The printing world is always changing, and many companies have found that having the ability to create their own manuals for products or marketing brochures for sales is an integral part of the success of their business. They also realize that if they aren't printing these jobs in-house, they are losing some control over the production of these documents.
If you're a business who does a large amount of commercial printing outside of your company, it may be time to take a look at how bringing that work in-house can save you time, money and headaches. Here are several reasons production printing in-house can help your business.
- Control over your job quality. When your employees produce printable content, they know what they want it to look like. By sending it to an outside printer, they lose control over what that look is. Along with the control, you are now left at the mercy of the printer's timelines. How long will it take the printer to put together a proof of the job? Once it's signed off on, how long will production take? What if something happens, and the printer is closed for a day or two? How will that affect your job? All of these scenarios mean your business is losing control over the job. With production printing in-house, you're in control of what colors look like and what images you use. And more importantly, you control the timeline of the job.
- What type of paper do you use? If you're printing simple manuals, regular copier paper may be sufficient for your jobs, but if you're making marketing materials, the type of paper you use matters. When you use a commercial printer, you'll pay a hefty markup of 10-25% or more for paper. Printers make money by selling you paper. If you decide to try to print a marketing brochure at your office on your regular MFP, the likelihood of error is high, because normal MFPs aren't made for large production with various papers of different finishes. A production printer will allow you to have flexibility to choose the medium you want to print on, get it for the best price and ensure you will have success with your print.
- Account-Based Marketing. With the changes in the marketing landscape today, casting a wide net and hoping you can catch big fish isn't always the best approach. We all know that we have to provide personalized, meaningful content to be noticed, and we have to be able to do so quickly. If your business utilizes Account Based Marketing, having a production printer in-house will make your materials pop, and allows you to print smaller quantities of jobs at the highest quality. This gives you a better opportunity to be noticed by your potential target on your timeframe.
- Marketing isn't the only large job printer in your organization. Marketing may have the most complicated jobs that are printed in your business, but you can bet that there are departments printing way more and running up the copy counts on your regular MFPs. Think about your accounting department - what if instead of buying special paper on which to print your invoices, you customize invoices based on what your customers are looking for and print them continuously. Imagine your HR department producing their own employee handbooks for new employees and being able to make changes to that document more than once or twice a year because it can be printed in-house now. And of course, your new marketing intern can keep all of the marketing collateral in stock!
- Print What You Need When You Need It. Think of the last time your HR department had the employee handbook printed, only to notice that they spelled three words wrong on page 52. Your choices here aren't great - you either chuck the whole thing and pay again to print it, or you use it with the misspellings and maybe look a bit foolish to new and current employees. With print on demand, you can make changes to documents and print smaller batches when you need them to ensure all of your information contained in the document is up-to-date and fresh every time. Your materials will never be obsolete, because you won't have to print 5,000. You can print 100 at a time, and use them all before you have to print again!
- It all boils down to security. When a sensitive document leaves your walls to be printed, you expect that the printer will follow the same diligent standards you set for your in-house employees. And while the printer may be the consummate professional, they may not be aware of all of the compliance and regulations that follow your industry, and as such, your document production. With in-house production printing, you don't have to worry about what's happening with your sensitive documents while they're off-site. You can rest easy knowing they're exactly where they belong.
With in-house production print, your company can take back control of your outsourced printing costs, the time spent dealing with an outsourced printer and the content and look of your important documents. To learn more about in-house production printing, contact us today to set up an assessment with our production print specialists.