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
The most practical AI wins in print do not happen on the pressroom floor. They happen earlier, where sales, CSR, estimating, and admin teams translate customer intent into production reality. This article explores how generative AI reduces friction, rework, and risk before ink ever hits paper. Read More
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
The most practical AI wins in print do not happen on the pressroom floor. They happen earlier, where sales, CSR, estimating, and admin teams translate customer intent into production reality. This article explores how generative AI reduces friction, rework, and risk before ink ever hits paper. Read More
Heidi Tolliver-Walker takes a close look at LiftERP, part of Durst’s Smart Factory portfolio that targets the mid-to-enterprise segment of the print industry. Read More
Canva just redrew the creative landscape again, and this time, it’s aimed squarely at professionals. By merging its 2024 Affinity acquisition into a free, full-featured design suite that plugs directly into Canva’s collaborative ecosystem, the company has built an end-to-end environment for creating, approving, and delivering content across every channel, including print. For designers and print providers alike, this shift isn’t just another software update; it’s a fundamental change in how creative work is produced, shared, and delivered, bringing both unprecedented opportunity and new production challenges in the months ahead. Read More
Vendor consolidation is reshaping the print industry, as mergers and acquisitions ripple through every corner, from press manufacturers to workflow and consumable suppliers, leaving printers wondering what will change next. Behind every upbeat press release lies a set of practical questions about product support, pricing, and service continuity that can directly impact your operations. Let’s unpack how to read between the lines of vendor deals, identify what questions to ask immediately, and turn industry upheaval into a strategic advantage for your business. Read More
On February 15 of this year, Paul Brainerd—the father of desktop publishing—passed away at the age of 78. WhatTheyThink contributor Alan Darling takes a first-person look at Brainerd’s life and legacy and the early days of the technology that transformed the printing industry. Read More
With 14 tracks and 152 sessions, 40 of them focused on packaging, attended by over 518 attendees and 16 partners, this 26th year of CONNECT continues to be a unique and valuable users conference. Product roadmaps along with industry trends, automation, and AI were at the top of mind for the enthusiastic crowd. Read More
In this Product Spotlight, David Zwang takes a deep dive into Fiery JobFlow Pro, a new and innovative workflow platform based on intelligent automation. Read More
The most practical AI wins in print do not happen on the pressroom floor. They happen earlier, where sales, CSR, estimating, and admin teams translate customer intent into production reality. This article explores how generative AI reduces friction, rework, and risk before ink ever hits paper. Read More
HiFlow Solutions brings decades of experience from packaging plants, building technology around real-world workflows. In this interview, CEO Mariusz Sosnowski explains how HiFlow’s strategy centers on Operational AI—using automation and intelligence in estimating, scheduling, and order processing—to transform MIS and ERP from a traditional “system of record” into a true “system of decision.” The discussion highlights HiFlow’s independence, its Microsoft AI Cloud partnership, and its role in addressing industry challenges such as workforce shortages, sustainability compliance, and integration between legacy EDI and modern APIs. Looking ahead, HiFlow envisions ERP as a decision-support platform that augments human expertise with AI-driven insights for smarter, faster operations. Read More
Imagine if every employee in your print shop had a 24/7 assistant that could instantly answer operational questions, from press setup to postal prep, based on your SOPs and documents. With NotebookLM, you can turn your existing workflow guides into an AI-powered operations chatbot that boosts efficiency, supports training, and strengthens business continuity. Read More
Operators of print businesses know automation can reduce costs, boost throughput, and improve customer satisfaction, but don’t know where to start. Let’s learn how to kick off your automation journey by walking your workflow, identifying bottlenecks, and building data connectivity across departments. With a clear framework and the right tools, even the most complex print operations can turn automation from a buzzword into a bottom-line advantage. Read More
Many companies have been creating solutions to enhance the printing and packaging production plant. Hybrid Software is unique in being the only full-stack provider of all the core technologies required for industrial inkjet printing from printhead electronics to high-performance digital front ends (DFEs) and workflow automation systems. They do this through an interesting collection of very targeted solution acquisitions and continuous development, which can be confusing to understand to some, but knowing the principals I know there is a plan. Read More
Automation is no longer optional for printers—it’s foundational. From commercial print to packaging, thriving businesses are building Automation Universes that align people, processes, and technology to reduce friction and drive value. Here is what you need to know about how to design scalable automation ecosystems tailored to your goals, budget, and evolving team. Whether you’re buying big or building lean, the path forward starts with strategy, not just software Read More
The reality check for AI in print production begins with a journey through current tasks, processes, and data to understand the current state. The next step is to look for quick wins where applying AI tools can produce quantifiable results. The challenge is separating the promises from the facts. Read More
Some printing companies use AI tools to guide their manufacturing processes and code development, while some embed AI technology, including GPT solutions, into their products for preventive maintenance management, color management, and quality control. Pat McGrew and Ryan McAbee take a look at some of the tools these companies are using. Read More
Automation in commercial print depends on more than just software—it relies on smart, secure, and well-timed connectivity between systems. This article breaks down the four most common integration methods—REST APIs, Webhooks, EDI, and JDF/JMF—and explains when to use each based on speed, scale, and workflow needs. If you're looking to streamline operations, reduce manual tasks, and future-proof your print business, understanding these data exchange tools is essential. Read More
Web-to-Print (W2P) has evolved from a convenience to a must-have for today’s print businesses. With a projected market value exceeding $30 billion by 2028, W2P delivers speed, scalability, and seamless customer experiences across all print segments—from commercial to packaging. But its value isn’t limited to online storefronts. Integrated W2P platforms reduce job onboarding by up to 70%, enable faster sales cycles, and open new revenue channels. If you’re not leveraging W2P as a strategic asset, you’re likely losing ground. This is why now is the time to invest—and make W2P your print shop’s competitive advantage. Read More
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now poised to revolutionize print MIS by enhancing financial intelligence and improving budgeted hourly rates (BHRs). AI can analyze past data to keep BHRs accurate, suggesting adjustments when discrepancies arise. It can also assist in creating estimates for customer quotes by evaluating historical data and pricing conditions. Here is what to expect. Read More
Pat McGrew takes a close look at PlanProphet’s new AI-powered Tools, designed specifically for print businesses, aiming to automate and elevate front office operations. Read More
Print Management Information Systems hold a special place in the print industry. When implemented carefully, they can unlock profitability. When poorly or partially implemented, they can hide opportunities for more profit. Here are five things to consider if you are in the market for a new Print MIS. Read More
In this article, written and sponsored by Fiery, discover how Fiery is driving DTF innovation with its patented Single-Pass Underbase with Highlight technology. Built into Fiery Digital Factory software, the technology allows printers to intelligently separate and apply both the solid white underbase and the lighter highlight white ink in a single pass. The result is brighter, more detailed prints with greater speed, consistency, and efficiency—no media rewinding or extra hardware required. Read More
An Intelligent Workflow Infrastructure should be designed to support an almost infinite selection of equipment and processes, to ensure a future-proof design. However, the real goal should be connecting and/or sharing data that will ultimately bring siloed companies and process automation to the entire supply chain. Read More
This article, sponsored by Print Management Information Systems (PrintMIS), takes an in-depth look at PrintMIS ePRO management software. Read More
The U.S. commercial printing industry is under significant pressure, as new tariffs and rising labor costs drive up expenses across the board. In this article written by Aleyant, COO George Mixco explains how automation tools are an effective strategy to protect against external market forces—such as the uncertainty caused by recent tariffs. Read More
Any printing or packaging business can analyze costs, establish budgeted hourly rates (BHRs), and benchmark costs against industry standards using Cost Rates Advisor—empowering smarter pricing decisions that drive increased sales and profits. Pat McGrew takes a close look at Cost Rates Advisor. Read More
Automation is now a requisite to a profitable print or packaging company, and needs to provide for centralized business and production management. Ultimately, the solution needs to fit the specific needs of a PSP and their disparate customer and partner relationships. Read More
You have a software tool kit to work with in your shop. No matter what you produce or the segment you serve, you have programs to help collect data, manage processes, and report results. Most of these tools require installation configuration and some training for the team on using them effectively. Over time, those tools are updated, but other things about your business also change around them. How can your team stay current to best use your software tool investment? It’s a game of intellectual Roomba. Read More
In this article, sponsored by Aleyant, Aleyant CEO, David Graves, shares some insights about the new PDF2Press preflight solution for the web-to-print industry. Read More
In this article, Giselle Robeson talks about how industrial printing is creating new opportunities across manufacturing sectors, from packaging and labeling to direct-to-object printing and textiles, and how Fiery is accelerating the evolution of industrial print, helping manufacturers integrate digital solutions more efficiently and cost-effectively. Read More
In commercial printing, it’s all about automation. Fewer touches is the only way to move forward in the industry. That’s why Alliance Franchise Brands (AFB) chose Aleyant’s Pressero over 10 years ago. In this article, sponsored by Aleyant, Ryan Mastako shares their eCommerce journey and what he sees on the horizon for workflow automation. Read More
It looks like 2025 should be an exciting year in workflow. To build an infrastructure that takes you into the future, here is guidance on where to look for opportunities in your shop. A dose of automation sprinkled with AI-enablement is the recipe to enable a brilliant future. Read More
The New Year is upon us. That means it is time to look back and take stock. Here are the trends we saw during the past year. Compare them to what you saw and review the advice for taking advantage of the changing options for workflow automation. Don’t forget to use this guide as you have your year-end business reviews with your vendors! Read More
If you are among the thousands dipping their toes into using AI tools to help you understand your business, you may be wondering where it can be most effective. Here are some ideas for where to start using your AI skills to learn more about your business! Read More
With so much focus on artificial intelligence’s potential to transform entire industries, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed or unsure about where to begin. The good news is that AI provides value at every stage of implementation, regardless of whether you’re just starting out or looking to scale advanced AI solutions. This article explores how businesses can unlock real benefits as they continue their AI journey, regardless of stage. Read More
OnPrintShop harnesses the power of AI to streamline workflows, reduce setup times, and deliver a seamless experience for print service providers, enabling faster go-live and improved productivity across diverse print applications. Read More
In this article, written and sponsored by Fiery, read about how, through a strategic partnership with the Graphic Communications Scholarship Foundation (GCSF), Fiery is not only providing access to best-in-class resources and certifications but also creating a bridge between theoretical classroom knowledge and real-world print applications. Read More
If you are suffering from the PDF Flu, here are some things to watch for and some ideas on how to ensure that every PDF you send through to production can process and run efficiently, whether going to print or an edelivery platform. Let's look at your options! Read More
At a recent industry meeting, many printers pointed out that they are seeing more poor PDF files than ever before. The point was that many companies are offshoring content development, even for transaction and marketing mail. The PDFs coming into their print queues are so poor that some won’t process at all, while others cause delays in RIP and processing. Let’s look at your options! Read More
In this article written and sponsored by Propago, learn how efficient integration in web-to-print solutions is crucial for printers to automate operations and add value. With diverse integration methods, systems communicate seamlessly, reducing errors and manual tasks. Connecting key platforms streamlines workflows, enabling real-time updates, improved data accuracy, and a responsive customer experience. Read More
As noted at the time by my colleague David Zwang, many were scratching their heads over Epson’s acquisition of Fiery. Last Friday, November 1, Epson provided more detail about its strategy and expectations related to this acquisition, which are summarized here. Read More
AI is more than a buzzword in print. It has the potential to automate complex print tasks, optimize resources, and improve processes. Fiery, an industry leader in digital print technology, is at the forefront of this transformation, integrating AI into solutions that streamline job processing, enhance inventory management, and ensure consistent print quality. This article, written and sponsored by Fiery, explores how Fiery’s AI-driven tools are empowering print providers to boost efficiency, reduce costs, and drive growth for print businesses. Read More
In this article, written and sponsored by Aleyant, David Graves from Aleyant highlights how printing companies can automate their processes and previews a webinar that will expand upon these points by showcasing PDF2Press, a new product from Aleyant. Read More
Heidi Tolliver-Walker recaps WhatTheyThink’s recent Technology Outlook webinar on software and workflow in which Pat McGrew and Ryan McAbee looked at the trends and technology introductions in this category. Read More
When the Fiery acquisition by Epson was announced, many were scratching their heads trying to understand the logic and synergies—although the acquisition does make sense when you look at the expansion and growth rate of inkjet. Read More
The increasing adoption of artificial intelligence has spurred a widespread integration of new technologies. AI is more than just the talk of the town—it has proven that it can walk the walk. This article explores how AI integration is leading us into the future. Read More
As we enter the last quarter of the year, you may be crunching numbers and planning strategies based on what you see. You may have a set of trusty spreadsheets that you update or rely on your ERP, MIS, and back-office programs to build reports to analyze. What happens if the data you rely on is wrong? Read More
In this article, sponsored by XMPie, Ayelet Szabo-Melamed from XMPie delves into the cutting-edge trends propelling personalization to the forefront of the print industry and highlights how print businesses can leverage these trends to stand out, engage customers more effectively, and achieve success in a competitive market. Read More
Customer requirements for color accuracy, print quality, and turnaround times in wide-format printing are becoming more demanding. PrintFactory empowers wide-format printing workflows with its renowned support for thousands of devices and easy-to-implement color management capabilities. It continues to expand its ecosystem to include desktop and cloud-based software. Pat McGrew takes a close look. Read More
Personalization in print is rapidly advancing, presenting opportunities for brands, enterprises and print shops. In this article, sponsored by XMPie, Scott Houck from XMPie highlights the growth of Variable Data Printing (VDP), the resurgence of direct mail, the impact of automation and omnichannel personalization, and the need for streamlined workflows and data-driven solutions to stay competitive. Read More
