Print software (web-to-print, Print MIS, production workflow systems, etc.) are clearly vital to running your print business in a data-driven world with margin pressures. The potential upside to these tools is huge.

As the founder of Netscape and the now famous venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said, “software is eating the world.” We have seen printers completely change their ability to scale by investing in their software infrastructure. One printer said to me recently, “before when I sold a new customer I was afraid to bring the news back to my team because they were already so overwhelmed with our manual processes.” Today, after upgrading his technology and streamlining his operations by moving all manual, offline processes into his Print MIS and optimizing his integration with his web-to-print stores, new customers get added all the time with his team hardly noticing. By the way, this customer has doubled his business over the last few years and lowered his full-time head count. Yes, I’ll say that again; he doubled his business AND lowered his overall headcount. What printer wouldn’t want to say that or shout it for that matter?

He invested, don’t think these results didn’t take an investment of money (buying the print software) and much more important an investment in leadership and execution. Anyone can buy print software; the purchase doesn’t deliver the value. The execution of the print software in your business is what delivers the value. Too often we think that execution is the vendor’s job. It is not.  You are the lead, you are the visionary, you have everything to gain and everything to lose. The vendor is a member of the team of people you need to make this a success. It is your job to get this print software working and most importantly REPLACE all the manual processes you have in place today. Print MIS implementations should “eat Excel spreadsheets, log books, FileMaker Pro hacks, post-it notes, job boards, white boards, chalk boards, etc. by the dozen.” In the process of implementing a Print MIS, you should retire all those “pockets of manual tracking and processing” that got built up over the years where you didn’t have a single trusted system of record. If you implement a Print MIS and keep all those “pockets of manual tracking” around, you just spent a bunch of money to make your business even MORE INEFFICIENT! (ouch).