Web-to-print is a great solution for many companies these days, both large and small. This is the final set of tips from a three part series to illustrate some success factors related to web-to-print solutions.
Think volume.
The front-end dollar signs are often offset, not just by administrative savings, but by incremental price savings driven by volume. The more sophisticated the solution, generally the higher printed volume that will be run through it. High-volume usage can earn back the cost very quickly. Certainly, in the case of one national financial institution, the system was costly to set up, but for every order of 1,000 books, it was able to drop the cost of its retirement enrollment materials by $5 to $10 per book.
Once you decide to deploy a Web-to-print system, implement a plan to get full buy-in.
Of course, not every company will be able to generate this kind of volume. Even for those who do, the key to ROI is getting the full company buy-in. If you are going to invest in a Web-to-print solution, it is critical to get the buy-in at all levels so that the system gets used.
This is why another one of the best practices of successful W2P implementations is setting up training and incentive programs that get employees at all levels (or third parties like distributors or independent realtors) vested in the program even before it is deployed. One approach is to set up employee focus groups to help in working out the bugs. Not only does this help to gets the buy-in from participants in the program, but it has the additional benefit of helping you work out any potential problems before you deploy the site.
Think beyond digital print
Whenever people talk about Web-to-print, the tendency is to talk about applications like 1:1 personalization, customization, and decentralized targeted marketing. But when it comes to cost-justification, Web-to-print is just that—Web to any kind of print. It can be long-run offset. It can be short-run digital. It can be labels. It can be presentation folders. It can be business cards and corporate identity materials. It can be large-format graphics or anything else you need.
If you can print it, it can be output on the back end of a Web-to-print system. Even complex documents can be uploaded on a static basis to a Web-to-print solution for output an as needed.
For this reason, it’s important to keep in mind that cost justification comes, not just from the sexy applications, but the ability to streamline and automate mundane, day-in, day-out print ordering, too.
NextPage marketing portals have been a great solution for thousands of users. Contact us today to explore this possibility for your business.