping up with that work. In an automated shop they may be monitoring information about work sold, stated, and completed, but in so many shops these are manual activities that take time. In sales and marketing, they are chasing leads, working with prospects and customers, and writing orders that keep production humming. The production team handles getting the jobs through prepress and onto the marking devices, finishing devices, and then out the door. Everyone is heads down, doing their jobs. Who has time to learn about every new machine that comes?

The answer should be everyone.