I recently attended and spoke at the Xerox Forum, an event run in Berlin by Xerox Europe. I was speaking on a panel and was asked what I would recommend for printers to invest in within the next year. My answer was that I would recommend developing their Internet expertise in the area of web to print to make it easier for customers to work with them, for new customers to find them so improving their sales opportunities, and to make their companies more efficient by automating processes.

This message was confirmed last week when I listened to an HP Indigo webinar. For those of you have not listened to webinars these are Internet based presentations where one can listen to a speaker or speakers and watch their presentation slides at the same time. Webinars are like attending a mini conference while staying in the office thus saving both time and costs. One of the speakers at this webinar was Gary Peeling, Managing Director of UK commercial printer, Precision Printing. Precision is a typical, or should I say was, a typical medium sized commercial printer that started in 1966. Up to 2005 it was a purely litho operation with a range of B2 Heidelberg presses. At that time it had a turnover of $8.8 million and employed 85 staff and took in an average of 45 orders per day with an average order value of $795. They invested in digital with an HP Indigo 5000 press to increase their service to clients. I visited Precision in early 2008 when they were a beta tester for the HP Indigo 7000 press. At that time digital complemented the litho printing and they were mainly using digital for just short run colour printing. They had no web to print operations and did only a small amount of variable data printing. Also at that time they did not believe in inline finishing systems and used the same finishing equipment for digital as they did for litho.

Today, just three years later Precision Printing is a totally different company, and this is predominantly through a major investment in web to print and digital workflow and integration. The company developed its own workflow, OneFlow, built a partnership with Italian web to print specialist Pixartprinting, and increased its digital printing equipment to four HP Indigo presses. In 2010 the company had a turnover of $19.2 million, more than a 100% increase in five years, and its staff had increased to 120 employees. Litho turnover had remained constant at  $9.6 million despite a major increase in capacity with a 10 unit Heidelberg Speedmaster 74, and with 55 litho orders per day, and the average litho order value had dropped to $690. Digital printing turnover was £6 million with over 10,000 orders per day with an average order value of $3.68. In the 2009 – 2010 year digital print grew 80%, and orders peaked at 25,000 orders per day in the run up to Christmas

Gary Peeling attributes this major change and increase to web to print operations for receiving orders and the OneFlow workflow for automating almost all processes to eliminate manual operations. The Pixart link has allowed for integrating online photo brands, greeting cards, general ordering of print for both offset and digital, and working with online print managers' systems.  

Precision Printing is showing that small progressive printers can do the same things as major organisations like Vistaprint in automating all processes and having orders created online via the Internet. The systems Precision uses make it easy for customers to buy from them at reasonable prices using their own buying approaches including linking their buying systems directly into Precision' systems.

Precision Printing is not alone in making this transition or opening up totally new business opportunities by adopting web to print technologies. Vistaprint was perhaps the first company to show what could be done, and they have developed their business hugely every year by mass marketing largely via email. Precision has seen and is seeing major growth through using web to print to create partnerships with other companies. Again this is not new. One of the best examples of building growth through partnerships is Colorcentric in the USA who have built their business on a B2B basis through a range of partnerships with other online companies like Lulu, Snapfish, Blurb and Fujifilm.

Colorcentric like Precision built its own workflow Printernet, and they are now using this to build a worldwide franchise where other companies can link into the Colorcentric network to create their own online print operations. Precision used its link with Italian Pixartprinting to enhance its web to print operations. It is interesting to speculate whether Precision will also offer further partnering with its online operations to allow other companies outside the UK to link with them. With that thought in mind it is interesting to recall a quote from John Laacagnina, the CEO of Colorcentric who stated "when something goes digital, it's going to go global."