Hybrid Software today has grown organically and through the acquisition and integration of an extensive but synergetic group of companies. This has allowed them to build very complete and efficient solutions for both OEMs as well as PSP users. David Zwang explores how Hybrid software can control all aspects of print production. Read More
Pat McGrew and Ryan McAbee round up three software solutions providers who were showing their products at drupa. Read More
Pat McGrew provides an overview of how Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are only two aspects of building workflow automation that brings efficiency to print operations. Integrating diverse threads is an essential element in building an automated print shop. Read More
Pat McGrew provides an overview of how intelligent automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are implemented in industry software solutions. Read More
Atomyx a cloud-based platform that can both streamline the print business and production processes, while also reducing the skills needed to do the plant-wide automation integration to support production from Mass Production to Mass Customization. David Zwang takes a close look at Atomyx. Read More
PRISMA Home is a unique platform that houses valuable applications and tools in the cloud to help manage and support compatible print production processes. David Zwang takes a close look at how the PRISMA family has evolved. Read More
Chromaspot is a new universal color library available to the industry to communicate color references. Read More
At drupa 2024, Xitron introduced K2, a new software system that integrates some of the Hybrid Software offerings to create a complete workflow. David Zwang takes a closer look. Read More
Konica Minolta is not only a manufacturer of printers, the company also has considerable experience in color science. The company teamed up with the University of Hiroshima for its new Ex Kansai software. Ralf Schlözer explains how, by leveraging AI and neuroscience, the Ex Kansai software is set to simulate the visual perception of consumers. Read More
Fiery is one of the best-known names in Digital Front Ends and Raster Image Processing for print hardware sellers in many segments. If you are a digital printer, the chances are good that you have equipment powered by Fiery in your print shop. Pat McGrew spoke to Fiery CEO Toby Weiss at drupa 24. Read More
Patrick Henry looks at Xitron’s new K2 workflow for offset prepress, which was shown at drupa 24. Read More
David Zwang looks at Atomyx, a platform built on the vision of Connected Automation to enable the profitable production of individualized print jobs at scale, which was being showcased at drupa 24. Read More
At drupa 24, two much-cited critical challenges faced by print service providers (PSPs) were cost pressures and workforce challenges. Pat McGrew looks at how some vendors are helping printers conquer these challenges. Read More
David Zwang takes a deep dive into Fujifilm’s Smart Flow workflow software, being demonstrated at drupa 24. Read More
David Zwang looks at how Hybrid Software has grown organically and through the acquisition and integration of an extensive but synergetic group of companies, allowing them to build very complete and efficient solutions for both OEMs as well as PSP users. Read More
At drupa 24, CloudLab announced two new web-to-print solutions—printQ and packQ—to enable printers of all sizes to quickly create products for their e-commerce customers without the need for IT support or long learning curves. Read More
This article, written and sponsored by eProductivity Software, takes a look at Nubium, a cloud-native MIS solution designed for the underserved small- to medium-sized commercial print market, which was launched at drupa 24. Read More
In this article, written and sponsored by HiFlow Solutions, previews a webinar, hosted by Florida Graphic Alliance, that will help print businesses unlock insights into their costing process. The focus will be on determining the true costs by showcasing how software tools can automate a shop's costing system. Read More
Oops! You might have bought the wrong software. Or, you may have outgrown the software you are using. The right software should integrate seamlessly, provide the needed features, and include ongoing vendor support. By being proactive, you can ensure your print software empowers your business, not hinders it. Read More
Procurement, workflows, and logistics need to be connected and optimized into one single workflow, as online print service providers need to be masters in cost-efficient and fast-turnaround print production spanning multiple sites and production devices. European section editor Ralf Schlözer points out how, in a remarkable move, online print provider Gelato is now opening up its software solution and production platform, GelatoConnect, to all print service providers. Read More
In this article, written and sponsored by HiFlow Solutions, learn about a Windows-based app that gives estimators an easy-to-use imposition solution to replace costly and error-prone manual imposition processes, making estimates faster to produce. Read More
Today, it takes more than some commercial firewall tools and virus protection license to keep your business safe. If you haven’t done a comprehensive security review in the last six months, take the time to do it now. If you are held for ransom, there may not be a road back. Read More
As PSPs diversify their businesses, they are managing a range of job types across different digital printing technologies from multiple vendors. In this article, sponsored by Fiery, John Henze from Fiery discusses how PSPs can embrace diversification and create a unified print room by leveraging RIP software. Read More
There is a cycle to software development that is intended to capture market or customer needs, develop solutions that meet those needs, and then launch into customer use. As more workflow automation tools and platform integration options come to market, consider having a different type of conversation with your vendors to understand the mindset behind the offering. The goal is to learn if their design and architecture are consistent with the needs of your shop. Read More
Imagine a cloud-based platform that could both streamline the print business and production processes, while also reducing the skills needed to implement a plant-wide automation integration. While still in the early stages of development, that is the goal of the Atomyx platform. Read More
Depending upon who you ask, AI means either the beginning of the end for the human race’s domination of the world, or the elimination of all our jobs…or the debut of a really amazing and useful tool with almost limitless possibilities. Steve Johnson looks at how, in fact, it might be all three. Read More
It’s likely that in implementations by suppliers to the industry is where artificial intelligence (AI) will first show up in your business. Cary Sherburne spoke with a couple of industry executives from companies that are suppliers to the industry to understand what, if anything, they are doing or thinking about with respect to AI. Read More
Many of the current “off the shelf” workflow software and professional service offerings are being developed to support newer and disparate technologies and markets. Ultimately, solutions need to fit the specific needs of a PSP and their customer and partner relationships, and that’s where rules based workflows shine. Read More
Heidi Tolliver-Walker looks at how one particular print business—Atlanta’s Wise—got the most out of a print MIS implementation by developing a process for doing so and walks us through that process. Read More
Cary Sherburne explores how Walker360 completely restructured its production platform—and realized exponential productivity gains. Read More
Do you have tasks that are never completed? Is your tech stack out of date? Is software and hardware maintenance on the back burner because no one has time? Trying to get to the cloud, but struggling with your on-premise installations? Are you wondering if you are getting the best advice from your staff and vendor partners? Maybe you need professional services! Read More
In days gone by, we had apprenticeships and vocational training to feed the print industry. Apprenticeships are a wonderful way to grow the talent of new employees and help them along a career path as they master the craftsmanship of print manufacturing. Vocational schools, state colleges, and vendor training also provide important educational resources. A growing option is cloud-based training to meet the needs of on-the-go trainees as they navigate the rigors of print in environments that increasingly rely on cloud services! Read More
Many networked, automated production capabilities are now built into the operating systems of the latest digitally controlled offset presses, but there has been no universal movement toward adoption, and printers still need guidance about what workflow is, how to implement it, and how to make the best use of it. Contributor Patrick Henry looks at how building a software-based workflow for offset production starts with understanding how the idea of workflow originated and what functions and features it now consists of. Read More
This week, we are publishing the content from 2024's Issue 1, the Software Issue, with an emphasis on “the cloud” and so-called AI. In this article, a preview of the week’s content. Read More
As the cloud rapidly emerges as a key influencing technology, the integration of business and production management solutions into cloud-based platforms has become inevitable, and things are changing fast! Read More
Contributor Jim Russell of New Direction Partners explains how a company’s technology infrastructure is an important consideration for a potential buyer. Read More
It’s time to abandon your Trust but Verify approach to security. The changing legislative and technology landscapes demand a new approach to securing your shop, whether you print, e-deliver, or produce output across multiple channels. Zero Trust is the modern approach to your cloud-enabled workflow architecture. Read More
There is no doubt that industry understanding of the power of workflow is growing. As machines get faster, the processes that feed them must be as efficient as possible. To attain efficiency requires a series of integrations to ensure that workflows connect and share data. Here is why that is important for your business growth. Read More
Last month, Fiery® unveiled Fiery Command WorkStation® 7, a centralized job management solution that helps unify the digital print room. In this Q&A, sponsored by Fiery, we sat down with the Fiery product team to discuss what’s new in Command WorkStation and how printers can use it to gain operational efficiencies and elevate color performance to meet customer expectations. Read More
Cloud-based solutions can provide a tremendous benefit for in-plant and print-for-pay printers, especially small to medium-sized operations. In this article, sponsored by Ricoh, Pat McGrew explains how offering automated, vendor-neutral, rules-based workflow technology that provides simple, easy-to-use tools in a SaaS environment removes the requirement of a heavy infrastructure and IT expertise. The key to overall workflow profitability all starts with job onboarding. Read More
The team at eProductivity Software has been adding features and functions to their entire range of workflow and marketing management solutions. Their MarketDirect platform is a comprehensive solution that helps print businesses sell more online, improve customer engagement, and streamline operations for printers in every segment. And it's a perfect fit for shops of every size. Read More
A growing number of printing companies are placing increased focus on workflow automation as the industry continues to face competitive challenges, both from inside and outside the industry. In this article, sponsored by Fiery LLC, we speak with Meredith Nichols of Nichols Associates, who is Fiery Certified as well as a Certified G7 Expert. She explains how she works with clients to help them reach those automation goals. Read More
Canon’s PRISMA offerings include a wide range of applications and tools to help optimize print production workflows and digital printing production. These solutions have amassed over the life of PRISMA and have adapted to the changes in technology and production requirements, as their use requirements have changed significantly over the years. David Zwang takes a close look at how PRISMA has evolved, focusing especially on a recent addition to the software suite: PRISMAcolor Manager. Read More
In this article, sponsored by Fiery, we take an in-depth look at factors to consider when choosing a digital front end (DFE) for a new or existing digital printer. It emphasizes the importance of a robust DFE for efficient and high-speed print operations. Not all DFEs are created equal, and simply comparing hardware specifications does not tell the whole story; that approach can actually be quite misleading. You can also download an in-depth white paper for additional information. Read More
By optimizing costs and resolving bottlenecks, the print industry can bring more efficiency to its business, resetting print economics and getting more from its print production. Let’s do it! Process automation increases productivity, helps to control bottom-line costs, and can add hidden capacity. In this article, sponsored by Baldwin Technologies, see how Baldwin solutions are based on decades of experience bringing insights to printing companies with data and automation. See how they can help you conquer today’s challenging print industry economics. Read More
European section editor Ralf Schlözer takes a look at the current state of Zaikio, and its recent integration of a procurement app that can aid or fully automate supplies ordering processes. Read More
Patrick Henry takes a deep dive into the myriad ways print businesses are implementing workflow automation, the tools they are using, and the results they have achieved. The range of what printers have accomplished indicates how much becomes possible once a plant commits to workflow automation. Read More
Consumers are no longer satisfied with only buying mass-produced products. Online and brick-and-mortar print shops have offered B2B and B2C buyers the ability to customize printed products, but the process is sometimes complex and hard to understand. Pat McGrew looks at LiveArt’s web-to-print services which address the gap between off-the-shelf web-to-print solutions available in the market and the growing needs of printers requiring more custom-tailored solutions for their clients. Read More
From the World Wide Web to cloud services, technological developments in recent decades have fundamentally changed industry and business—and with them the work and processes in print shops. However, one small tool, or rather file format, is often overlooked in the list, even though data exchange in general and online printing in particular would not work as we know it today. We’re talking about PDF, the Portable Document Format, which turns 30 this year—and has been with me for just as long. Time to talk about its history and its importance to printing. Read More
At its essence, software is a tool that is based in science, but has artistic manifestations. The style of coding, the elegance of programming expression, and the user interfaces that join the user to the software capabilities create a yin/yang relationship. Software does require care and feed, however. Here is some guidance on living with software, whether it was created in your shop, downloaded for free, or purchased from a vendor! Read More
Two weeks ago, as part of WhatTheyThink’s fourth annual Technology Outlook Week, our five-day series of webinars that look at the latest trends and technologies in a broad cross-section of the industry, Pat McGrew and Ryan McAbee took a look at software and workflow—specifically addressing automation. In this article, Heidi Tolliver-Walker recaps the webinar. Read More
Welcome to the rise of the robots—or at least chatbots! Businesses in every segment are looking at how artificial intelligence can help them grow. The anecdotes are becoming part of the mainstream—eliminating staff positions and replacing them with chatbots is a common theme. That begs the question: what happens if you fire everybody and let the bots do the work? Let’s explore that. Read More
A CRM tool needs to deliver value to your sales team in the form of time savings or differentiation in how fast they can get quotes out to their customers. Read More
When the power dynamic is uneven across the functional areas of your print business, more powerful areas (production and sales) tend to shift manual steps to the less powerful areas (customer service). Read More
We tend to discount the time of our full-time employees because we are paying for it already—looking at them like sunk costs. So, when we ask them to do things that are non-value add (aka a complete waste of their time), we don’t see it as a cost. Well, it has real costs. Read More
You may remember Jay Farr who founded ePACE in 1985, a mid-range print MIS solution and the first browser-based MIS, that was ultimately acquired by EFI in 2008 (now eProductivity Software). Following his commitments to EFI pursuant to the terms of the acquisition, Jay continued to be a presence in the Print MIS business, and in 2016, became an investor and the VP of Business Development for DocketManager. We recently spoke with Jay to learn more about this unique MIS solution. Read More
In a print plant, it is easy to come to work and fall into the drama of getting jobs out the door. There is always something you can focus on in your day-to-day work life. The art of moving your business forward happens when you direct your focus to areas of your business that you can impact the most. Read More
