LEXINGTON, KY -- WhatTheyThink, the leading media organization serving the printing and publishing industry, announces the immediate availability of Value-Added Services Primer: A WhatTheyThink Overview of Ancillary Services and the Opportunities They Offer to the Commercial Printing Industry. This 62-page report provides an easy-to-read rundown of a half dozen or so of the top services that printers can add to serve present customers, acquire new ones, and build new profit centers.

Purchase Value-Added Services Primer

So what are value-added services? The idea behind the strategy is that a single provider handles more than one portion of a given client’s project, the result being a reduction in the total cost of the project for the customer. That is, it should be less expensive for the customer for one provider to handle multiple tasks for a project than it is for a different provider to handle each task. So the idea of a printer adding a value-added service means he is taking on that task, perhaps earlier in the value chain than if that task had been done outside the plant. In other words, it’s about the printer taking more responsibility for some aspect of the total job.

Although the list of potential value-added services is seemingly endless, the Value-Added Services Primer focuses on a limited core set, including:

• graphic design, creative, and prepress services
• fulfillment, kitting, and distribution services
• shipping and mailing services
• new media services, including bulk e-mail, Web design and hosting, and other interactive media services
• marketing services

This primer report identifies for print providers the specific tasks each value-added service entails; the equipment, hardware, software, and skills likely to be required; where the opportunities in each service lie, and the chief barriers to successfully implementing those services. The report also offers a general outlook for each value-added service; that is, is demand for a given ancillary service likely to grow or shrink in the near future. A list of resources—associations, publications, and so on—is provided, for readers interesting in delving further into any given service or combination if services.

The report also provides general advice, cautions, and caveats for shops looking to implement some kind of value-added services strategy. The section on “marketing services” looks at the “new rules” of marketing in today and tomorrow’s rapidly changing media landscape, and explains how the printer—as a graphic communicator—is in a better position than he thinks he is to apply those rules to a real marketing services initiative. 

Value-Added Services Primer is available for online here.

Researcher's Comments

“The topic of value-added services is hardly a new one; it actually dates back at least 30 years, but received some degree of hoopla in the early years of the present decade. But it’s becoming more important than ever for printers to expand ‘beyond the press.’ Whether that’s called value-added services or simply diversifying, the point is that for many shops, printing is going to have to become one of a variety of services a particular establishment offers. What we’ve sought to do in this report is distill the topic down to its essence and just give printer owners, operators, and industry executives the essential points they need to investigate this technology further and ask well-informed follow-up questions.”

Editor’s Note

Additional information pertaining to each report is available for editorial purposes. Please make inquiries directly to Cary Sherburne at 603-430-5463 or [email protected],  or visit www.whattheythink.com).

About WhatTheyThink

WhatTheyThink comprises the largest graphic arts community in the print industry. Started in March 2000, WhatTheyThink.com provides daily news, interviews, research, and many more resources to our members. Our goal is to provide unbiased, real-time market intelligence to print and publishing executives.

The name WhatTheyThink (provided by an industry consultant) reflects our goal of developing a community built on what industry professionals had to say. We wanted unbiased takes from print buyers, designers, printers, and suppliers. Not just the big printers or the suppliers who were “buying advertising,” but ideas and knowledge from every corner of the industry.