Strategy for Improved Profitability within Print & Mail Operations

Within print and mail operations, it is common to see excessive overhead and production delays squeeze profitability from document processors.  Common areas of lost profitability include:  

$       Paying higher postage for jobs which run late

$       Paying unscheduled overtime to complete jobs in order to meet contract deadlines

$       Stopping production to find missing pieces and reconcile jobs/pieces on the plant floor

$        Operators utilizing production time to enter production data and manually close out jobs (rather than running production)

$        Manually entering production data in to spreadsheets and reporting programs

$        Paying late delivery fees and compliance penalties

$        Introducing duplicate pieces and extra postage into the production cycle

$        Manual re-print processes which require excessive labor and production resources

$        Waste and spoilage within printing, finishing and inserting processes

An effective piece and job tracking strategy can measurably eliminate these expenses while providing management with REAL TIME, desktop transparency to:

Ø  Status of jobs versus production schedules and SLA’s

Ø  Immediate notification of integrity issues such as missing & duplicate pieces

Ø  Elimination of manual process transitions, operator logging/reporting and manual data entry to record production information

Ø  Enable jobs to be completed on-time without excessive postage costs and overtime charges

Ø  Production performance dashboard including productivity benchmarking

Ø  Automated reprint process

Ø  Compliance audit trails

Today’s job and piece tracking systems provide a strategy to measurably optimize profitability and integrity performance, regardless of the equipment types and information management architecture in a production facility.

By Pat Hoskins, pat.hoskins@ironsidestech.com, PH 585.953.3013

Business Process Optimization

In the world of print and mail tracking, where document integrity and privacy protection is paramount, it is often the by-product of this tracking which is most useful for the document processor’s business.

Businesses involved with printing, mailing and fulfillment operations are challenged every day to reduce operating costs and improve margin. Yet, the methods by which many use to quote jobs or predict production schedules are traditional in the sense that they are often based on estimates.  This is the space where significant margin is lost in the form of excessive overhead costs and lost profitability dollars.

Document and fulfillment operations have, at their fingertips, the data and technologies to maximize profitability.  The use of production reporting data in predictive models for quoting, estimating and scheduling optimizes business performance along with providing the requisite print & mail integrity.

Real-time production data contains tangible information based on what actually takes place in the production environment.  Objective information, it defines actual production costs. Properly displayed, it shows caveats in the production process.  The utilization of predictive modeling, based on unambiguous production data allows document processing operations to generate optimal quotes based on actual costing to optimize profitability, coordinate efficient schedules to minimize labor costs and correct deficiencies in business processes.

Print & mail integrity may still be the foundation for document tracking strategies.  Compliance penalties, late delivery fees and lost business risks make sure of this.  However, business process optimization through the access and intelligent reporting of this data should also be a natural output of integrity tracking processes

By Pat Hoskins, PH 585.953.3013, pat.hoskins@ironsidestech.com

 

Require Vendors to Improve your Document Processing Operations

Would you invest in a technology if you knew it would, without risk, tangibly pay for itself in several months?

It is understandable that companies, especially those involved with document processing, would be hesitant to invest in another solution which claims to help their business.  Too many times, the document processing arm of insurance companies, financial institutions, healthcare companies and service bureaus have been burned by vendors promising performance improvement but instead, providing professional service laden and proprietary solutions.  You know, those software solutions that work great as long as they are attached to a specific brand of hardware/software or require additional investment if you want to actually get any data out of them.

There are business process optimization, integrity verification and piece/job tracking systems which truly do measurably improve business performance.  Those built on truly open platforms and current technology can break the culture of proprietary, expensive, closed, etc.  Solutions built upon reducing overhead, reducing risk of late deliveries, ensuring compliance, improving quoting/scheduling/invoicing accuracy do exist, without requiring extensive and expensive professional services.  After all, you shouldn’t require anyone’s brand of anything in order to run your business better. Changing customer requirements and applications demand that we be more flexible than that.

