Every piece of new equipment carries a promise of expanding revenue streams through increased capacity and options to add new product offerings. Once the dust has settled on the equipment installation and the vendor training team has exited the building, the work is just beginning. Without understanding the real advantages of the new equipment, assessing and updating talk tracks for sales team members, and revisiting the marketing collateral and campaigns, that investment may languish.

The first step is an assessment to go through the checklist that began with identifying a need for an investment. Once the installation is complete, it is time to assess what capabilities are now available—and how to monetize them.

There are many types of assessments you might conduct during the year, but this assessment is intended to document what has been installed, what it can do, what new capabilities it brings, and how production might change to ensure operational efficiency. Start with the basics. What does the new equipment do? How is it different from other equipment on the floor or the equipment it replaced? Is it faster? Is it capable of handling a wider array of substrates? Is it capable of a wider color gamut? Does it add enhancement features? Is the pre- or post-equipment different?