In conversations with a label converter recently, the General Manager told me that more than once in the last few years key employees had voiced the core belief that “this plant wouldn’t run without me.” Now, you can take this statement a lot of different ways. My initial reaction is concern for the business because the employee that says this is both likely a key player and potentially a risk. Read More
This year’s CONNECT event, hosted by eProductivity Software at The Wynn in Las Vegas, featured a Women’s Networking Lunch where women—along with some men—gathered to hear the stories of powerful women and discuss ways to get more women into the industry and leadership positions. Read More
WhatTheyThink talks to eProductivity Software’s Nick Benkovich about how print businesses’ software needs are changing in response to changing customer needs. Read More
Software is the future of every printing business. At More Vang, it’s the present. More Vang president Jon Budington explains how More Vang went from commercial printer to software developer. Read More
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. Read More
Increasing numbers of small and mid-sized businesses are investing in DIY marketing automation. Platforms such as MailChimp, Pardot, and HubSpot lower the barrier to entry, but without the marketing and database expertise to put them to use, those tools are little more than window dressing. Heidi Tolliver-Walker explains how understanding where and how to plug in can be of significant value to those customers. Read More
With the shifting market directions of procurement and print production there is a lot to be learned about the new requirements, processes, and pain points of the customer base. Building a “one size fits all” solution will usually fall short of those goals. Ultimately the solution needs to fit the specific needs of a PSP and their customer and partner relationships. Read More
Senior Editor Cary Sherburne looks at how print software solution providers are responding to the evolving needs of customers. Read More
Printers are complaining of the lack of qualified candidates and a higher-than-expected amount of turnover. While this section of WhatTheyThink is titled Software, the focus is often more on people than software. After all, people are what make your software investments' ROI. Software is simply potential. Read More
A Print MIS/ERP purchase is an event; the journey is where actual differentiation takes place. Read More
It can be challenging for print businesses to be agile, particularly production printing rooted in small-batch, custom manufacturing. To reach the peak of business agility, you may need to be agile using software and software services. Pat McGrew and Ryan McAbee look at how First Line Software’s custom software and data solutions can help improve print business agility. Read More
Flagship Press prints everything from books to direct mail, large format to promotional products, because they embrace their range of offset and digital equipment. But their workflow was slow, hard to maintain, and needed more of the features their volumes demanded. They started the search for a faster more automated workflow. In this case study, written and sponsored by Kodak, the answer was Kodak. Read More
Optimization efforts can often result in generalized approaches that miss the mark of delivering what each customer needs, when they need it, based on their specific business needs. Read More
More software systems create more complexity, which creates more overhead in your business. Choose wisely based on the realistic and mandatory feature sets required to run your business. Read More
Putting ink or toner on a vast range of substrates is something PSPs do daily, and the process is getting a bit easier every year. What is not getting any easier are the operational processes required before and after printing. Pat McGrew and Ryan McAbee explain how job onboarding, proofing and approval, and invoicing are the three most consistent problem areas found during workflow assessments for every type of print service provider. Read More
A willingness to learn can be greatly enhanced by creating a safe environment for mistakes to happen. Documented processes are a tool that removes shame and blame from work mistakes and helps the organization get better. Read More
Designers and others who were accustomed to hearing Adobe’s creative software natively speaking Pantone’s language of color are now listening to a dialog that comes with an unanticipated price tag. As a service to its members and to the industry in general, Printing Industries Alliance presents this overview of the situation and its consequences for end-users. Read More
In mid-October, the European members of the Graphic Users Association met up in Munich after a three-year, COVID-induced hiatus to explore together the far-reaching potential of the new KODAK PRINERGY platform, benefiting from the extensive expertise of workflow professionals, and learn about both new and existing but unexplored features and tools to help customers further develop their business success. This article, written and sponsored by Kodak, recaps the highlights of the conference. Read More
Diving into your business to mine ROI out of your processes is best done with your ears and your eyes. Observe and listen to how the processes are being managed today, then step back and choose the challenges that return the most ROI for your business. Read More
Solving challenges in your print business that involve your software solutions can be tricky because your team has a strong bias to how you are currently working and generally no experience of how other companies are utilizing the software. Read More
You can’t buy software like a press. It must keep moving with the technology infrastructure, the market, and your business. SaaS is a subscription model that better matches the reality of the way you need software to keep evolving. Read More
Issues arise whenever you’re trying to work with a team. Do you have a safe and consistent method for identifying issues and processing them so that your business can stay in alignment? Read More
The print industry has focused on diversification on the production floor (e.g., digital, offset, oversized, flexo, web, etc.). It’s time to look at diversification in your sales channels—how you get new customers. Read More
Transforming your business can happen incrementally by looking at the daily workflows you execute on and finding areas of improvement. New software tools are a great time to transform your workflows. Read More
Sometimes the hardest part of taking advantage of the available marketplace is having tools that work they way you need them to. One size does not fit every situation. That is where Customer’s Canvas comes in. The team at Aurigma work with their clients to craft the web-to-print solution that will work most efficiently for their business. Read More
The building of integrated workflows continues to get more complex and require more, not less, vendors. Your decision-making approach must be balanced between solving specific needs and integration up and downstream. Read More
Change can be difficult. You can make it a little easier by dividing up the constituents and hearing from their unique perspectives, basically giving them the airtime they deserve. Read More
You have change agents: they are your sales team. A group of people who are selling change every day. Use that team to help sell internal change whenever possible. Read More
Your customers require selling even after they are customers. The selling comes in the form of encouraging them to engage with you in a way that is both convenient for them and improves the outcomes of your workflows. Read More
EFI Fiery DFEs have been driving digital printers for over 30 years. As the digital printers and the market requirements they serve change, there is a need to bring more automated preflight to the production floor to ensure process consistency, EFI has ensured that their DFE meets those challenges with their customers in mind. This includes the newly released Fiery Preflight Pro, available for Fiery FS500 Pro and newer servers. Read More
Process or workflow documentation sounds like something only for very large bureaucratic corporations. This is not true. The smallest companies can benefit from process improvement. Your business is a series of processes that are repeated over and over. Read More
Physical foundation has been our collective focus for decades. The print industry creates physical products using physical machines. Digital foundation is our new differentiator: data and systems create new business opportunities and enable you to run your business more efficiently. Read More
The software demo is typically a key to the decision-making part of the sales process. Your definition of your core challenges before the demo can greatly influence ROI outcomes in the future. Read More
You run a print factory, you have an assembly line—find the critical path, then find what’s standing between you and your cash flow. Don’t be surprised if it's way upstream of your press. Read More
Print MIS/ERP systems are a favorite thing to complain about and be frustrated with. This week I am trying to do the impossible: get you to double down on the Print MIS/ERP you currently own instead of throwing it out and starting over. Read More
Doing a little more work on feature requests can have an oversized impact on the likelihood of getting into a product roadmap. Read More
There are a lot of differences among the different demographic groups in the labor force colliding right now in your print business. The most critical for your business is both the access to technology throughout their lifetimes and the rate of change of technology in their lifetimes. Read More
The production floor was the centerpiece of print businesses for decades. It determined so much about your business. Capacity, capability, and deliverability times were all dictated by your equipment mix. Today the focus is turning to what customer challenges you can solve in front of the press. Read More
A competitive differentiation is when you’re doing something that your prospect finds valuable that your competitors are not doing. Read More
Labor is forcing us to scale in innovative ways. No more “throwing more people” at every scale problem, it's time to optimize so that you can continue to grow with the team you have. Read More
Look at everything as a project and you will find that you need to define everything a lot better. Goals, roles, and constraints get confused with most project and that causes a lot of project failure. Read More
Evaluating and buying software can be overwhelming, especially if the software segment is mature and therefore has hundreds of features to it. It is hard to keep track of which solution has which features, let alone evaluating if they will work in your environment. Read More
Total automation is a common dream in the print industry (a custom manufacturing industry where the customer provides a key part of the manufacturing process at the time of purchase!). There are dreams and there is the reality of what is operationally possible with your business (a collection of constraints). Read More
In this year’s third annual Technology Outlook, Pat McGrew and Ryan McAbee look at how to effectively collect and use data to improve production workflows. Read More
Allowing a remote workforce can improve your talent pool as well as force you into fixing your manual process habits. Read More
Expos and exhibitions are interesting opportunities to sell, but the event alone is not enough to generate leads or close sales. Selling at trade shows takes a strategy and preparation. In part two of a two-part series, contributor Pat McGrew offers some do’s and don’ts for selling print software at trade shows. Read More
The way you’ve always done it vs. the innovations currently available in the marketplace, mostly in the form of software, can create a lot of tension in your business. Mutual respect for both perspectives is the key to better outcomes. Read More
In the highly competitive commercial print market, the QMC Group continues to thrive. In this article, sponsored by Kodak, learn that one of their secrets to success is that, as they expand organically, they also acquire complementary companies. Those acquisitions bring new capabilities, talent, and the requirement to integrate everyone into a single culture as quickly as possible. And that secret sauce is their workflow. Read More
Heidelberger Druckmaschinen is not only a leading offset press manufacturer, but Heidelberg is also a leading provider of workflow solutions as well. In mid-May, the company launched Prinect Direct, a complete revamp of its Prinect print shop workflow, which will now be available in the cloud. European section editor Ralf Schlözer takes a close look at this new release. Read More
Commitments are hard. The sales process for print software is like dating. Everyone is full of positive hormones about potential. Then salespeople step away and the implementation begins. It gets hard. It doesn’t go back to the honeymoon phase—ever. Read More
Being good at one thing doesn’t make you an expert at everything. Expertise is limited because time is limited, and change is unlimited. Understand what you have expertise in and then respect the expertise of others as a way to optimize your business. Read More
Pat McGrew and Ryan McAbee take an in-depth look at Canon PRISMA Tools for data analysis and accounting, which monitor the operational pulse and direction of your a operation. These tools can help staff take quick and decisive actions to keep production running smoothly and make better print production decisions. Read More
Press speeds, resolutions, and the use of variable data is growing, and with it the need to inspect the print for defects before it comes off the press and goes into finishing and converting is essential. Global Graphics Smart QI is a solution targeted at that increasing and demanding requirement. Read More
We all know our businesses have lots of room for improvement, yet when faced with change we often have an unreasonably fierce attachment to the status quo. This happens in every business and leadership is the only anecdote. In this time of tremendous change, it is critical to apply leadership to overcoming your employee’s fierce attachment to the status quo. Read More
Real change, real business value comes in the form of process improvement. It is incremental vs. revolutionary. Remember, change is often limited by the pace in which the people working in your organization can digest it. Incremental change often takes root, revolutionary change faces fierce resistance and often gets fully rejected by it. Read More
eProductivity Software (ePS) may be a new name, but their software solutions for packaging and print have been driving the industry for more than 30 years. This article reintroduces ePS to the market. Read More
Inflexibility is what causes most of the headaches with print software. When your business doesn’t flex, you are at the mercy of software vendors and their commercial print software solutions. Read More
Constraints have always been present in our print businesses. Today, new ones seem to be getting introduced at what can feel like an alarming rate. Understanding how you can put you and your business in a position to respond to new constraints is the differentiator. Read More
Automated workflows are discussed a lot, yet the vast majority of print service providers still don’t have a comprehensive job preparation and prepress automation workflow in their operation. Fiery JobFlow is an easy to install and easy to use solution. Read More
Jennifer Matt takes an in-depth look at PressWise by SmartSoft, a print MIS built simply as a system to remove touchpoints in a digital printing workflow. Read More
When I think about operations in a print business, I think about the end-to-end business process “order entry to invoice.” The operations of getting jobs out the door and cash in the bank as another way to put it. This business process encompasses a lot of different functional areas of your business, many people, and a handful of software technologies. Read More
Software is the hidden infrastructure in every business. Without a common understanding in both the business and production teams that installed software tools are to be used and not circumvented, the business cannot have a clear understanding of inbound orders, scheduling, work-in-progress, bottlenecks, shipments, and invoicing. Pat McGrew explains how to get everyone on board. Read More
There is much in your control when it comes to choosing the right print software package for your business. It has nothing to do with counting features. It has everything to do with your approach to engaging with the vendor, learning from other printers who already have the solution, and choosing your team wisely. Read More
When you move to integrating with software systems external to your business (e.g. at your customers or your suppliers), it’s time to think about your integration strategy or architecture. You can waste a lot of time and money redoing the same thing repeatedly or you can have a strategy that simplifies how you interact with external systems and reuse components each time. Read More
Don’t delude yourself into thinking measuring more metrics in your company will magically fix broken processes. Measuring more doesn’t fix things, it simply identifies that there are more problems to fix. Read More
From digital storefronts, to workflow, to hardware, modern print production systems now support the ability to monitor the state of system. We now have a tremendous amount of data at our fingertips. Using modern observability techniques, we can use data from software and hardware to make business and operation decisions that create better buying experiences for our customers and make production efficient and more profitable. Read More
We’ll never go back to a preset “normal.” No matter what change happens, there is always this collective delusion that things will return back to a previous state. When COVID started, I admittedly thought we would be sheltering in the place for a few weeks. We are now so far past a few weeks and so far away from a pre-COVID normal, it's hard to even remember what that felt like. Read More