As you have probably guessed, this entry is quite self-serving.  However, it is written with the honest intention of helping clients understand that information management and process optimization are different today. We must expect our clients to know and understand all short and long term costs associated with a solution.  We must be held responsible for meeting the return on investment we commit to. We must be advocates for their long term business.

Whether we are supplying an ADF (Automated Document Factory). Business Process Optimization (BPO) or integrity verification (compliance), the days of “spend and hope” are long over for our clients.

By Pat Hoskins, PH 585.953.3013, pat.hoskins@ironsidestech.com

“Big Data”…A Print & Mail Perspective

I am already painfully tired of the buzzword “big data” and vendors’ over reaching efforts to confuse clients into spending money for ambiguous “big data” solutions.  More data exists for us to use than ever before.  That is a good thing.  But inducing confusion or unrealistic expectations is not.

No one doubts that we are in a data driven economy.  Data is intelligence waiting to be learned.  A reality of today’s technology, however, too much data is clutter which hides this intelligence from its meaningful use.  The responsibility is on vendors to help clients sort through this information to effectively utilize the most valuable pieces. 

I do realize that the presence of more data creates other challenges such as privacy considerations and implementing archival strategies.  Although these can’t be ignored, the majority of our “big data” efforts should be focused with an eye on how this abundance of data can improve our client’s core business. 

It is the availability, usability and meaningfulness of the data which is paramount. To over simplify (which I am brilliant at), find the data which allows clients to run their business better.

Data needs to be meaningful- What are the significant pieces of information that will allow customers’ business to run better or allow them to capture new business? What are the 1-2 biggest challenges for the client’s business that if they addressed today would impact their performance?  What are the pieces of information which will allow them to address these 1 or 2 business aspects?

Data must be accessible- Data must be available when and where the client needs it without contacting a vendor or manually manipulating information within an information management system.

Data must be useable- It must be in a format which is easy to understand and easy to share

From a print/mail operations perspective, the important data is that which helps answers questions such as:

How do I increase productivity with given resources? 

How do I reduce operating costs (i.e. where am I not optimizing operations)? 

How do I compare my plant productivity metrics with my estimates and schedules to optimize performance? 

How do I easily measure my profitability on a job (or product) compared to projections? 

For print & mail operations, the information that answers these questions is “big data”!  If vendors’ “big data” efforts are not focused on these core aspects, then I advise caution about what their real intentions may be.

The availability of data within today’s print & mail operations is a tremendous opportunity.  Our job as vendors is to collaborate with clients to identify and help them use the data which will most impact their performance which measurable results.

By Pat Hoskins, Ironsides Technology, pat.hoskins@ironsidestech.com, PH 585.953.3013

Customer Service Matters More Than Ever

As vendors for business process optimization and print/mail integrity tracking, we provide software and services which must improve our customer’s business in order for us to be successful.  We are in a challenging market, in relatively tough economic times.  Why then, do I see so many large service vendors forgetting that it is the customers they are servicing? 

It is very easy for any business to get so caught up in day-to-day battles and processes, that they momentarily forget who is paying the bills.   But when it becomes the culture of a company to put process and “the company” ahead of the customer, decline is imminent.   Customer service must be embedded in the culture of a company…. A way of life, rather than check mark in a “to do” list.    

It is the customer’s growth we must be focused on in order to achieve our own growth. Simple things matter:

Ø  Understand the business objectives  and risks of the client

Ø  Make it easy for the customer to do business with your company

Ø  Stay in touch with the client, not just when they are buying

Ø  Look and listening closely to the factors challenging the client’s business

Ø  Be advocates for their business

I am fortunate enough to work for a small company where there is no tolerance for lack of customer service.  Success, even survival, is predicated on ensuring the customer’s success.   

If you have customers, you are in the customer service business! It is far too easy for our prospects to find competitors.   

By Pat Hoskins, pat.hoskins@ironsidestech.com, PH 585.953.3013