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Web2Print 2.0

Web-to-print software experts change the print buying landscape forever

By Rebecca Trela

What’s new in web-to-print?
It’s a tricky question, as a divide grows between firms in the print industry. For some, web-to-print
is new technology, a popular buzzword that’s just beginning to take shape in an
e-commerce platform. Others have mastered the art of online ordering and ponder the next step, engaging in online software development and cultivating unusual partnerships.

Bellwether accounts show print technology is growing in the same way the internet is, with collaborative building and networking on top of an already-familiar web “platform.” This is sometimes referred to as “Web 2.0,” referencing the interactive, personalized, dynamic aspects that have grown from original static web applications. It is Wikipedia.org from Britannica.com; RSS feeds from bookmarks; blogging from personal homepages.

The collaborative, interactive nature of Web 2.0 transforms related enterprises in the print world. Partners in the print supply chain connect over networking hubs online. End users are courted with interactive websites such as pURLs. Machines message back and forth in real time.

Many distributors and manufacturers know that web-to-print is a sliding scale, encompassing simple online ordering to sophisticated direct-to-T-shirt systems. Most companies have tested web-to-print applications cautiously, striking a balance between what’s affordable and what customers demand. A handful of distributors and manufacturers offer more complex options and a few deal only online. As this technology inevitably grows in market share, your company must confront two questions: where do you fall on the scale now, and where do you want to be in the future?

Collaborate, Innovate, Grow
According to Slava Apel, CEO of Toronto-based Amazing Print and an industry consultant, the number of print buyers searching online has grown exponentially during his nine years in the business. “There used to be a popular search engine that could tell you how many people were searching the English-speaking internet every month for business cards, and back several years ago it was about 35,000,” he says. “Do the same study this morning and we’re at 1.5 million searches.”

Clients want to minimize their exposure to the routine, painful aspects of print buying and focus on more important jobs: interacting with business partners and working on creative, revenue-generating projects. Most look for a distributor partner who wants the same thing.

“We look at the notion of commerce as moving more toward collaboration,” says WorkflowOne Chief Technology Officer Ian O’Brien. “When you look at personalized, variable print, you want to talk about changing it more often and keeping the material current. Traditional print processes aren’t very conducive to doing that quickly or easily.”

O’Brien’s department is responsible for designing a customizable software/webware platform for the Dayton, Ohio-based distributorship to offer clients. “For us, collaboration means putting together tools that facilitate the print environment.” The company’s platform, WorkflowOneAccess, allows clients to share documents and ideas online with Workflow and branch locations. “Maybe they need a place to get ad agencies and legal counsel involved. Maybe they need to track tasks, make a calendar or share ideas without shooting off emails all over the place.”

For Workflow, creating a collaborative software program was the next logical leap in web-to-print technology they’ve offered for years. O’Brien gave the example of a bank branch: a teller could input client information when opening a new bank account. That would trigger a predetermined set of actions, managed by Workflow’s programming. The new checking account numbers and information about online banking would print within the building, and the teller would hand it over immediately. At the same time, a 4-color thank-you note would be printed in another state, ready to be mailed for follow up. The personalized software solution is an integral part of ordering print online in a new, streamlined way.

“It’s thinking about the end user’s client,” he says. WorkflowOne has expanded its web-to-print offerings by focusing on where the printed pieces end up, not on who buys it.

“A lot of our [manufacturer] customers, surprisingly, still think of each job as unique,” says Patti Quinn, workflow marketing manager at Xerox Corp. in Rochester, N.Y. Most processes, she says, can be automated for greater efficiency and cost savings. According to industry research and reading, Apel says, almost three-quarters of all print projects can be templated and offered online.

Web-to-print, asserts Mike Morgan, founder and president of Corpus Christi, Texas-based National InterPrint Corp., hasn’t just changed what print clients buy. It’s changed how they buy it. “We have been trying to get into back-end systems,” he says. “In another 10 years we’re going to look more like an ad agency with a major stake in web development.” While National InterPrint sells checks and forms, he acknowledges, selling webware solutions has become more profitable and prevalent. Webware refers to software-like applications hosted online that are browser-based, not saved to a hard drive.

“You have to make whatever you do relevant to the customer,” Morgan emphasizes. “We use Four51, and each client has a password to order from us. But sometimes it’s easier for them just to send an email. Sometimes we make them go to the website and proof it.”

Versatility is the key to surviving a changing marketplace. “You have to offer all models. You have customers who will buy only from you, only from a catalog, and some who will buy only online. If you can make them all work together, you have an ace,” Apel says.

Just Another Tool
While some industry firms offer the most sophisticated web-to-print technologies, many still view the process as a basic variant of online shopping. End users visit a website, indicate the desired merchandise, proof it in PDF and click “yes.” That act triggers a message to the distributor or manufacturer, and in some cases, begins the billing process as well.

“That’s okay,” Quinn says, “for a small shop that’s just starting down the path. Not every piece has to be automated right away. You can pick and choose, and the program builds on itself,” she says, explaining the components of Xerox’s Freeflow program.
For a few companies, web-to-print is a bad phrase. They protest that the technology is too expensive for a small company to invest in, or claim that online ordering writes them out of the print deal. In a few instances, online reordering does take reps away from the client’s office and removes them from the gatekeeping position between end user and manufacturer or company owner. The fear of losing clients to a more gregarious (and present) sales rep, or getting cut out of the distribution channel, has halted the growth of web-to-print options in many cases.

