Print Solutions Magazine, March 2005 -- The E-Files

A Hole-in-One, High-Tech Solution

Distributorship dotcom.printing.inc. teams with a California tech company to streamline video and print data.

BY JOE DONATELLI

THE FILE ON DOTCOM.PRINTING.INC.

Company: dotcom.printing.inc.

Launched: 1999

Location: Eden Prairie, Minn.

Principals: Ken Langehaug, owner and president

Business in Brief: dotcom.printing.inc. is a distributorship that offers its clients the ability to store video and text on easy-to-search CD-ROMs.

Let’s say there’s a country club golf course. We’ll call it Bushwood. And let’s say that one of its members—we’ll call him Judge Smails—loses a big bet on a short putt and throws his putter in a fit of rage. The putter strikes a female patron. Is the golf course liable for her injury? Are Bushwood officials obliged to call her an ambulance? Who, if anyone, should contact the police?

This is information that Bushwood employees need to know before Judge Smails rains excuses for civil litigation upon club members. But making risk management information available to the right employees can be a cumbersome, imperfect process for businesses and insurers. That’s where dotcom. printing.inc. comes in.

Functional Design

Distributorship dotcom.printing.inc., Eden Prairie, Minn., teamed up with tech company YesVideo, Santa Clara, Calif., to offer clients video and text on easy-to-search CD-ROMs. Instead of sending an assistant greenskeeper into the basement to pore over safety manuals and watch VHS videos, our fictitious golf course officials can let him research risk management on a personal computer. “We started this with an insurance company that needed to educate golf courses on how to limit exposure to risk,” says Ken Langehaug, president of dotcom.printing.inc. “A typical golf course has to deal with a box of binders, manuals and VHS tapes designed for group education. We offer individualized training.”

The CD-ROMS provide a variety of functionality. Individuals can search for the information they need, but managers also can cut and paste from video clips and then email snippets of video—or whole video segments—to employees. The same can be done with text files. Managers can create playlists that categorize digital information by specific subjects. The user also can email these video playlists to specific employees who need them most.

The user interface is divided into three segments. On the left side, an interactive video player allows individuals to choose which video clip he or she wants to view or edit.

On the right side is a visual display field for the video clip and a toolbar that allows users to play, pause, fast forward and rewind. In the bottom right corner is a button that gives users access to PDF files, which they can print from their computers. “We’ve distributed the cost of printing, collating and shipping to the field,” Langehaug says. dotcom.printing.inc placed nine videotapes and hundreds of printed pages into three CD-ROMS for its insurance company client. Langehaug estimates that he saved the customer $300,000 in video and printed materials.

Streamlined Sales Tool, Hollywood Quality

A purchasing employee for the insurance company that supplies the CD-ROMs to its golf course customers says the biggest savings are time and materials. “This is something that we have created already and that we can use year after year,” he says. “It keeps us from reprinting booklets, which becomes expensive.” The CD-ROMs also provide customers with a learning tool that’s alive and animated. While access to PDF files is useful, the video is what sells it, the employee says. “You used to have this piece of videotape here and this piece of information there, and all of the explanation of how to find the information was done by word of mouth,” he says. “Now we can use this same information as a sales tool. It has that professional feel.”

If you’ve ever taken a home movie to CVS, Best Buy or Walgreens and had it converted to a DVD, then you’ve used YesVideo technology. For dotcom.printing.inc., YesVideo takes PDF and MPEG files, and encodes and embeds them with software that lets users access each file. Jason Primuth, director of business development at YesVideo, compares the functionality of the CD-ROMs to Hollywood DVDs. “What we’re doing isn’t revolutionary from a technical standpoint,” Primuth says. “But it’s revolutionary from a print standpoint.”

Langehaug says the idea was born during brainstorming sessions with clients. dotcom.printing.inc. and YesVideo spent a year bringing the product to market. Now both companies hope to capitalize on its potential customer savings. “It’s hugely successful and it’s technology-driven,” says Langehaug. “If I hadn’t talked to Jason about YesVideo’s capabilities, this wouldn’t have happened.” Primuth says that YesVideo technology is being used by other business entities, such as lawyers who want to search through the text or video of legal depositions.

Going Forward

dotcom.printing.inc. plans to expand its interactive offerings, Langehaug says. The company is streamlining a showcase architectural manual—with all of its digital printing, tabs and collation—into CD-ROMs. Langehaug expects to increase the company’s sales from $1.4 million last year to $2 million this year. Its biggest growth products are pressure sensitive labels, but the conversion of printed media to CD-ROM will contribute “significant” growth, he says.

A potential application: taking educational materials—text, video, speeches—from statewide organizations and converting them to CD-ROMs, which users could access on computers at their leisure. Such a move, says Langehaug, would reduce costs, time, materials, housing, transportation and overall attendance costs associated with large group presentations. “There’s a lot of revenue in printing and related services,” Langehaug says. “We’re not that big of a company, but we’re positioned right to get things done.”

Joe Donatelli is a freelance writer in Los Angeles. Email us your comments at bholt@printsolutionsmag.com.