Posts tagged web to print

We talk to a lot of print company owners and managers in charge of sales to production and everything in between.  These are the people that are in charge of picking the strategic direction for their respective print companies and making sure they have the technology and systems to support those efforts.  Over the course of the last decade a lot of them have been sold the concept of “web-to-print” as something that will solve all of their problems.  In reality, it has only provided the incremental improvement in efficiency by allowing customers to customize simple documents via a clunky web interface.  

If you step back and analyze the status quo of “web-to-print” in the context of today’s business communication technology and common practices at large; the concept is outdated to say the least.  Does it provide instant gratification on simple document edits for the customer?  To an extent.  Most print service providers do not have the volume required to benefit from these incremental time savers.  Does it make the customer more loyal to the print service provider?  Only if there is a long-term agreement in place already.  Which is coincidentally why print service providers have been trying to get customers to pay for the costly implementation of these systems. Is it worth the time and cost to setup it up?  Given the previous answers, not often.  

Most of this is not new.  Surprisingly many print service providers – even with today’s broadening general technology availability context – are still hyper-focused on this one functionality.  Not to mention the companies that have already been disappointed with the broken promises of new business these “web-to-print” systems are supposed to bring.  We call these customers “2nd generation” and they are they are looking to make an upgrade while still operating from within the intent constraints of these systems of the past.

So what SHOULD you be looking for?  
In any business, ecommerce is efficient because customers get what they need when they need it.  In the print world this means: finding the right print service provider, getting a fast quote, placing an order, paying for it, uploading files, dialog during pre-press and production, and finally getting the delivery or shipment.  These are the core basics and are the biggest stumbling blocks to a smooth customer interaction in the print business.  Who cares if they customer can modify a business card template if you can’t provide them an accurate quote, shipping options, calculate sales tax, get paid, and give them a clear order status the entire time their job is in production?  Especially if took tens of thousands of dollars in software, months of initial setup, and many hours of training and configuration for each of those templates.

So what’s the message?  When moving your business online, you must realize that you are fundamentally changing your business workflow for the better, first and foremost.  Ecommerce is no longer something you sell as a capability, but it is the shortest path between your customers and your business.  When done right, it is a win-win and positively affects both your top and bottom lines.  Done right, means focusing on the basics and making sure you start with a sound foundation.

This is what we think about when designing our print ecommerce killer app, get in touch with us for a demo.

Cloud computing has only begun to show its profound effect on the way software and services will be consumed from this point forward. Already many business productivity software categories such as CRM (Salesforce), Project Management (Basecamp), and even Word Processing (Google Docs, Microsoft Office 365) are either completely or well on their way into the cloud. Acceptance of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has risen due in part to the marketing dollars invested by leading cloud companies such as Salesforce and Google. Their efforts have popularized the benefits of and reduced the fear of relying on hosted services. Sentiment towards hosted services has turned remarkably quick from fear to mass adoption. As a result, many legacy companies have decided to put the shinny veneer of new and trendy on their old and tired products, in the process frequently misleading customers.

Salesforce is largely credited with coining the term Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). SaaS is an architecture that goes back to the era of time-sharing main frame computers in the 60s, subsequently with its modern iteration growing out of the Application Service Provider (ASP) model of the 90s. ASP’s popped-up with the proliferation of broadband Internet connections. Distributed software then began moving from the in-house corporate data centers to colocation facilities of the software vendors. This allowed companies to offload the work of maintaining servers. However, someone still had to do it and one layer below the surface it didn’t vary by much. Although there were now many clients in the same data center (and in certain cases on the same servers via virtualization), each instance had to have the appropriate technical headroom (storage space, bandwidth, etc) and be maintained individually per client. This is the single tenant model and has inherent limitations.

Enter SaaS. A new breed of companies began treating their software as one large network. One set of hardware resources, one code base, one database, and many customer accounts. In other words: multi tenant. All of a sudden getting a client up and running required very little incremental effort, time, or cost. The resources are shared and therefore customer accounts no longer required 95% headroom. When the software is updated, it is done once for all customers at the same time. As a result, the maintenance costs for SaaS providers and the ownership costs for their client’s are far lower than an ASP’s. Coincidentally, without the SaaS model entire categories such as social networks would not be possible, as they rely on the network effect of multiple users interacting with each other.

The fact that print service providers have to transition online is no longer controversial. Choosing the right solution and understanding the disparity in return on investment between the different software delivery models is crucial. While the old Client-Server model is obviously the wrong solution today, the difference between ASP(single-tenancy) and SaaS (multi-tenancy) is equally as distinct. Paying an ASP for individual maintenance on 20 times more infrastructure than you actually need is just as outdated as paying for software license fees. Not to mention you’ll be missing out on the network effects (for example the Keen plugins which you’ll be hearing more about soon) and rapid deployment only possible with SaaS.

Based on the typical upfront cost, upkeep, and ramp-up time, we’ve done the ROI comparison for you. All the technical details aside, the dollars and sense are undeniable:

Licensed: High upfront cost, high maintenance cost, annual license renewal, long lead to first transaction, and because of the effort involved in each deployment applicable to limited segment of orders.

ASP: Still relatively high upfront cost, high monthly subscription fee regardless of actual order through-put, Still relatively long lead to first transaction, and still applicable to limited segment of orders because of the effort involved.

SaaS: No upfront cost, monthly cost tracks usage, sign-up to transactions in 2 days, designed for entire order flow, and because of virtually no additional effort applicable to most orders.

So the next time someone tries to sell you an outdated ASP in a SaaS costume, be skeptical. You can spot them by: setup fees, a long startup process, high maintenance fees, and the inability to work with other online services and partners.

Keen Systems’ CEO, Vitaly M. Golomb, will speak at Venture Summit Silicon Valley in Half Moon Bay, CA (Dec 13-14).

Venture Summit Silicon Valley (registration link) is a two-day gathering where 500 cutting-edge Internet CEOs in Digital Media and OnDemand computing meet top venture investors, corporate strategic partners, government and university officials, and members of the press and blogging communities. Internet entrepreneurs and their innovations are transforming and decentralizing large industries, including entertainment, commerce, finance, advertising, and media. At the Venture Summit, AlwaysOn introduces the next generation of “breakout” company CEOs and Founders driving the next wave of innovation in a series of industry trend debates, and in CEO Showcase presentations. A hand chosen set of other powerful investors and corporate insiders will be also on hand to present and debate the top technology and business trends and the strategies are driving success in today’s competitive innovation-driven markets.

Vitaly will present how Keen is helping print service providers leverage ecommerce to drive efficiency and expand their footprint.

Keen is currently in private beta and will be opening up a bit wider soon. Our goal is to help our customers (print service providers) to flourish online. We will be doing some free online courses, and here is the first lecture (if you can call it that). There is nothing print service providers are afraid of more and know about less today than the web. There are however highly successful paths for independent printers online. This white paper discusses ecommerce business models for print service providers.

(Source: udemy.com)