With the right preparation, the right equipment, and the right technology partner, your Return on Impression can be as exhilarating as an 85-foot plunge.
Cliff diving in an undoubtedly extreme – yet exhilarating - sport for the athletes mentally and physically strong enough to take the free-fall plunge.
During the 3-second fall from 85 feet, competition divers experience forces of 2 to 3 Gs when they hit the water. That's nine times stronger than the forces Olympic high divers feel diving from 33-foot (10-meter) high platforms.
The freedom and adrenaline rush that these divers feel is prefaced by immense preparation, years of practice, and taking into account necessary precautions at all times.
There’s nothing extreme about bringing Production Print In-House, other than the freedom it can offer if strategically implemented and managed.
Many businesses find themselves somewhere between the polar ends of printing everything in-house and exclusively out-sourcing. DIY Production Print is becoming increasingly more accessible with the digital printing technology available. By bringing jobs in house, you can take control over turnaround times to meet internal deadlines. You control volume to match internal demand. You also control the security and confidentiality of sensitive corporate documents.
But before taking the leap, it’s important to assess your environment and take into account all necessary precautions. You can't take the plunge into streamlined, cost-effective, and well-controlled in-house production without first making a thorough, pre-jump climb into discovery.
With the right preparation, the right equipment, and the right technology partner, your Return on Impression can be as exhilarating as an 85-foot plunge.
4 Things to Consider Before Taking the Leap into In-House Production Print
1. Explore the Water.
Before diving, know the depth of the water, where you’ll get out and how you’ll get back.
Exploring the environment around you – and all costs associated with producing desired materials – will do wonders for your long-term return on technology investment.
What type of pieces are you producing (brochures? Business cards? Three-part-forms? Handbooks?), and at what volume? What equipment components are necessary to provide a desired result and streamline the process with minimal off-line work?
A thorough discovery process with your technology partner will help decipher what cost justification is there for bringing production in-house, but also strategically find ways to help contain wasteful costs within the production process.
Consider also that as short-run jobs increase, bringing production in-house can drastically cut down on large set up costs and processing fees. By eliminating the need to print a large quantity with an outside vendor just to justify the set-up costs, your organization can print on demand and dictate its own turn-around time (and also replace those obsolete brochures collecting dust on your showroom floor).
2. Keep it Simple.
In cliff diving, keeping it simple means entering the water in a straight, vertical line and resisting the temptation to deviate from the toes-first, narrow-entry position.
In your production environment, don’t deviate from the potential capabilities and enhancements that are relevant to your primary set of jobs.
Your marketing rep may drool over the two-knife trimmer and face-trimmer add-on for your Canon imagePRESS, loving the idea of full bleed leave-behinds. But is it justified? Identify your primary types of materials you're wanting to produce, and match those precisely with relevant capabilities and features.
Maximizing your capabilities with your production print environment should be driven by maximizing your return on technology investment.
A few considerations:
- Finishing Features: Features like booklet trimming, binding, stapling, as well as production print speed and media capacity, should be bound by what your core production initiatives entail.
- Workflow: The capabilities with workflow automation have created new standards for streamlining and automating the production print process from end to end. From the print operator, to acquisition, pre-flight, make-ready and the internal and external communication, automation tools can essentially make the production process limitlessly efficient.
- Color Coordination: Color consistency is a continually-perfecting art with most digital office systems. For example, Canon's PRISMAsync incorporates an in-RIP G7 calibration method. Without a need for third-party software or complex procedures , print professionals can quickly and easily calibrate their PRISMAsync-driven imagePRESS color presses to achieve a near neutral print condition.
How do these tools correlate with your needs? Through a Discovery process, it’s essential to nail down what essentially you are wanting to produce and the necessary workflow process to achieve your business goals.
3. Take All Measures to Protect Yourself.
Many people unfamiliar with the sport of cliff diving consider the life-threatening injuries associated with the big jump. But the pressure from plummeting into a pool of water can blow a diver’s eardrums. Something as seemingly small as prepping your ears with silicone or olive oil can be life-changing.
In today’s data-breach-weary business technology environment, security becomes an always-relevant conversation. Every precaution must be known and accounted for.
The security of out-sourced jobs hinges on the security controls of your vendor – how do they collect, use and store confidential information? Law, Finance, and Healthcare markets particularly deal regularly with private, sensitive information that could be vulnerable without adequate protection measures.
A variety of digital production print solutions can increase document security by allowing only authorized access to devices, keeping confidential documents out of the wrong hands. Additionally, these solutions can be encrypted when being transmitted across a network, leaving them unsusceptible to interception.
4. Use the Buddy System.
In cliff diving, it goes without saying. Never jump alone. The same applies to production print.
In the case of managing your production print environment, the right technology partner can ensure that you’re never alone in your pursuit of cost-effective, well-managed in house production.
They will consider both your Return on Impression – the value of that lasting image your corporate printing leaves in the minds of clients and prospects – as well cost-per impression, the hard-dollar metric of producing materials in-house.
A trusted technology partner knows that partnership is not part-time. A regularly scheduled partnership review is much more than a "one and done" post-sale follow-up effort, but an ongoing lather/rinse/repeat process for the long haul - from realizing technology capabilities to reviewing and refining service performance.
Are you ready to take the plunge into in-house production print? Through our signature Datamax Discovery process, we can help your organization begin exploring the water surrounding your technology environment, and realizing the exhilaration that comes with bringing more jobs in-house. Through our partnership reviews, we'll honor our commitment and ensure your return on technology investment.
Take the leap by scheduling your production print workflow assessment!