In this article, written and sponsored by InfoFlo Print, learn about the fully integrated MIS and web-to-print order management system specifically built for print shops, offering unique features and integrations not found in any other Print Management system. Read More
The Print MIS/ERP administrator role in your print business is a strategic differentiator. You want as much independence and ability to move at your own pace as possible from the software vendor. Read More
I feel a little like a broken record regarding the importance of data integrity in your Print MIS/ERP. It seems like I write an article about it a couple times a year. It isn’t getting any better out there and it’s only getting more important to your print business’s ability to profitably scale and innovate. Read More
Self-service is a strategic move. It takes leadership. The status quo is a powerful resistance machine which should not be underestimated. Read More
Using a software support desk is not anyone’s favorite activity. You have more control than you think over your ability to get what you need via your software vendors support desks. Read More
Printers often experience the pain of peak—that time when capacity is at its limit, and even minor issues become significant. This article, written and sponsored by HP, looks at HP Site Flow, a software platform that automates processes from beginning to end, while providing tools to effectively manage the production floor and track the work to meet business goals. Read More
Business processes controlled via trusted software systems are the best defense against the ever-tightening labor market. Read More
Automation is about finding recurring patterns and then taking them out of the hands of humans and into the realm of software so that repetitive tasks can be done programmatically—and “programmatically” automating anything in your business will inevitably involve your Print MIS. Read More
The default approach to working is to just show up and respond to inputs. But what’s the non-default approach to work? Goal setting, which is more important than ever because we’re all drowning in our inputs. Prioritization is critical and goals help us prioritize. Read More
Teamwork can be a differentiator for recruiting and hiring in a tough labor market. Technology can help set up the conditions (trust and transparency) that make teamwork possible. Read More
New technology solutions have opened the doors that allow work to get done from anywhere and on virtually any device, providing the resources needed to keep businesses moving ahead. Terry Antinora, VP and General Manager, Workplace Solutions Offerings at Xerox, discusses technologies that support a decentralized workforce, placing productivity at the forefront. Read More
You can’t learn a Print MIS system by calling the support desk. One ticket at a time is not an ideal learning environment. Internal expertise and the ability to optimize your print software investments delivers value directly to your bottom line. Read More
This Product Spotlight looks at PlanProphet, a specialized, complementary solution to your print MIS that acts as your business virtual assistant. Powered by the industry-leading Salesforce CRM, PlanProphet is a cloud-based subscription software that analyzes customer data and behaviors to identify trends and automate touchpoints. Read More
Jennifer Matt takes an in-depth look at Canon’s PRISMAprepare Go pre-production workflow solution that can be deployed and optimized in a small print facility whose primary business is processing small “upload and print” orders. Read More
Sometimes the way you’ve been managing your core business data in your Print MIS/ERP is fundamentally broken. This has a ripple effect across your business, so it’s worth the effort to clean it up. Stop ignoring the crack in your business foundation. Read More
Your existing technology stack should be one of the most important factors in making decisions about new software solutions and new automation projects. Read More
Small print jobs have been on the rise, even as many of the pre-production processes have remained unchanged. This article explores how intelligent planning software solutions like those from Tilia Labs can help PSPs better manage the influx of smaller jobs and optimize print production. Read More
“Must-have” features typically are not worthy of holding up a launch or delaying the utilization of software. The best way to assess the importance of features is to start using the software, then you stop assessing “theoretical” importance. Read More
Jennifer Matt takes an in-depth look at Print Reach’s MyOrderDesk, a product that has not only stood the test of time but has now become a foundation block in Print Reach’s automation strategy, with a feature set that clearly reflects a product that has evolved with the times and continues down that path. Read More
You can use software as it was designed, or you can stand your ground and request workarounds to force the software to work like you do today. Your flexibility has a greater impact on your business outcomes. Using that flexibility to optimize software utilization is the most powerful lever in your toolbox. Read More
Sales teams are under increasing pressure to handle more accounts, grow those accounts, and deliver on margins. As a result, sales performance software has become a huge business. Pat McGrew rounds up some leading sales dashboard applications. Read More
Automation is about changing a business process. Focus on the business process, involve the people operating the business process today. Keep full automation as a goal, drive incremental improvement as the strategy. Read More
From sales to estimating to order entry, Modern Litho’s processes had been steeped in manual touchpoints, and they realized that they needed to upgrade their front-end technology. In this article, sponsored by Kodak, Modern Litho’s Jeff Davidson chronicles the company’s search for and implementation of a new MIS. Read More
Self-service is an unsettling concept in the traditional business-to-business print world where growth is achieved by pivoting on every custom request from your customers. Online, self-service businesses embrace constraints and reap the benefits in their bottom line. Read More
Jennifer Matt takes an in-depth look at Liftoff, not a traditional web-to-print solution, but one that has expanded its feature set into other software areas (e.g., CMS, ERP). For example, the Liftoff product suite allows you to create content like blogs on your web-to-print solution. Read More
Sales is being reinvented in the age of self-service. When the customer can make a buying decision without parental supervision (aka a sales representative), you can turn marketing into a sales engine. Read More
When you lose a press operator, you know what to do. What happens when you lose your Print MIS administrator? Read More
Launching a new way of interacting with our customers can be scary. It is also the best way to learn how to iterate the solution going forward. The sooner you realize you don’t know how your customers are going to utilize new tools, the better for your business. It makes you a better listener and helps your customers feel heard. Read More
The products we produce are on paper, so paper is part of our business. Yet we need to break our attachment to the analog (paper) as a tool for running a dynamic custom manufacturing business. Read More
Projects like a Print MIS/ERP transition always create resistance to change. The most common resistance to change is fear but it generally is disguised under a barrage of logical objections. Read More
Automation is the sexy sales and marketing term. Process improvement is where the magic happens. Keep your reality hat on and think about automation at the discrete task level of your business process. Read More
Constraints are real. You can feel limited by them or you can decide to work with them in a way to maximize your results. No business is without constraints. With print software, humans and existing software are critical constraints to embrace. Read More
Being busy doesn’t equate to business success. Is your busy-ness leading you in the right direction? Or are you being led by your inputs? Prioritization takes uninterrupted time and discipline, it results in your activities having strategic direction. Read More
This Print Software Product Spotlight looks at EFI’s Midmarket Suite. EFI’s “suite” approach to software solutions essentially pre-packages a group of products that already work together to solve end-to-end workflows. Read More
A strategic feature of software is a value driver that generally has prerequisites in order to reap the benefits of the feature. The sales process generally skips the prerequisites (for obvious reasons). It is your responsibility as the buyer to understand precisely what it will take to reach the potential. Read More
Lift Software Print MIS/ERP was invented inside a large wide format printer. That alone will tell you a lot about how Lift perceived the challenges of running a print business. For most Print MIS solutions, supporting wide format has been an add-on to a more traditionally focused offset or digital print manufacturing focus. For Lift it is clearly a deep specialty. Read More
Highlights of a recent Print Geeks webinar in which resident geeks Jim Raffel and Shelby Sapusek of ColorCasters were joined by contributor Dan Gillespie of Alder Color Solutions to discuss five common areas where color management fails in the world of inkjet printing. Read More
Software has evolved to allow automation with developers. Print businesses can take advantage of this if they invest in technical leadership and give them a seat at the decision-making table. Read More
The documentation of your repeating processes will change your business in so many ways. No matter how inefficient you might be today, the simple act of documenting processes and committing to iterative improvements will turn your business into a continuous improvement engine. Read More
From the moment new work enters the business to delivery and invoicing, printing businesses are a mix of orchestrated and structured activities and ad hoc business decisions. Savvy print operations leverage smart automation because every touchpoint brings potential delays and costs. In this article, sponsored by Kodak, learn about implementing comprehensive automation that uses the power of artificial intelligence (AI), including Machine Learning (ML), to collect more data and provide deeper insight. Read More
Software solutions have features that overlap and are outright solving the exact same issues. Just be careful of the tendency to assume that a small feature means more than it really does. Be wary of where the feature gets done in your workflows. Read More
Lots of activity, little in the way of results is often the situation when your culture jumps to solutions without defining the problem first. Pause, say the problem out loud. Ask others to say it in their own words. Don’t move to the “how” until you all agree on the “what.” Read More
Stakeholders in print and packaging have a new awareness that automation and Industry 4.0 will be what’s going to keep their companies competitive. It may be true, as it was for Granpak, a large packaging manufacturer, that implementing an MIS/ERP can impact an organization WITHOUT spending any additional money on machines or additional personnel. Read More
It is very possible that the software in your workflow is not the best fit for your business! Business workflow suites and production workflow suites can be found for every size and type of business and at every price point. You can even find freeware for some of your common tasks. But just because it looks good and meets your budget doesn’t mean it’s the software for you. Pat McGrew explains how and why. Read More
Print shops with under 20 employees have typically been left behind when it comes to automation tools. However, the environment is changing quickly, and cloud-based solutions, such as Good2Go, opens the door to automation for printers of any size. Read More
Who is in charge of your print software solutions? The small step of simply assigning an individual goes a long way towards truly owning the software tools that run your business. Read More
In this fourth article in this series, we continue to look at Industry 4.0, not as a marketing term, but in an actionable way so that you can begin or continue to prepare your company and participate in the many benefits today and tomorrow. In this article, we pause the background education and take a look at some currently available solutions and a peek into futures. Read More
As part of our preview of next week’s Technology Outlook Week, Pat McGrew looks at how your workflow infrastructure and the software that supports it can foster customer loyalty. Read More
According to recent research from Keypoint Intelligence, the top investment areas for IT decision-makers in the United States include cloud-based solutions and cybersecurity. This article explores how print service providers can leverage these and other areas to better meet their customers’ ever-changing print requirements. Read More
The PrintVis Print MIS/ERP is an offering that combines a globally recognized ERP system from Microsoft (Dynamics 365 Business Central), with the print industry specific addon from PrintVis, and in this article we’re featuring Sabre Limited as the implementation partner. Read More
Where are you headed? What is your strategic goal? Then who is going to execute on all the tasks required to reach that goal. Strategy + execution plays a part in almost every project you take on in your business—especially print software projects. Read More
Training is not learning. Training is something you hire other people to do to you. Learning is something that you do. Start building a learning culture now in your print business; it is the only defense to the acceleration of change in our industry. Read More
The integrity of your print business data is a foundational building block of your business. It impacts how fast you can move. Lack of data integrity is like an anchor your business has to drag around—it slows almost every aspect of your business down. Read More
Color correction is a repetitive, time-consuming, and complex process. This article, sponsored by HP and written by HP Indigo's "Workflow Chef" Gershon Alon, explains how to optimize color correction, focusing on two aspects: automation and simplification. Read More
Replacing your Print MIS might be one of the most important projects you take on in the history of your business. Shopping is not the first step. Assessing your data and your processes is ideally done before you start interacting with software sales representatives. Read More
It seems like everyone is talking about “OEE” these days. This article, sponsored by HP and written by HP Indigo's "Workflow Chef" Gershon Alon, explains how OEE is a standard way to measure the “overall equipment effectiveness” of a manufacturing process—in this case, the printing process. Read More
Laggards are people in your company who have stopped learning and actually insist on doing their job in the same way they have been doing it, and for one reason: it’s the way they’ve been doing it. Investing in your laggards to drive software utilization is a good investment. Read More
You getting paid is as much a part of your customer’s experience as placing the order. Make every effort to streamline how much customer time you consume. A vendor that is easy to do business with creates loyal customers. Read More
You can’t start printing until you have approved artwork, but you don’t have complete control over this step in the process. You can optimize your press and finishing processes down to the second, yet you might wait three full days for artwork approval. The best you can do is make it as easy as possible for the customer to respond in a timely manner. Don’t confuse them, don’t make them work, and don’t underestimate convenience. Read More
How are orders managed before they hit the press? In this third part of a five-part series, Jennifer Matt defines the complete order process from initial inquiry to invoice payment. This means a great deal of the process happens in the carpeted area of your print business. Read More
Pat McGrew responds to feedback she received from a recent article on selling software, shares some ill-fated buyer stories, and draws up “three rules for software buyers” and “three rules for software sellers.” Read More
Automation is the next step in a successful future. It enables print service providers to tackle a growing number of print orders with the greatest efficiency and accuracy. Beyond having financial and practical benefits, it can be yet another differentiator that helps organizations stand apart from their competitors. This article discusses the most common benefits of automation and offers insights into how to overcome the challenges associated with implementing it. Read More
Think about your front office in terms of what “objects'' you need to manage there. In part 2 of a five-part series, we discuss customers and prospects. This means tracking sales activities and inserting more valuable information (both quantitative and qualitative) into your Print MIS regarding your customers. Read More
Is your finishing operation holding your business back? Or depressing your margins with labor-intensive processes or waste caused by bindery errors? Are finishers disconnected islands in your workflow automation? This article, the third in a series sponsored by EFI, explains how to integrate the printing operation with nearline finishers to complete automation from prepress to finishing. Read More
