How Web-To-Print Can Grow a Wide Format Print Business and Enhance Existing Customer Relationships

Why implement web-to-print?

There are many potential benefits from running an online sales portal. Customers gain the convenience of being able to order at any time that suits them; for simple 'off the shelf' items or repeat orders they may find this more efficient that having to phone or email. For the print service provider, a W2P portal extends both the effective hours of trading and the business's geographical reach.

With appropriate integration between the W2P portal, MIS/ERP and production systems, it is possible not only to automate job capture, but also its set-up and progression into production. By connecting the job submission and production processes, large format print service providers reduce delays and errors in moving work from quote to production, and allow sales and other staff to concentrate on higher-value work.

Who would use it and for what?

A realistic approach for most printers is to start by using W2P as an enhancement to the service for existing customers. W2P portals do not by themselves attract web traffic, let alone generate new business; the online service needs to be marketed and it's easiest to build on existing relationships.

Repeat orders and catalogue items are the simplest to offer via W2P, but many systems offer the ability to support template-based artwork creation in which the customer can choose a design, edit text and/or select images and then preview and approve the artwork online before confirming the order. Within a franchise or retail environment, for example, this type of system enables individual stores or franchisees to order and pay for customised materials that conform to branding guidelines.

Links into workflow systems with pre-flighting and soft-proofing capabilities also make it possible to accept and validate user-submitted artwork files. Within established business-to-business relationships where there is sufficient production knowledge on the customer's side to understand and respond to any error messages, this can be made to work to the benefit of both customer and printer.

Web-to-print also enables new business models, from offering competitive rates on low-priority work that fills spare capacity to consumer sales. However, some of these ideas can require considerable re-focusing of the business and so should be planned carefully, ideally after a familiarisation period.

Types of W2P system

There is a proliferation of W2P products from a range of suppliers that includes MIS/ERP developers as well as printer and prepress vendors, but the majority are not specifically targeted at or optimised for wide-format print applications, having been developed to support commercial digital or offset print sales.

Some W2P products provide the online shopfront which can price jobs, take and confirm orders, and collect submitted files in a hot folder but do not themselves link into MIS/ERP or production, leaving the integration task to the user. More sophisticated systems will make these links automatically and in some cases can provide very close integration between job capture, order management, production and shipping to the extent that it is possible to configure a system for fully automated 'lights out' production at the printer's site.

From a customer's perspective it's valuable if the portal can provide information on job production or shipping status, as well as allowing review of quotes and invoices; again, the more integrated W2P offerings provide this kind of bi-directional communication and some offer artwork review and annotation facilities in addition.

Who runs it?

Many W2P systems are offered under a remotely-hosted 'software as a service' (SaaS) model. This is charged according to usage, though there is usually a basic monthly service fee as well. The SaaS approach takes the responsibility for maintaining servers and software away from the print service provider, making W2P more attractive to smaller wide-format print companies. Alternatively, some - but not all - W2P developers will license their software for the customer to run on their own site in the conventional manner. This arrangement is more likely to suit larger print companies with dedicated in-house IT resources.

In-house development of bespoke W2P systems or integration with other business systems is also a possibility, though again this requires IT skills that would not normally be found in smaller print companies. Unless a wide-format print service provider has extremely unusual requirements, it's likely that a commercially developed system will be a more cost-effective W2P solution.

Offering a W2P portal is by no means compulsory, though as the general trend towards online ordering of all kinds of products and services continues, it may look increasingly odd to customers if a large format print service provider does not at least offer a simple way to handle repeat or standard item orders. In an increasingly competitive market, W2P offers a way of enhancing relationships with existing customers, as well as potentially widening the customer base, especially within niches that require specialist finishing equipment or skills, and provides a point of differentiation from competitors.

This article is an extract from 'Why integration matters in large-format printing', a free white paper from EFI that explains the benefits in productivity, quality and profitability that wide-format print providers can achieve through full integration of their print, production and business systems.

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