Jun 24, 2009
The latest in-plant trends you need to know
Labels: digital color, inplant, web-to-print 0 comments
Last week, I attended a webinar series by Printing Impressions. Barbara Pellow from InfoTrends talked about current trends in in-plants. It was interesting to learn how in-plants are providing solutions to their customers with digital and software technology and how quickly they are adapting to these new changes. Without a doubt, in-plants are growing their profit while fulfilling their role as money savers for their organizations. Here are the trends in the in-plant Industry:
•The only growth is in digital
–300% increase in the number of establishments since 1998
•The cost of digital printing and software solutions continues to drop
–In-plants can print applications like VDP, and transpromo more affordably. In fact, 54.8% offer VDP in 2008 compared to 33% in 2004.
=> the trend we see here is investment to improve efficiency and effectiveness
–Longer-run applications can be moved to digital
•There is significant growth in digital color
–InfoTrends forecasts that from now until 2012 digital color will grow at a 25% compound annual growth rate (CAGR)
•Investment in Software is increasing
–The benefit of digital printing is the ability to produce a variety of applications, like Graphic Arts, VDP, transactional VDP, and multi-channel communications. Despite the economic downturn the software market continues to grow at 8.8% CAGR
The most interesting part of the webinar was to see how Web-based services are becoming a key factor in order to run a profitable in-plant. Offering Web-to-Print service has grown from 27.9% in 2004 to 48.6% in 2008. Two thirds of buyers are using web-to-print services while only 11% of them were doing so in 2000. Here are some benefits of using web-based services.
•Increased efficiency
–From requesting jobs, to tracking and billing, real-time communication improves productivity. They can avoid confusion and unnecessary communications by having all the information online. Because the software is more advanced, not only can it produce customized products but it is also easier to operate.
–Increased efficiencies shorten turnaround times, make tracking easier, and reduce inventory. According to an InfoTrends study, print buyers saw 14.4% savings in terms of print purchases.
•Ability to track ROI from multi-channel marketing campaigns
–Imagine being able to do all of these things: sending a direct mail piece with Personalized URL, having a customer visit their PURL and fill out the information, then immediately receive a thank you email/mail, which is followed by a direct sales call, and being able to track the whole processes at each step.
Fact: The Response rate is 35% higher when multi-channel is used, as compared to print only (source InfoTrends).
•Increased margin
–Since the end users are uploading their files and submitting information, the accountability is moved to them, which limits costly mistakes and therfore increases margins.
•Promoting their marketing capabilities
–Seminars, blogs, etc., in-plants are using different tools to promote and educate their customers about how they can do ROI driven marketing campaigns.
Barbara mentioned that the demand for on-demand printing is equally important today as it was in 1990. The only difference is the Internet. Customers are benefitting from in-plants who offer web-based services to control what, when and how many they want to print. It is a big challenge for in-plants to shift from being just a print shop to a value added service provider. It takes a lot of planning to decide how much investment to put into new equipment and software, and what value to add to your in-plant. However, if it’s done right, there is a huge opportunity not only to run a profitable in-plant but also to grow your business.
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