More and more printing companies are engaging with workflow automation solutions, which tend to bring better margins and often increase available capacity with current equipment. This is a path open to all companies—but walk carefully. In this feature, Pat McGrew explains how to evaluate your current software environment and what areas can offer the biggest returns. Read More
This article, the first of a five-part series on the modernization of your print business front office, starts with some guiding principles and then discuss the various “objects” that are managed by the carpeted area of your plant. Read More
The increase in digitally driven on-demand printing, combined with the flexibility of online ordering, has greatly increased the number of print orders—often at lower print volumes—that a print service provider must manage and produce. This article explores how PSPs that increase their levels of automation now may be able to reap disproportionate rewards in the future. Read More
If you run a print manufacturing business, chances are you should invest in a print-specific MIS/ERP solution. However, proceed carefully if you insist on adopting a generic MIS/ERP software solution. Don’t get caught up in paying for customizations that are expected features for a print business. Read More
If you have taken the first steps to automating your workflow, you will have seen significant benefits from software you had likely already invested in. In this article, sponsored by EFI and the second in a series, explores how to take your workflow automation to the next level by examining your prepress operation to uncover bottlenecks that require extra labor and slow the production process. Read More
Selling software is not like selling hardware. Pat McGrew offers tips and suggestions for acquiring the skillset needed to successfully sell software solutions. Read More
Technical skills are important in every functional area of your print business and sales is no exception. Every salesperson needs to be able to calmly and strategically uncover business challenges and communicate these challenges to your technical resources without limiting potential solutions or setting unreasonable expectations with the customer. Read More
Working from home, data as an asset, and automation: three business trends and their specific impact on print businesses. Read More
Understanding your customer segmentation and even more importantly the “jobs” the printed products do for your customers can help you better target your sales efforts. Diversity is a hedge against catastrophic market segment collapse (another lesson of COVID-19). Read More
Feature requests are popular. The default response to new software to ask for it to be changed to fit the way you specifically think it should fit into your specific environment. “Change your processes to optimize your use of the software” is the one statement that would save the print industry millions of dollars. Read More
The printing industry is becoming more dynamic—not just as it relates to COVID-19 but in general. Everything is moving and increasing in velocity. Our ability to thrive in this environment requires a dynamic business approach, one that is characterized by constant change. A business must adjust according to its current conditions. This is a path to systemizing a dynamic business, one that is characterized by constant change—but a constant change that doesn’t leave your people behind. Read More
Integrate with your customers’ systems so that your technologies have relationships just like your people have relationships. The more ties that bind you and your customers together, the less likely you will divorce! Read More
Selling during the pandemic is like selling during a widespread economic downturn. You have to figure out the market segments who are least impacted or, in COVID-19’s case. find the companies who are positively impacted. Directing your sales efforts is critical to closing new business. Read More
The future of your customer service department still involves skilled labor. In fact, the labor is more skilled than it is today and it will be able to handle more volume because of the self-service tools your customers will have access to. Customer service will turn into customer success—a proactive element to drive more business and maintain loyalty thru convenience. Read More
WhatTheyThink Print Software section editor Jennifer Matt looks back at the year 2020 in software, some of the trends that emerged from the pandemic, and how software has become an important element in helping print companies adapt and pivot. Read More
Humans resist change, even when it provides them real value. If you need a group of humans to change, you have to think about your approach in order to optimize the outcomes. This applies to your existing customers and how they engage with your business. Read More
It is hard to think of a time in recent history when we have been so captivated by data. The COVID-19 global pandemic has had us glued to data for the better part of eight months. Data is guiding the day-to-day recommendations of epidemiologists around the world and it will also guide when a vaccine is safe to release. In any industry, a strong data foundation is critical to enable companies to make proactive decisions that will move businesses forward. Read More
Selling during the pandemic is like selling during a widespread economic downturn. You have to figure out the market segments that are least impacted or, in COVID-19’s case, find the companies that are positively impacted. Directing your sales efforts is critical to closing new business. Read More
A crisis is also an opportunity, and COVID-19 is no exception. The rate of adaptation taking place is one of the most powerful forces at play in 2020. Entire populations are expanding their comfort zones with online tools, remote learning, and working from home. Read More
As print service providers (PSPs) onboard more applications supporting a diversified set of customers and industries, it becomes more of a challenge to manage the unique requirements of those industry segments with a single business management tool. PSPs looking to expand into new markets and applications must ensure that their business management system is up to par. This article explores how these systems must adapt to support the requirements of the future. Read More
Your business processes need to move off of paper and into software. This was important before COVID-19, and like everything else, COVID-19 has simply accelerated this trend. Paper is no longer a viable business process medium. Read More
When clients are used to traveling for press checks of color-sensitive documents, then a global pandemic severely hampers business travel, how do you continue to meet the needs of those clients? You create a brand-new proofing solution. At least, that’s what you do if you’re Continental Web Press. Read More
Sales is never going back to normal. The pandemic didn’t create anything new—it simply accelerated what was already happening. Evolve your sales team now; donuts and face to face meetings aren’t coming back. Read More
Most web-to-print software solutions are built inside software companies. Propago was built inside a large commercial printer. This is a unique origin story for a software platform and it tells us a lot about how and why features made it into the Propago product. Print Software Section Editor Jennifer Matt takes a close look at Propago’s web-to-print solution. Read More
Making decisions wears us out, even easy decisions like what to wear, what to eat for breakfast. Decision fatigue is something we need to manage especially when it comes to projects that require lots and lots of decisions (like Print MIS implementations). Read More
Web-to-print portals are the enabling technology behind a “print program” which can elevate your relationship with your customers from transactional to relational. That relationship becomes “stickier” when technology is embedded into the customer’s organization. Read More
Don’t make your customers think. Don’t make your customers administer multiple logins in order to do business with you. Don’t make your online engagement a burden on your customers. Read More
Don’t have a mindset like a lighthouse. Have a mindset like a fast, nimble, ship with the most advanced navigation systems. When navigating the waters of the print manufacturing industry, stationary businesses will not survive. Read More
Like it or not, all work involves learning. Not like our education system, but self-directed, project-based learning. You have to be a self-learner and as a leader you have to hold your people accountable for self-learning. Read More
As your business matures and grows, you will need to improve your processes. As software invades every corner of your business, your processes have to change to adapt to the new reality. You need to know who in your company is a process creator. Read More
Considering most printing companies have an assortment of presses, finishing equipment, and product types, having disparate imposition workflows is a very inefficient way to manage it. Ultimate has raised the bar again with the just-released Impostrip 2020. Read More
Your customer service team is the place to start online ordering adoption. You can practice your sales pitch on them and then teach them how to pitch your customers into a self-service workflow. Read More
COVID-19 is a challenge and an opportunity to rebuild and make changes to your business that would otherwise be met with the standard “this is how we’ve always done it” line of resistance. Read More
Data decisions get made everyday in your print business. Here are three examples of important data decisions that we can all learn from. Read More
Thanks to a new collaboration between the global design platform Canva and the robust workplace solutions team at Office Depot, small businesses can quickly and easily develop creative content for different kinds of print and non-print applications—everything from reports and posters to menus and yard signs, even social media marketing campaigns. Read More
Online ordering is about customer convenience. How do you leverage technology and self service to make it easier for your customers to do business with you? Read More
Your business is made up of two kinds of processes: predictable ones and exceptions. A well-run business has codified or systematized the predictable business processes so that the humans working in the business apply all their skills to the exceptions. Read More
Will Morgan, Senior Research Analyst for Aspire CCS, provides some key takeaways from a new report that takes an in-depth look at the state of cloud computing in Customer Communications Management (CCM) and highlights opportunities for enterprises and services providers who are ready to modernize their communications strategies. Read More
Partnering can solve challenges that you don’t feel comfortable taking on initially. A partnership also helps you grow your expertise in an area so that when you do expand, you’ll make much better investment decisions. Read More
More and more, the productivity of your company is based on the ability to efficiently work in the software applications that run your business. Don’t hamstring your mission-critical software applications by starving them of the resources they require. Read More
The most expensive things you do in your printing plant every day involve talking to clients and physically touching their work. You talk to clients to better understand the work they want you to do, and you touch the work, in prepress or at other points in the process to ensure that the client’s intent is rendered on to the substrate. But every conversation and every touch has a financial impact. While you rely on workflow tools to aid the process, in most companies there are also spreadsheets, whiteboards, and sticky notes used to gather and communicate information about the jobs-in-progress. It’s only natural! However, the more you talk and touch, the less money you make on the job. Read More
Getting your customer’s pricing is a critical measure of customer satisfaction. Your customer might not be outwardly complaining, but many print customers are migrating to online solutions that provide immediate pricing. Not every job you produce deserves a manual estimate. Read More
Every business has projects. Every business treats them differently. The range is enormous; from no project methodology to bureaucratic craziness. Print businesses of all sizes would benefit from a simple project methodology because it can quickly eliminate the most common reasons why things just don’t get done. Read More
Evaluating print software is a process that desperately needs to evolve. Step back and look at the business objectives of the evaluation as a starting point to reinventing your approach to purchasing software. Read More
So many trends are being amplified or accelerated by COVID-19; the evolution of the sales process is one of them. Your customers are being asked again to do more with fewer people and less time. They need vendors/partners that can help alleviate the pressure. Read More
COVID-19 economic symptoms include the weakening of the “we’ve always done it this way defense”—which will have some positive impacts on outdated printer workflows and some negative impacts when customers evaluate print spend under new market conditions. Read More
There will be a new, new normal after the height of COVID-19 passes. It will be even more reliant on software technologies to connect your employees, your customers, and your suppliers. The time to evolve to this new reality (often referred to as digital transformation) is now—crisis evolution cuts through a lot of the resistance. Read More
Every type of plant can build a better workflow, one that is efficient and scalable, that helps to save production costs, and adds to operational efficiency. The place to start is with a tour around your plant. Pat McGrew continues her “virtual guided tour” of a plant's workflow, and some key questions to ask at each stop along the way. Read More
Learning is the real work of software optimization. Once you really learn the application you own it. Once you own it, then you have the chance of reaching its full potential inside your organization. Read More
HP's PrintOS is a cloud-based platform with browser-based and mobile apps that connect to and extend the functionality of HP production printers. There are multiple tools that provide robust analytics, mobile monitoring, access to PrintOS anytime and anywhere, and security. Read More
Every type of plant can build a better workflow, one that is efficient and scalable, that helps to save production costs, and adds to operational efficiency. The place to start is with a tour around your plant. Pat McGrew provides a “virtual guided tour” of a plant's workflow, and some key questions to ask at each stop along the way. Read More
Crisis creates an environment for rapid innovation. The digital transformation of all business sectors was in progress before COVID-19, and the crisis will continue to separate the digital haves and have-nots. Read More
Some basic questions—who? what? and most importantly why?—of print software will greatly increase your chances of optimizing your print software investments. Read More
Understanding what the primary objective or challenge that a print software claims to solve is an important factor for shopping for print software solutions. You have challenges, print software vendors have solutions (in the form of products). The better defined the challenge, the better the chance of alignment and return on investment. Read More
We are going to come out of COVID-19 into a different economy and a different print industry. Many of the changes taking place now will persist, even after we’re all vaccinated or have developed widespread herd immunity. Your customers will return with fewer people resources—a competitive advantage will be for vendors who can save customers time. Read More
Adult learning is hard especially when you’re transitioning from a toolset that your people have been comfortably using for years. Do not give the resistance any power and do not try to force the new system to work like the old one—you will pay dearly for that in the form of lost productivity. Read More
First an April fools laugh, then some more insight on how to deploy your best resources during the COVID-19 pause in capitalism. Read More
Documenting your core workflows can be a good strategic use of key resources who might not be fully occupied working from home. Read More
We find ourselves in difficult times, the conditions of which are delivering a window of opportunity to do strategic projects that will accelerate your business when the economic engine starts running at full speed again. Read More
The sales process should extend into the implementation of print software because all humans need to be persuaded of the merits so that they can become enthusiastic about the new toolset. Read More
There are a lot of decisions to be made around print software; it might surprise you which ones I think are the most important. Read More
It's easy to get into a panic when you wake up to the reality that your approach to software in your print business requires a major overall. It probably took you years to get into this state; don’t freak out because it could take years to crawl out of it. The best thing to do is to calmly prioritize and then start making incremental progress. Read More
In an industrial inkjet environment, a lot of pieces go into creating a specialized solution, but it’s the raster image processor (RIP) that does the heavy lifting. Elizabeth Gooding takes a detailed look at all the criteria to keep in mind when selecting RIP software for an industrial printing workflow. Read More
Your software investments deserve big picture, strategic planning. It’s time to step back and assess your core business processes and how software helps, hinders, optimizes, or ideally automates the steps required everyday to deliver on your customer promises. Read More
We have spent decades focusing and optimizing the production floor (where there is no carpet). It is time to focus our energies on the carpeted areas of the business which impact customer’s perceptions of our business. Read More
