Today's challenges for print production companies? Here's how to overcome them!

6 November 2024

The printing industry is in the midst of an exciting transformation. Digitalisation is coursing through its veins, creating new challenges as well as surprising opportunities. Commercial printers are facing a complex and dynamic landscape of an increasing number of small orders, a shortage of skilled staff, the pressure to operate more sustainably and a competitive low-margin market, ... How do you deal with this as a print business?

An increase in the number of small orders makes traditional scheduling impossible

Demand for print services can quickly exceed the capacity of print businesses. Consider customer demand: complex orders with special finishing processes, such as multiple print runs or unusual materials. Or supplier delays, stock shortages, printing machines that remain idle, ...

But customers expect increasingly competitive delivery times, sometimes within days or hours. Print businesses are under great pressure to optimise their logistics processes. Excessively long lead times can lead to dissatisfied customers, lost orders, reputational damage, lower margins and higher administrative costs. Just think about the edition of orders getting smaller and smaller. This causes more and more orders that are needed to achieve the same turnover. But that in turn requires more administration, which leads to higher administrative costs. This also increases the number of errors exponentially, because files are checked too late or processes are poorly coordinated. And so you keep running into challenges....

So investing in an optimal workflow or schedule is crucial. Suppose you have only 5 orders as a print business, but they are very large orders. Then planning is not difficult. If it's an edition of 10, but you have 1,000 orders, that's a huge challenge. Planning the way you used to do it is no longer possible. Manually, this is not feasible. And what's more, it comes with ever-increasing administrative costs.

Scarcity of personnel with knowledge of prepress, printing and finishing processes

Sign and print businesses face a shortage of skilled personnel, including people with knowledge of print jobs, prepress, printing, and the finishing process. This shortage makes it difficult to fill vacancies and ensure print job quality. Just think of administrative employees who do not have enough knowledge about print jobs to do calculations and order processing correctly. Companies must be creative to attract and retain talent, for example, by offering competitive wages, good benefits, training opportunities and advancement opportunities.

Automation helps relieve pressure on administrative staff and increases efficiency. Repetitive tasks such as file preparation, calculation, order processing, document printing, print job finishing can be automated. Today, autonomous print robots are used for loading and unloading materials, moving pallets and packaging print jobs. Therefore, the increasing automation and robotization way are the only way to address the current labor cost handicap and staff shortage.

Do you know the carbon emissions of each print order?

The government is forcing us to focus on sustainability: environmentally friendly materials and processes. The printing industry has a major impact on the environment through the use of paper, inks, energy and other materials. Printing machines and equipment consume a lot of energy, which leads to CO2 emissions. Therefore, print businesses need to make their processes increasingly sustainable. Invest in energy-efficient technologies, choose green materials and suppliers, and optimise waste streams.

But do you know how much CO2 your print business emits? You should be able to check this easily with the CO2 calculator in your MIS/ERP. This gives you insight into how well you are doing in reducing CO2 emissions. And it is possible to add the CO2 cost to each calculation, i.e. to each quotation and/or order. Sustainable practices ultimately not only reduce your company's carbon footprint, but also save costs and improve your corporate image.

How do you survive strong competition in the print industry?

The print industry is a competitive low-margin market with many players both locally and internationally. To survive, companies must differentiate themselves. Focus on niche markets, specialization, innovative products and services, or excellent customer service. In addition, online printing platforms present an additional challenge due to their low prices and fast delivery times. Therefore, companies must review their online strategy and optimise their digital channels to compete.

It is important to know the production cost and time of your products to make sure you are making a profit on them. This prevents you from having to rely solely on sales price, as many other print businesses do.

Overcome print challenges by addressing your administrative processes

You can own a business software that makes the exact calculation of a quotation. You can track customers properly with your MIS/ERP. Or you can use Artificial Intelligence to determine which margin gives you the greatest chance of making sales. But are all possible administrative processes already figured out from the MIS/ERP software your print business works with? Is the software connected to machine workflows, prepress solutions, accounting packages and transportation companies? And can all administrative operations be automated?

Above all, we need to address the administrative processes where the need is greatest. So halve your administrative costs per print order with an MIS/ERP like MultiPress.