WhatTheyThink

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Working Over Your Workflow: 5 Steps to Turn Your Digital Printing Workflow into a Profit Maximizer

Reviewing your workflow on a regular cadence can lead to continuous improvement. It can also lead to continuous savings! With every new software tool and every new device there will be opportunities for more efficiency and optimization. Here is how to build your profit maximizer.

Tuesday, February 07, 2023

As an industry, we learned many lessons during the years of the analog-to-digital transformation, and it is still ongoing.

Digital printing unlocked new applications for customers through print customization and personalization. 

Customers also realized that their print buying patterns could shift to extend their budgets while giving more flexibility to marketing and fulfillment that could match their business cycles. Fewer quantities spread across more frequent orders became the norm. 


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About Pat McGrew and Ryan McAbee

Pat is a well-known evangelist for inkjet productivity. At McGrew Group, she uses her decades technical and marketing experience to lead the industry toward optimized business processes and production workflows. She has helped companies to define their five-year plans, audited workflow processes, and developed sales team interventions and education programs. Pat is the Co-Author of 8 industry books, editor of A Guide to the Electronic Document Body of Knowledge, and a regular contributor to Inkjet Insight and WhatTheyThink.com. Ryan McAbee is Chief Analyst at Pixel Dot Consulting LLC.

Recent Articles from Pat McGrew and Ryan McAbee

AI Increases Work—The Right Work

AI Increases Work—The Right Work

If you have spent any time experimenting with AI tools in your print operation, you have probably noticed something unexpected. You are not working less. You might be working more. Before you chalk that up to a failed technology investment, Pat McGrew and Ryan McAbee offer a counterpoint: that is not a bug. For print service providers, it is the feature…the whole point. Read More

Workflow Before Hardware: The Fastest ROI in Production Inkjet Starts Before the Press

Workflow Before Hardware: The Fastest ROI in Production Inkjet Starts Before the Press

The production inkjet market continues to mature at an impressive speed. Vendors are delivering genuinely capable platforms, and the hardware argument has never been stronger. And yet print providers continue to miss due dates, chase customer inquiries, untangle billing disputes, and absorb remake costs that have nothing to do with the press on the floor. Pat McGrew and Ryan McAbee explain how money is leaking from the workflow that surrounds the equipment. Read More

Riding the Automation J-Curve: Why the Robotics Revolution Is Your Print Shop's Best Opportunity Yet

Riding the Automation J-Curve: Why the Robotics Revolution Is Your Print Shop's Best Opportunity Yet

The productivity promises of robotics and AI sound almost too good to be true, and yet somewhere between the trade show demos and your actual production lines, there’s a gap that nobody seems to want to address, but understanding it is the single most important thing you can do right now to position your operation for success over the next decade. Pat McGrew and Ryan McAbee talk about the J-Curve. Read More

Labels as Data: The Software Stack Behind Automated Label Production

Labels as Data: The Software Stack Behind Automated Label Production

The smartest operations have stopped thinking about labels as print jobs. Today, they treat them as enterprise data problems. Pat McGrew and Ryan McAbee explain. Read More

AI Won’t Save Your Workflow: But Fixing It First Will Make AI Work for You

AI Won’t Save Your Workflow: But Fixing It First Will Make AI Work for You

There’s a phrase that has echoed through prepress departments for decades: garbage in, garbage out. The same principle now applies to AI adoption across your entire operation, and most print service providers are missing it. Read More