Describe your business challenges: be specific, be precise. Then let go of any attachment to the “how this business challenge gets solved by print software.” You want your business challenges solved. One of the fastest ways to solve them is to describe them accurately and then to be open to all the possible solutions. Read More
You purchase software to solve business problems. When evaluating software, keep your focus on the challenges you want to solve. This will keep you open-minded about all the possible ways your challenges might be solved, rather than attachment to one specific solution. Read More
Treat software like printing press hardware: assume your people and your processes have to change to optimize the new software rather than staying attached to how you think the software should work. Read More
Technology is invading every corner of the print industry, and many print business owners are novices when it comes to technology. How do you make good business decisions when you are not the subject matter expert? Whom do you listen to? How do you know they are qualified? Run your business like a meritocracy. Read More
People in your organization have to keep learning new things so that you can continue to optimize your business using new tools (mostly software). Leadership’s job is to deliver the “have to” part of the learning equation. Read More
2019 ushered in new levels of interest in improving and automating workflows, but the level of actual implementation was not as high as we would have hoped to see by now. This article explores some of the barriers to workflow automation and offers insight on overcoming them. Read More
What do you provide for your sales team to get the upper hand in the marketplace? Do you have differentiation? Are you investing in something that will not only win new customers but keep existing ones? Read More
A customer narrative documents the experience of doing business with you—from the sales process all the way through invoicing—from the customer’s perspective. Read More
How are the players in the print production process like a group of musicians playing on stage? Idealliance CEO Tim Baechle offers advice for filtering out all the noise we are bombarded with and focusing on “playing in time” with others in the supply chain. Read More
Your print sales people need a different perspective when selling web-to-print solutions. They need to understand short vs long term benefits as well as how the customer’s convenience is driving loyalty. Read More
The merger of software technology stacks and strategy is a key component to any two businesses coming together. It takes time, effort, and patience as technology is uniquely embedded in a business. Be strategic about what you address and when you address it. Not everything should change right away. Read More
Software feels malleable. New features come out. Trade shows are packed full of vendors showing the bright new thing that might lure you into the sales process. Complex software (Print MIS) does not change fast (because it shouldn’t), and the sooner you realize that changing your business is a better strategy, the faster you’ll get to the ROI and business differentiation that a Print MIS can deliver. Read More
The number one thing we hear when we engage with a printer who is having trouble with their print software (Print MIS, Web-to-Print, or Pre-Press automation) is “we didn’t get trained.” Ironically, more training is rarely the solution to this common complaint. Read More
You have a bias for what solutions work; that bias is based on what has worked for you in the past. If you’re a print business owner, buying new stuff feels like a solid way to solve challenges of hiring new employees. Solving print software challenges requires expertise in print software. Read More
We live in a connected world. The artifacts (documents, spreadsheets, etc.) we create for business should be stored centrally with controlled access in the cloud. Isolated artifacts on employees’ computers slow projects down and make research into past projects nearly impossible. Read More
Getting the return on investment for print software takes a lot more work by the people at the printer than you are led to believe in the software sales process. Read More
The dream of an online business that delivers profitable revenue from strangers is a good dream to have. It simply takes a lot of work to be successful at it. I have seen too many printers spend too much time focusing on the software and forgetting that internet traffic is not free or easy to get. Read More
Building good software requires a very desirable skill set in our current economy. Virtually every single company on the planet needs to utilize software in order to increase their efficiency and reach more customers. Read More
Getting outside perspectives into your print business is important, especially when implementing a Print MIS or other print software. You want people who see a wide variety of print businesses to weigh in on best practices. Read More
The best way to look at MIS/ERP systems is holistically, in the context of the bigger picture of managing your business as a whole. Just as you should have a production workflow system, ultimately an MIS system is a workflow system for your business operations. Read More
Ryerson University has just published a detailed study of expanded gamut printing, based on a series of extensive tests using commercial color management systems to process and print test forms containing PANTONE spot colors. The author of the study, Dr. Abhay Sharma, presents some of the top-level findings and conclusions. Read More
Define the challenge you're trying to solve before you jump into a shortcut that borrows from another feature in your Print MIS or web-to-print. If you borrow too much, you’re implementation of the software will get detached from the vendor’s product roadmap—which can be expensive and painful. Read More
The value in the print industry today is migrating from the production floor to the mobile device of your customers. How are you investing in providing your customer access to your business from their phone? Read More
Print software is a pile of features that solve business process challenges. You have to learn how to prioritize what’s the next most important feature in the software by comparing its impact against all the other features. Read More
Don’t let a feature stop you from implementing what works for you today. Don’t let the people in your organization that are good at looking for all the ways something won’t work win. Implement what works and then find ways around the missing features. Waiting is keeping your business in neutral. Read More
Print software gets thrown out by printers primarily because of factors that are 100% in the printer’s control. Read More
Your print business has two kinds of challenges: the challenge of getting jobs out the door (tactical) and the business of continuing to strategically evolve so you maintain relevance and competitive advantage in the marketplace. Read More
Learning is the most important part of software procurement decisions. The vendor needs to learn about you (to assess if you are a good fit for their solution) and you need to learn about the vendor. An RFP doesn’t facilitate any learning. Read More
A learning event vs. a selling event—that is the event the print industry needs. An event where you go to solve your challenges through active collaboration, open-minded because nobody is trying to sell you anything. Read More
Internal communication deserves better tools than email. Real collaboration happens best when more, not fewer, people are involved. Taking internal communication out of email reduces the cognitive overhead of deciding whom to communicate with. Read More
Your print sales team has to evolve to understand and be able to sell the value of the software that enables print demand from business processes. Every printer should have a direct revenue line for their software. Read More
The level of trust you have in the data in your Print MIS impacts all aspects of your business. When printers get their Print MIS to be “trustworthy,” they can move a whole lot faster, with less labor costs, and be more responsive to the never-ending request for more data from all stakeholders in your business. Read More
Everyday, most of us choose the most important thing to work on. The employees in the carpeted area of your print business are making these decisions everyday. Do you know what they are prioritizing? Do you know how they are spending their time? You should measure time just like you measure revenues, profits, and costs. Read More
Being strategic about print software is nearly impossible when you are in a crisis. Too many print software decisions are made under duress. When you have the discipline to plan before the crisis, you are being strategic. Read More
Jennifer Matt reviews Slingshot by Avanti, and feels that its integrated warehouse management, multiple approaches to scheduling, and approach to implementation are its core strengths. Read More
The toolset for solving business workflow challenges has completely changed in the last decade. If the only tool(s) you’re deploying are email, spreadsheets, and/or PDFs, you are using yesterday’s tools to solve today’s challenges. Read More
If today’s online storefronts and web-to-print workflows don’t look anything like they used to, there’s a reason. The software has advanced leaps and bounds from where it was even a few years ago. This interview with founder and CEO of Amazing Print Tech Slava Apel reflects how the technology is changing...and how it is changing those who use it. Read More
All print business owners want more data about their businesses so they can make better decisions. It isn’t about reporting packages or business intelligence tools—it’s really about how your business generates data on a daily basis. Read More
I wish all customers’ top priority was purchasing high-quality print; it isn’t. Your customer’s have upstream problems. The printers who go upstream and solve these problems will be rewarded as manufacturers downstream. Read More
Learning is the experience of trying to do something without parental supervision. It is not watching a trainer do something and shaking your head that you understand. Holding your people accountable for learning activities is the most important part of improving user adoption of new tools in your print business. Read More
Your print business is rich with patterns. By looking at patterns we can find ways to codify those patterns into processes that make us more efficient. You need real human processing for your business—free this up by taking the recurring stuff off their plates. Read More
Automation starts with an understanding of the business process and how it’s done “manually.” Documenting this business process is called a “standard operating procedure” which is where you can begin your journey to some level of automation. Read More
The first platforms appeared over four years ago and have steadily increased their performance, functionality, and partnerships over time. This article explores the characteristics of true print workflow platforms and discusses how platforms can benefit print production. Read More
Your customers want convenience. Printers who prioritize around making it easy to do business with their customers will differentiate themselves. Don’t wait until your best customers demand online ordering and self-service access to the business they do with you—do it proactively and strategically instead of under duress. Read More
Software is like a press; it needs to be staffed. Software is like a press; it needs to be maintained. Software is like your business; it needs to keep evolving. Your most important piece of software is your Print MIS—dedicate the tasks of your Print MIS to one individual. Read More
New software tools are often rejected because the humans feel like their jobs are being replaced by computers. Software does math better, faster, and more accurately than humans—that is not debatable. But new tools augment brainpower—not replace it. Read More
Your print business is being invaded by software tools. These tools require a level of thinking/concentration that requires blocks of uninterrupted time for your employees. Without this uninterrupted time, your software will remain grossly underutilized and lacking measurable ROI. Read More
Think of your go-live date for your Print MIS as a flood. Prepare for it by training everyone how to create sandbags and then monitoring that everyone actually applied the learning and figured out how to do their jobs in the new system BEFORE go-live. Read More
Although printers acknowledge that dealing with a high number of small jobs is a major workflow bottleneck, many have not automated their processes. This article offers some quick tips for getting started with automating processes to aid employees and benefit customers. Read More
User conferences are a great way to change your perspective and get a break from your day-to-day activities. The learning happens when you engage with both the presenters and the participants. Read More
When buying and implementing print software, start with the simple jobs software does well, implement and learn. Do not get stuck in a myriad of “use case exceptions” as an excuse to do nothing. You will never get ROI and you’ll never find software that can do everything. Read More
A lot of crazy things can happen in estimating departments. But estimating is the foundation of your print business. If your estimates are grossly inaccurate, you risk the utilization of your precious resources for the privilege of losing money. If your estimates are right on target, you are able to make very strategic decisions about customer pricing. Essentially, the estimating department is your profit management center. Read More
Leading by example is the most powerful way to approach challenging business environments. When the leadership is engaged in constant learning, the culture of the company is much more likely to be a learning organization. If I could pick only one characteristic of a business, it would be learning because if you’re learning, you’re staying relevant against any future changes. Read More
Technical people are a differentiator in your business—not just the typical geeks, but technical people at every position in your company. When your print business is staffed by technical people, they have a greater potential to deliver profitable growth. Read More
Integrated software is a requirement for an end-to-end workflow. You will be faced with lots of decisions around integration when you’re purchasing new software tools. Never let integration to be a yes/no question—it requires much more exploration and understanding. Read More
Software implementations evoke fear in the minds of your employees—these fears are manifested in a variety of ways. You should be looking for fear, not reacting to the symptoms of fear that cause all kinds of issues with print software implementations. Read More
Your customers expect more than a “print order taker” print sales representative. Successful printers require a sales team that can dig in and learn about their customer’s business processes that involve print. When you understand the business process that print is involved in, you get the opportunity to solve other challenges and create more value for your customers. This is now an expectation of most customers. Read More
The topic of Print MIS software can be a dangerous topic to bring up if you want to keep things low-key or drama-free. Most printers are really frustrated with their MIS. I’ve been working on customer-facing technology (web-to-print) my whole career—the Print MIS is by far the most important software tool you have in your business. Read More
Software is never done. It has to keep moving to stay compatible. It operates in business processes that keep changing. The consumer expectation of how fast and easy software can change is being set by some of the most valuable companies on the planet. Read More
What are you investing in that will result in the true differentiation of your print business? An important question in a market where many commercial printers look alike (same equipment, same sales approach, similar online tools). I think differentiation is about solving additional customer challenges that your competitors don't even know about. Read More
Your Print MIS should be your trusted system of record for your business; the estimating module is the most critical component of your Print MIS. When you implement estimating brilliantly, it provides you a healthy daily dose of ROI forever. Read More
Once you make a print software decision, you have to enforce it by communicating the strategy clearly and then repeatedly. Your people will forget, your business will evolve, sales people will appear from other solutions trying to convince your team of a different path. Read More
If you make decisions about your business based solely on the intuition of you and your staff, you are limiting the growth and the scale of business learning that can take place in your organization. Read More
Although the industry has not yet hit a “flash point” that would result in the significant growth of cloud-based software solutions, there are indications that this spark may not be far away. This article explores the growth potential and lingering challenges associated with cloud software. Read More
Your web-to-print solution is underutilized. Do all functional areas of your company—sales, customer service, technology—understand all the challenges your current web-to-print system solves? Probably not. You can’t be “solution focused” without understanding the challenges your toolset solves. Read More
A print business that learns is one that has a foundation for tracking its business processes and improving on them. From a cultural standpoint, a learning organization has to be able to talk openly about mistakes made from all levels of the organization. Read More
