Stability is not progress – embrace change for long-term success

Commercial printers make up the largest market segment of print and produce a huge range of products, from books and direct mail to brochures, manuals and magazines. But the print business is changing, with relentless increases in customer demand for shorter runs and faster turnaround times. And these bring higher associated costs.

It’s no longer about just controlling costs or trying to improve the efficiency of old business models. The future is all about adapting and adopting new ways to add value. But to understand how to do this, you first have to understand your customer. And, just as importantly, you need the back-up of intelligent processes to help you to deliver.

So what steps can you take to meet your customers’ changing expectations and still protect your bottom line? By taking decisive action, you can make the necessary changes to succeed and lay a foundation for long-term prosperity. Here are three tips to help you to thrive in the future:

Online print services with ultra-efficient production are competing for every print order. For most commercial printers, leading on price isn’t sustainable in the long term.

The current economic downturn means that many marketing budgets are being scrutinised and cut. This leaves print marketing at risk of being deprioritised if you can’t convincingly demonstrate its value.

One way to maximise your future success is by adding value by being more consultative. This begins with understanding what your customers need, their commercial aspirations and current challenges. When you know what they’re trying to achieve, there’s a massive opportunity to show them how to integrate print elements into wider campaigns or make printed assets more valuable within a diverse content mix.

And when print proves its effectiveness, price becomes a much smaller consideration, so your customers will keep coming back for your expertise, enabling you to increase sales and grow your business.

With shrinking run lengths and shorter turnarounds on the increase, flexibility and agility are important traits for the modern printer. Although offset technology is a cost-effective solution for long-run printing, many print providers are profiting from expanding their production set-ups with digital workflows.

The key benefit here is value, not volume. A technology line-up that includes digital printing will allow you to be much more flexible and respond to just about any challenge your customer can throw at you, at a margin that makes sense for you. Your customers need the print elements in their marketing mix to be fast, adaptable and – increasingly – personal.

Digital inkjet combined with workflow automation software enables you to make significant gains in profitability by improving your efficiency and delivery timelines as well as by leveraging data and insights to create print that’s impactful, customised, hyper-personal and, above all, effective.

No one could have predicted the impact of the pandemic on the commercial print industry and the wider economy. It has served and continues to serve as a real-life lesson about the importance of being nimble and flexible. Investing in agile and automated digital technologies should be a high priority for printers serious about thriving in the long-term.

In the commercial print market, we recognise four general business models based on digital printing that printers can adopt – process optimisation, market expansion, value-add services and seamless print. In our reTHINK Commercial Print Guide, we take a deeper dive into each area and explain how they can help commercial printers to quickly reposition themselves and then develop their business with digital print technology.

Download the guide here to find out more about the evolving commercial print landscape, how you can optimise processes through end-to-end solutions and how to add value to your customers.

It’s time to reTHINK Commercial Print.