Canon in Las Vegas, Part 2 Powerful Tools for In-Plant Printers
November 8, 2009
It’s enough to keep an in-plant manager awake at night. In-plant and CRDs in many companies are exception-processing; well-outside the core business of their respective firms and in these days of ever-tightening budgets, are under pressure to justify their very existence. And those are the lucky ones.
At first glance in-plants and CRDs would seem to be in an enviable position, with a sizeable base of relatively captive customers, but they often find people and departments in their companies send print jobs to outside suppliers and are often unaware of the capabilities the CRD or in-plant shop has to offer. The challenge for these managers is how to get the word out about all they can do, and to promote the cost savings and other advantages of keeping more print jobs in-house. The difficulty, though, is that managers often lack the skills and tools needed to do these essential tasks.
In contrast, all types of commercial printing operations can avail themselves of business development tools offered by equipment vendors. Capture (HP), MarketMover (Kodak), and ProfitAccelerator (Xerox) are replete with comprehensive business building tools, templates, guidebooks and more that print providers can use to bring in new and repeat business. This material is heavily skewed towards the commercial print operations and not necessarily adaptable to in-plant operations even though they may use the exact same equipment as outside providers.
Canon, in a battle for supremacy in the corporate print segment, sees this as opportunity.
In-Plant Business Tools
So at the Canon Dealer event in Vegas last month they rolled out the In-Plant Business Tools program (iBT). Think of this as a Swiss Army Knife for in-plant and CRD managers who need to bring more business to their shops. Presently available only online, it is a rich mix of software tools that can reach out to a company’s employees and tell them about the range of printing products and services available within their own organization. It can show in-plant managers and print customers alike how much various jobs will cost and enables remote job submission to streamline production.
I was walked through some of the key features by Aaron Hale, Industry Marketing Specialist at Canon Business Solutions. Aaron has been around the industry for a number of years and was one of the leaders in developing iBT and its many features. It was quickly apparent that it’s no shallow dive. For example, it contains an ROI Calculator Suite that can show the difference between printing multiple short runs using a print-on-demand strategy versus traditional bulk printing. It can show the ROI for personalized direct mail marketing or cross-media campaigns, with all costs factored in. There’s even a reverse ROI calculator so users can start out with the ROI they need to achieve and work backwards to determine the best way to print a given job.
Much like tools aimed at print-for-pay operations, there are even instructions, templates and procedures for conducting an open house to show off all the technology and capabilities in the in-plant operation. Makes me wonder how many times I should have used the in-house print shop back when I used to buy print at a couple of former companies!
Equipment Investment Analysis
The iBT offerings go beyond operations to the financial and analytical. For example, does buying that shiny new digital press really make sense? Canon’s iBT has tools to help in-plant or CRD managers determine which piece of equipment is justified and can present the data in a way that will satisfy a cautious CFO. An interactive spreadsheet can be loaded with all the salient facts about the print operation and various pieces of equipment, both existing and desired. These can include lease and operating costs, service charges, interest payments, facilities and utilities cost, insurance, productivity and throughput projections, and more. At the end of the calculations the spreadsheet shows variable costs and TCO based on print volumes and projects the ROI. Working thorough the requisite thought process is also an advantage for in-plant managers, because it can raise the bar on how they think about their operation, helping them look at equipment-and their operation- less tactically and more strategically. And that makes them more valuable as managers.
There’s still more than I can go into here, but this to me was one of the most important of the products Canon rolled out in Las Vegas. Every in-plant manager who’s feeling under the gun (at least ones with Canon hardware on the floor) needs to use this tool to drive more business to their shop. It shows how, in digital printing 2009, it is less about the print engine and more about what is done with it and how you bring jobs to the machine.
Posted by Noel Ward on November 8, 2009 | Comments (0)
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