The implementation of print software is as important as the software itself. With every software tool there is a foundational knowledge that will help you be more self-sufficient. Those printers who understand their software tools succeed in spite of lack of support from print software vendors. Read More
In the printing industry, production dashboards provide critical and timely information for owners, managers, and operators so they can control the production chaos. This article provides a brief overview of available production dashboards and explores how they can simplify the production process. Read More
The ability to make data-driven decisions is critical to your business success. The various software systems (Print MIS, web-to-print) are your primary tools for managing this data. When you do integrations make sure you keep the control of right data in the right hands. Read More
Jennifer Matt reviews printQ by CloudLab and its modular approach to web-to-print. Read More
The process of getting your Print MIS into a “trusted state” can be difficult, but the effort is well worth it. Printers who 100% trust the data in their Print MIS move faster and are more profitable than those who are constantly questioning the data. Read More
Print software is a powerful tool to create efficiencies in your business. Your success with print software is dependent upon how well you can make the various technologies work and play together in your overall technology stack. Read More
Buying more software isn’t always the best option. Duplicate solutions that solve the same set of challenges (e.g. multiple web-to-print solutions) have extra costs and require extra understanding by your sales team. Buying software should be at the same strategic level as buying presses is in your print business. Read More
Working smarter is an evolution. Digital tools are providing us ways to work more efficiently, but it comes down to being able to work with other humans. Efficient communication is the key to working smarter and optimizing the digital tools at our disposal. Read More
When sales become more complicated, involving more people on both sides of the equation, you need a team player to facilitate collaboration. A winning sales team is a combination of subject matter expertise and relationship building. Read More
A disruptive market creates the conditions for acquisitions. This has been happening with printers for years and print software vendors are experiencing the same conditions. As a customer of these products, you must understand the conditions of the acquisition in order to prepare for how it will impact you as a customer of the software. Read More
When you invest in software for your print business, it’s like a marriage because you want to have a healthy long-term relationship with the vendor. Changing software is painful and expensive (like divorces). Read More
The recent acquisition of print automation software provider Aleyant by Canada’s Volaris Group raised some eyebrows in the industry. Who is the Volaris Group? What strategy are they pursuing relative to the printing industry? And what does this acquisition mean for Aleyant? These were questions Senior Editor Cary Sherburne investigated. Read More
You work with a team. It’s time to upgrade the tools you use to foster more efficient teamwork and better management of the artifacts that are created in projects. Email with attached files doesn’t cut it anymore. We are creating an isolated mess of artifacts that cannot be effectively found or used in the next project. Read More
Adobe announced Adobe PDF Print Engine 5, their core technology used by many Digital Front Ends driving print production equipment. This release makes PDF 2.0 print-related features available for OEM implementation. Read More
A culture of finding ways to optimize software in your business is something you can control. The successful printers will be the ones who are getting the most of their print software tools—mostly by being open to evolving their own workflows to fit the how the software works best. Read More
The source of our innovation is moving from the production floor to the customer’s mobile device. We are going from the differentiation based on speed, quality, and finishing to differentiation based on solving customer’s data challenges way upstream of the printing press. Read More
Sales is about catering your company’s solutions to the specific challenges that are relevant to their current situation. There is no better way to lose a prospect’s attention then to talk about subjects that aren’t relevant to them. Read More
The transition between sales and implementation of web-to-print systems can be a rough road for the implementation team and the customer. The leadership of the implementation belongs with the printer—all too often the customers take the leadership and run the project off a cliff after spending lots of time and money. Read More
Do your innovation projects take into consideration what would be best for your customers? Your customers want to know that you’re innovating to solve their challenges. Read More
When you lose a sales deal, how does your company react? Do you have a culture of learning from losses or do you have a culture of blaming? A sales loss is a treasure trove of learning—successful companies evaluate and adjust for their next pitch. Read More
Prepress automation, streamlining your customer service department, and reducing the time between inquiry and jobs getting on press – these are common feature requests for web-to-print systems. They are all about you (the printer) – web-to-print isn’t about you! Web-to-print is for your customers! Read More
Every industry is being transformed by a new staffing option for the “jobs to be done” and that staffing option is software. Your business needs to get stuff done—some of that stuff needs to be done by humans and a lot of that stuff needs to be done by software. Read More
Managing color in today’s ever-changing environment has long been a challenge for printers. No two scanners, monitors, or printers will reproduce colors identically, making it necessary to implement specialized color management systems to achieve an exact match across devices. This article explores some of the options that are available for printers. Read More
If you’re on your way to embarking on a Print MIS transition, then you need to sit down and pretend the whole thing was a spectacular failure. Once you’re in that uncomfortable place—work backwards and build a plan to prevent its untimely death. Read More
Smaller print shops face many of the same challenges as larger shops, so the need for a single system of record to manage the business is just as critical. Until recently, the only solution was purchasing an expensive print MIS with integration capabilities and pay for professional services to set up the connectivity to the other software solutions. This article explores how things are beginning to change for the better for small print shops. Read More
There is a conflux of pressures on businesses today: increase speed, personalize products, respond to the market faster, localize the messaging, and do all this with less people on a tighter budget. Read on for tips on how to cope with these challenges. Read More
Our important customers get our attention and our dedicated resources. What happens when customers prefer online tools over dedicated resources? Read on to find out. Read More
A print software application can do certain jobs for your business. Once you’ve proven it works, don’t forget to execute. Deploy the software so it does that job across your entire organization. Read on to find out how. Read More
The meeting is a tool that should be used sparingly. It is expensive. It is for a specific purpose (alignment, understanding, status check-in, etc.). It is overused and the art of running a good meeting is underrated. Read More
Henrik Christiansen of Graphic Robotics writes about the real meaning of productivity and efficiency in the print production process. This two-part article will address the quantitative side of automation in print. Read More
When new software is implemented in your native environment – that’s when the real learning happens. Everything prior to that point was theoretical. Take this time to learn how this software uniquely meets the needs of your business. Read More
Your sales team must do more than sell. They must be good learners (that means less talking, more listening, and more curiosity about how they can help their customers). Your customer’s time is valuable. When they give you their time they are voting on your value. Read More
Your business toolset is changing; software is becoming one of the most important tools for managing, growing, and innovating your business. At Dscoop next week, we are conducting a Print Software Bootcamp to help Dscoop Members learn more about the Print Software toolset. Read More
The most precious thing you spend every day is your customer’s time. Treat it with the respect it deserves or it could be the reason you are replaced. Read More
The definition of a successful printer is changing with the times. The updated definition is forcing printers to solve more than a manufacturing challenge. For printers who refuse to move out of their comfort zone; price will be the primary subject of conversation in every sale. Read More
What is the difference between reactive and proactive customer service? The former waits until the customer has a problem and then makes contact. The latter strives to keep those problems from happening in the first place. Rather than wait for customers to complain, why don’t print software vendors proactively publish helpful best practices to their existing customers on a regular basis? Read More
This software won’t work for our print business—a conclusion that can be the result of weeks', months', even years’ worth of time and money. Nobody wins in this outcome. Yet, it is an all to common result of failed software implementations. Read More
What can your customers do without your parental supervision? Your customer wants to be empowered to interact with your business online. Can they? Read More
A Print MIS transition requires an individual inside your organization to convince all aspects of the business to embrace change. The right leader is a critical decision in making a Print MIS transition less painful. Read More
A business is a set of processes that are done over and over, do you have those processes written down? Do you review them? How often do make mistakes due to a human error that just involves “I forgot”? Process improvement starts with defining the process, adhering to them, and then constantly learning and adapting the process to the smarter you. Read More
Technical resources are hard to find. Keeping up with technology requires constant learning. When looking for technical staff; probe for the candidates willingness and ability to learn new things - it is an absolute requirement. Read More
Every industry has different roles, in the software industry there is a role called the “Product Owner” also referred to as the “Product Manager”. First, I’ll explain this unique role in the software industry; then I’ll make a case that as print continues to evolve and become more digitally friendly and software dependent printers are going to have to have this role in their organizations. Read More
What makes your print business unique? This is a question every print business should ponder over the new year. In 2018 how will you guide your company to create differentiation? Will it be based on the past or the reality of our shared future? Read More
Print MIS implementations are complex, they touch every corner of your business. It is critical that you actively looks for ways to simplify the project in order to increase your chances of success. Read More
I’ve been interacting with a lot of customers of web-to-print lately (the people who order from web-to-print, not the printers). In every single interaction I learn something new. Read More
Creating results in your company takes coordinated effort by a group of people – some would call that a “project”. Project management is the art of keeping all the contributors to the project on task “herding the cats.” This skill set and this role is underappreciated in our industry. When you need to get complex things done with a group of people – you need a project manager to drive the project to successful completion. Read More
When you buy print software for your business, it needs to “fit” into the technology stack you already have. This means that it solves challenges you cannot solve with your existing software and it will fit with the other pieces of your technology. Read More
The Print MIS/ERP system is the foundation to your overall print business technology stack. It is the system that should run your business. Many Print MIS solutions have and continue to expand their support for a diversified printing operation. One of printIQ’s strengths is its approach to and the execution of a modular approach to supporting additional manufacturing processes Read More
The solution sale only works if you’re solving the problems that are most important to the customer. The race to find solutions often results in sales teams wasting tremendous effort solving the wrong customer challenges. When you first agree on the challenges and their importance to the customer – solution selling works. Read More
Purchasing new software is exciting; it’s full of potential, the vendors invest a lot in making the sales process enjoyable. This influences our reaction to when our existing technology gets hard or frustration – it can feel easier to quit and buy a different platform thinking that will solve all our challenges. Read More
We are biased towards solutions when the most valuable thing we can do it clearly define the problem first. The tech startup world calls this innovator bias (falling in love with solutions) – there are always many ways to solve something, the more time you spend understanding the problem, the better chances of getting to the optimal solution. Read More
There is no magic innovation button, there is a boring execution button that can differentiate your business. Consistent execution on complex tasks is a path to profitability – checklists are a key tool to help you get there. Read More
There is an educational gap in the print industry, our industry events are still centered around buying and selling equipment rather than preparing printers to compete in the internet age. Read More
Everyone is talking about workflow automation; this article is about our attachment to artifacts of common print workflows. We have failed to upgrade our thinking beyond the “page” metaphor for sharing information and gaining agreement. Read More
Are you interrupting a lot of people to find the few who are in need of your products and services? Or are you working very hard to be found by the customers that are actively seeking out your services? Read More
What can your customers do online with your print business? How easy is it for your customers to do business with you? Are you asking your customers to use their precious time because your ordering process is inefficient and not available online? Read More
Print is an artifact of a business process/workflow. You should get very curious about the overall workflow so that you can provide more value than just the print. This is the path to embedding your services with a customer and increasing the areas where you can add value. Read More
People buy workflows; therefore sales is a discovery process that reveals the challenges in their workflows that you might be in a position to solve. You have to ask more question and make fewer assumptions. Read More
We train on presses, we engage with the press vendors. We make sure operators are competent – why don’t we do the same for software solutions (especially Print MIS, production workflow, and web-to-print)? Read More
Successful print companies have always been re-investing in their business to remain competitors. Up until now, that investment centered around production equipment and systems. Technology in the form of software will be a primary differentiator moving forward. Read More
Software is the toolset that enables you to solve the business challenges required to win the print that results from them. Your sales process is going to look like software as the main dish with print as a side dish. Read More
Every person in your business solves challenges every day with the tools they have at their disposal and the tools they are comfortable deploying. There is a rich set of intellectual property buried there which can be retrieved by listening and understanding how humans looks for ways to build trusted systems. Read More
Evaluating software is not a math problem, please don’t count the number of features and award the deal to the highest score. Print software must solve your challenges, in the order of importance to your business. Read More
Too many online order entry tools are discounted because the printer fails to see the value from their customer’s perspective. Don’t let your competitors use your customer experience to replace you. Read More
Every software tool sets out to solve a set of problems, all too often the problem is never defined because the sales process focuses on solutions, benefits, and features. Take the time to understand the problem print software solves and most importantly whether you have that problem! Read More
Your print business runs on software, more and more of that software is being delivered via the cloud where resources can be precisely controlled and scaling (both up and down) is configurable in real-time. Kodak’s flagship workflow product – PRINERGY Workflow is no exception to taking advantage of what cloud computing can do to a printer’s production workflow. Read More
Buy, implement, build – software is part of your everyday business life now. It is the primary tool of all businesses. Read More