“I’d like to think web-to-print would benefit my clients,” says Dave Dewitt, president of AceComputer Essentials, a distributorship in Lansing, Mich. “But I haven’t offered it. Our manufacturers aren’t with us there yet. And our sales force—they’ve been in the order-taking business for so long that they’re great at it. They don’t have marketing expertise, they have print expertise.”
To sustain long-term success as a print provider, it’s essential to leverage technology to your advantage. Web-to-print cannot replace who you are and what you do—it must help you do it, faster and more accurately.

There will always be complicated or creative print jobs—metallic inks, hand gluing—that require the personal touch. There will always be customers, both new and old, who need hand-holding and constant attention. But that’s not the majority of situations. “If I know everything about the customer, I can create their own digital asset management inventory,” Apel emphasizes. “I make it easy for them to keep ordering from me, liking me, and then concentrate on the moneymaking part of my business. Let us be a creative society and not a busy society.”

The Portal to Success
In the past year, savvy web-to-print providers have used software to nab a bigger piece of the business communication pie. In October, Kodak launched a program called the MarketMover Network at Graph Expo in Chicago. This program, which uniquely positions the Four51 network for printers, is part of a growing interest in collaboration.

“It’s like MySpace,” says Gary Nemcek, president of Four51’s Networks Group, suggesting analogous social networks. “You define your friends and contacts through similar contacts and interests. Through these people, your networks grow and you make more contacts—or in this case, conduct commerce. We’re bringing together communities that, in the past, it was impossible to do so or too cumbersome to bother.” He likened the service to a utility company, in the business of facilitating connections through webware interfaces.

Kodak’s segment of Four51 was designed to put Kodak’s customers, who are industry printers coast-to-coast, in touch with one another and with print jobs. “We use it for load-balancing and communication,” says Karl Post, senior manager of customer development at Kodak. “We find that in general, it works best for printing and distributing marketing collateral for distributed franchise organizations.”

While business cards take a lot of the limelight in web-to-print, they’re not the only print product that works well in an online order situation. Business cards serve as a point of entry for many companies, both for ease of intelligibility (the customer will order an item he can’t touch if it’s a simple design) and ease of templatibility (only a few variable fields). Once that template asset is available online, it sits unchanged, gathering revenue, while the company invests in other aspects of the business: calendars, postcards, brochures, even variable data print.

“Early in the web-to-print boom, some distributors and suppliers built proprietary technology to tie people in,” Nemcek says. This “fencing in” bothered a lot of distributors, because it builds a unique and tangled relationship with one supplier. “If you join a network, you don’t have to be fenced in,” Nemcek says. “You don’t just have to be ‘friends’ with one person.” Of course, there is a plethora of boxed and custom IT web-to-print solutions.

“In many respects, what we do looks similar to other web-to-print applications,” Nemcek says. “But it’s not just order and print. It’s a whole communications network.”

One of the bigger end users on the Kodak network, a nationwide pizza franchise, uses the customizable interface to allow franchise owners to order coupons, fliers and pizza shop products. But the corporate parent retains brand control by limiting the options available to each level of the management hierarchy. The materials for each pizza shop are printed and mailed locally by companies on the MarketMover Network.

Eventually, Post says, print jobs on the network will be automatically routed based on predetermined metrics of time, place, capacity and equipment. Connections between all 50 networked companies are now made manually. “We know that Four51 can automate those connections, but we wanted to make them manually to learn the vagaries of the system. It’s only been in place since October.”

Moving up the scale of web-to-print options means increasing your firm’s time, money and personnel commitment, but it can also yield bigger jobs and offers the advantage of staying on the front edge of technology.

According to a 2004 InfoTrends study, about a third of web-to-print enabled companies purchased an e-business solution from a vendor, a third developed it internally, and the last third used a combination of the two. Most of the vendor-based solutions are subscription services, not transactional sales.

National InterPrint Corp. is also still finding just the right mix of web-to-print, currently using a blend of Four51 and in-house programming. “It’s a good solution, and it’s gotten us some accounts, but it’s not everything,” Morgan says. “We wanted billing functionality, and we wanted it to work with the other order entry management and back-end software we have to use,” he says, highlighting another important trend in the web-to-print market. As web use has grown, more communication and intraoffice functionality has become completely or partially digitized. All of those electronic solutions must now collaborate.

Apel also offers alternative software solutions for those looking to get into web-to-print. “We’re like Adobe,” he describes, illustrating how Amazing Print offers a different webware package with interfaces for both distributors and manufacturers. “If you’re a printer and you don’t want to invest in writing a backend system, we have the templates. We also function as an ASP system that connects printers and distributors,” much like Four51’s network. “You can license our software and be a competitor to VistaPrint in 20 minutes,” he says. The software is optimized to not only facilitate web-to-print ordering but also to market its licensees online, increasing their web transactions at no additional sales costs.

“What is the coolest thing in web-to-print?” Apel asks. “The adoption rate. Look at how many people are going online everyday to buy. Look at what capabilities end users have now, with template-based printing and data merge capabilities. The pie keeps getting bigger and bigger. You can literally do anything.”

Rebecca Trela is assistant editor at Print Solutions magazine. Email comments to rtrela@PSDA.org.

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