Making good software is like building a nice home, it takes multiple resources who are coordinated to deliver on your needs. The more a printer understands the software process, the better they will be at managing it for internal projects or influencing the software roadmap of their vendors. Read More
We want to be efficient, we want to feel smart. When we hear even the first words of a challenge, we categorize it and start trying to solve it based on our available tool set. This prevents you from a real understanding of the problem. Read More
People don’t like change, they need to be led through change because the transition between “how you’ve always done it” and the “new more tech-focused way to do it” can be a river of misery. Read More
Change management is considered a soft skill (maybe because it can’t be measured easily in a spreadsheet). Change management can cause a lot of hard problems with technology change when it ignored. Read More
A print software strategy is a definition of where you want to end up – an objective, a goal for how you want all the software components in your business to work together. Read More
There is no “one software package” that runs your entire business. Businesses of all sizes have a technology stack (a collection of software). How well your technology stack fits together (like a beautiful puzzle) greatly determines your success in today’s market. Read More
Clear communication is essential when implementing print software. When you don’t ask clarifying questions, you assume that if there were more relevant details about the integration they would have shared them with you. Do not assume. Ask clarifying questions. Be that annoying person who keeps asking questions. Read More
We apply tools from our toolset to solve business challenges, often those tools create silos of data and processes inside our company that prevent us from becoming a truly data-driven organization. Read More
I wish you could just buy the right print software product and it would make you successful. You can’t. Success with software takes your execution. Software doesn’t implement itself, vendors can’t implement it without your active involvement. Read More
You can call it change management, I prefer the wise words of Seth Godin – change requires you to embrace stupid. Our market requires all of us to keep learning, “the pre-learning state is stupidity.” Read More
Selling print online requires knowledge of how to both accept artwork and deliver print assets to the manufacturing facility. Generic ecommerce firms don’t understand this which can cause printers to spend their time and money educating resources about what makes print ecommerce unique. Read More
Mistakes are part of our lives and our businesses. Nobody likes to make them, how you react to your mistakes dictates what kind of business culture you’ll create. Software changes are an excellent environment to create a learning culture and avoid a fear based culture. Read More
Step back and regroup. Stop looking at features and focus on the overall business objectives of your software solutions. All of us (vendors and printers) need to get out of the feature focus so we can make better software decisions AND make the software we have work better for us in spite of the lacking features. Read More
When both parties in the print software sales process make assumptions, poor decisions are made. Money is wasted. Time is squandered. Replace assumptions with clarifying questions so you come to a common understanding of the truth. Read More
User conferences are an incredible opportunity to load up on learning from the speakers, the vendors, and most importantly your peers. With Dscoop next week, this article covers the importance of the well-formed, thought out questions that can help you get the most out of events by preparing and focusing on your learning goals before you arrive! Read More
Retiring software solutions can be overwhelming. Continuing to pay maintenance on legacy software solutions is maddening. Start the process of transition by setting a realistic date – draw the line in the sand, rally your troops around what it takes to get from where you are today to throwing a retirement party for your legacy software. Read More
Your print software strategy is your responsibility. It requires strategic thinking to both define the challenges and the results you want to create (vision). Don’t make the common mistakes with your print software strategy. Read More
There are two major workflows that a job travels through in your print business. The production workflow which results in a printed product and the business workflow which results in an accurate invoice. The job must travel through both workflows; often in parallel and frequently requires some collaboration and/or communication between the workflows to reach both desired results - high-quality print product(s) delivered on-time and an error free invoice. Read More
Your business should be run by your print software systems; your people should run the systems. These print software systems require attention for both short-term initiatives and long-term strategy. Read More
Finding a niche for your print business (a target market with specific pain points) is not about aiming small, it’s about FOCUS and EXECUTION to build a repeatable product offering and to dive deeper into learning about your customer’s problems. Read More
User group meetings create a space for you to find peers for collaboration. Use these meetings to find your people. Do not proceed in these disruptive market conditions on your own! I invite you to attend the sessions. For those of you who are not planning to attend, I want to provide you with some of the key learnings that will be delivered. Read More
When people get frustrated with software, they are looking for an easy answer to get closure. One of the most common reactions to web-to-print frustration is to shop for a different solution. Before you start shopping, take a long hard look at your investment in really learning the web-to-print solution you already have. Read More
Implementing a Print MIS is challenging, it requires a focus on end results without an attachment to “the way things have always been done”, persistence, and adaptability. Look for these personality traits in the people you assign to lead your Print MIS implementation. Read More
As software takes on a larger and larger role in your print business, your technical leader plays a greater role in all aspects of your business performance. With the right internal technical leader, software can deliver almost everything that was promised in the demo! Without the right technical leader, you’re going to feel like your software investment was a complete waste of money. Read More
Aleyant PrintJobManager™ is a cloud-based entry into the Print MIS market. Most printers will recognize Aleyant as the maker of the popular Aleyant Pressero™ web-to-print solution. Aleyant is entering the Print MIS market with a stand-alone solution PrintJobManage Read More
Your web-to-print needs to solve two core challenges, the challenge of e-commerce and the unique challenge of selling print online. Design ‘N’ Buy took a different strategy for getting to market with a print-enabled e-commerce solution. They left the e-commerce part to the open-source community by proactively integrating with the most popular open source e-commerce platforms. Read More
Scaling your print business requires the removal of bottlenecks from order inquiry to accurate invoice payment. Your Print MIS is the system of record that can drive you to a more efficient business and enable you to scale. Read More
The most important thing you can do to thrive during times of disruption is to learn more about your customer’s problems. What you solved for customers in the past might not be relevant in the future, what you can solve in the future will reinvent may reinvent your business. Read More
Mistakes get made during the print software sales process because there is a lack of common understanding, a pressure on the vendor to say yes to every challenge presented, and a tendency to focus on solutions rather than the problems. Read More
When you buy and sell software by the pound (# of features), you get distracted as a buyer as to what business challenge is actually most important to solve. As a vendor when you build software by the pound you keep adding without going back and refining the core features of your solution. Read More
Implementing Print MIS software is an undertaking that touches every corner of your business. The belief system you go into this process with determines your success more than any other factor. Read More
Inevitably, Cimpress (parent company of VistaPrint) is expanding beyond its roots with the micro business and the business card product. Pixartprinting, a 2014 Cimpress acquisition, targets the creative professional with a 100% upload-and-print model supporting an ever growing collection of product workflows. Read More
Coding is one aspect of software. Making great software takes a team of well-coordinated resources. When we oversimplify software to just a coding event, we get unexpected results Read More
Web-to-Print isn’t for the printer; it is a self-service option for your customers so that ordering from you is more convenient. Customer preference is strongly in favor of self-service options for virtually all business processes, print is no exception. Read More
Going to live industry events is a great opportunity on many levels – get out of working in your business and focus on working on your business. Building relationships with peers and vendors is critical to your future success, live events are where these relationships are cemented. Read More
Printers get frustrated with complex software solutions, this frustration often results in the purchase of additional complex software solutions. Don’t rush to buy your way out of the challenge – it might be more effective to learn your way out of it by doubling down on your commitment to the software you already have. Read More
Customers come to printers to solve communication challenges. Transactional customers get their specific challenges solved. Transaction print is a tough business these days. Printers who inquire about and look to solve bigger picture challenges develop partners with their customers, moving above the transactional level. Read More
The recent move by the U.S. women’s national soccer team (USWNT), to ask for a raise is leading by example for women of all ages. Their performance from top to bottom has been exemplary, on and off the field, and for them, this would be a performance-based raise. As it turns out, simply “asking” requires the courage to work against how we’ve been socialized to behave as females. Read More
Web-to-Print software is sold to printing companies. Yet, the primary users of web-to-print solutions are a printing company's customers. This situation is the cause of many issues with the success of web-to-print programs. We have three perspectives at work (only one really matters). Read More
The biggest mistake in software decisions is relegating the discussion down to the feature level. The feature is a potential solution to an often ill-defined problem which may or may not be relevant to your business. Read More
If sales isn’t involved, your business-to-business (B2B) web-to-print project is going to fail. Web-to-print projects aren’t about features (solutions), they are all about solving the right customer challenges. Read More
User experience is the product. 1,000 features does not necessarily equate to a valuable product. When features are embedded into a confusing an cumbersome user experience – they don’t get adopted. Read More
A Product Workflow is a term I use in web-to-print projects; it defines the different offerings you enable online through self-service user interface. Defining terms is critically important to any project, product workflows is one of the key terms to every web-to-print project. Read More
Print is a communication challenge solution. Typically, the printed product is but one part of a much larger challenge. When your sales people learn to take their “print googles” off and uncover the bigger picture challenge, they embed your company deeper into your customer’s business process and ultimately uncover more opportunities for printed products. Read More
As production inkjet continues to expand its horizons, it can be a challenge for inkjet press manufacturers to have all of the skills internally to take their products to the next level. Global Graphics’ announcement of their Fundamentals service for manufacturers of inkjet presses can help manufacturers overcome some of those hurdles. Read More
Communication is the primary thing we all do for work. This article outlines some of my favorite tools for communicating, tracking how we use our time, capturing our ideas, organizing projects, and improving remote meetings. Read More
The temptation is to roll up your sleeves and work in your business. The only job that you can’t delegate to anyone on your staff is working on the business (future plans, strategy, diversification). Read More
Your print business website should be a living, engaging, and a results delivering part of your business growth plan. For business-to-business printers, this means delivering qualified leads to your sales team. Read More
Growing your business is more about marketing than it is about hiring more sales people today. The sales cycle is moving online where good marketing programs can nurture prospects from initial inquiry to paying customer. Read More
The print industry’s technology is too closed, too proprietary, making it overly difficult for print businesses (the entities that make this whole ecosystem work) to access, use, distribute, and learn from the data their business’ generate every day. If we keep at this, we will choke off the only thing that matters (growing print businesses). Read More
Technology decisions can be costly, not just in licensing/subscription fees but in the time and effort it takes your team to implement, learn, and launch technologies to your customers. One of the aspects of the Infigo product suite is the ability to add modules as you continue to diversify. Read More
Your customers don’t want to be trained, your customers want you to make them look good in front of their boss, get them promoted, and generally make their lives easier. Don’t try and educate your customers, sell them on what’s in it for them if they adjust their behaviors (e.g. use your web-to-print system, submit print-ready PDF files, etc.) Read More
One workflow for all job types results in wasted labor, unrealized profits, and slower turnaround times. The modern print business has to drive automation by creating different routes for different job types. The approach has to be strategic, because automation in one area can create congestion in another. Read More
Web-to-print is a strategic initiative that creates two service level paths through your organization; self-service and full-service. Your leadership is the key ingredient required for success. Read More
As we move more business online, utilize digital communication channels, and look to diversify – our print business marketing becomes more critical to our overall business success. Read More
At Dscoop this year, we will be presenting a series of Tech Talks in the Dscoop Collaboration Station on the show floor. We are all on a steep learning curve when it comes to technology. Join us to get a dose of technology education across a wide range of topics. Bring your technology leaders to Dscoop; their importance to your business is growing! Read More
Your web-to-print initiatives should be focused on the “jobs-to-be-done” for your customers. What can the customer “hire” your web-to-print system to do for them? Web-to-print ROI comes from a 100% focus from your customer’s perspective. Read More
Customers ask for a lot, they want us to service them but they also need us to apply our expertise to their challenges. The customer can and should be challenged based on your expertise. Read More
This product spotlight focuses on three areas that we see as the most powerful and differentiating features of Pace; PaceStation, Pace Customization Modules, and Pace Item Templates. The unifying concept with all three of these features is that they allow a printer to “configure” Pace to work for their unique business requirements. Read More
Business meetings can be horribly ineffective, yet with a set of small hacks you can unleash the productivity and innovation your company desperately needs. Here’s the good news, all you need is some Post-It Notes and a phone. Read More
As technology continues to change at a rapid rate, collaboration needs to extend into the functional areas of your business. Don’t stop at creating a peer group for print owners, encourage your accounting lead to get into a peer group, each functional area should have multiple sources of knowledge sharing. Read More
In studying the Propago product, a consistent theme reverberated throughout the product; this product was built based on real-time feedback from live users in a large scale deployment. The approach to solving the business challenges of web-to-print are rooted in data-driven decisions rather than theoretical solutions to ill-defined challenges. Propago came out of a large commercial printing organization that consisted of twenty-five companies across the nation. Read More
It’s time to stop talking about what we should become (marketing services providers) and actually take the steps that move us in that direction. Think through a go-to-market strategy for offering digital products, execute on that plan on your print business’ marketing, enable your sales team, and start diversifying your revenue streams for the digital age. Read More
In Print MIS implementations, your business data entered into the Print MIS database structure creates the data model of your business. Your attention to detail at this critical juncture of Print MIS implementations can set you up for success. Read More