Print Solutions Magazine November, 2001 The E-Files

Print Solutions: As a business-to-business e-sourcing marketplace, how does printhotline.com benefit manufacturers and distributors?
Aftab Jiwani: Our main focus at printhotline.com is the very first step-getting multiple bids. While we can't substitute the interaction that takes place after bids are sent back and forth, we can provide a wide array of vendors to distributors who normally would have to make several calls and faxes. The manufacturers can choose to view job specs and locations, and see what's available, what's out there, without having to do anything.

PS: How much does it cost to partner with printhotline.com?
AJ: There are a few options, but at the very basic level, it costs nothing for distributors. For manufacturers, there's an annual subscription and transaction fee. The majority of people choose not to pay up front. They pay per job, which requires a 4 percent referral fee. If manufacturers want to try a flat, annual subscription rate, there are different levels. Because the industry is so segmented, we have it broken down into segments. So if you only do business forms, then you only subscribe to the business forms request line, which is $399. But if you do labels, business forms and offset 4-color printing, then you would want all those requests filtered to you and would pay our maximum fee of $499.

PS: Who are the experts distributors are matched with, and how are they found?
AJ: Our experts are manufacturers who specialize in something. If you're looking for somebody to do business forms, then you don't want your quotes to go to somebody who only does cut sheets.

PS: printhotline.com is marketed as a timesaving tool. How much time do customers generally save?
AJ: Researching quotes and prices in publications, journals and ads, making telephone calls, and preparing and submitting faxes are eliminated by filling out request for quote forms, which are sent to 50, 100, even up to 1,000 printers. If you consider the time spent researching prices, ads and everything else, our customers save a lot of time.

PS: What are some of printhotline.com's biggest challenges?
AJ: No matter how convenient and timesaving our service is, all business-to-business people are figuring out that interaction can never be substituted. Finding out printers' capabilities, experience and expertise can be figured out only by meeting them. That's the biggest challenge. Our other challenge is having printers do work off of email, such as receiving requests for quotes.

PS: With the information highway littered in dot-come deaths, what's in store for the future of the internet in this industry?
AJ: The online economy is here to stay. It's not going anywhere. I heard the other day that more than half of American households have access to the internet. I think people on Wall Street who made rash decisions caused this collapse. Their early decisions made it worse for other people who have a business plan that really works. The internet now is part of us, and it's part of doing business.

PS: As a distributor or manufacturer, what are some specific things you would do in terms of e-commerce to become more efficient, and, in time, make more money?
AJ: I've been a distributor, manufacturer and have owned a trade print shop. The most difficult thing to do is to estimate jobs when you're a distributor, especially when you have to do bigger and complicated jobs that require multiple and competitive bids. This is where most time can be saved, and that's why printhotline.com is what it is-estimating made simple. Once you do that, you have more time to get new business and respond to customers more quickly.

NEWS

WAM!NET Partners with printCafe

WAM!NET, Eagan, Minn., a technology services provider, partnered with Pittsburgh-based printCafe™, an e-commerce provider, to add WAM!NET's networking and file transfer services to printCafe's EnterpriseSite, an online print procurement and production solution for print buyers and suppliers.

ImageX.com 2nd Fastest-Growing Tech Company in Washington State

ImageX.com Inc., an e-print service provider for online management and procurement of branded communications materials, announced that it has been ranked as the second fastest-growing Washington state technology company in the Deloitte & Touche Fast 50 Program. ImageX.com's revenue grew 64,940 percent from 1996 to 2000.

Infospace.com was the first place winner in the Washington state Fast 50 Program with a
5-year growth rate of 107,704 percent. Winners of the 19 Fast 50 programs nationwide are automatically entered in the Deloitte & Touche Technology Fast 500 program, which ranks the nation's top 500 fastest-growing technology companies.

General Motors Signs with printCafe

printCafe™ has announced an agreement to provide enterprise-wide print procurement solutions to General Motors Corp., the world's largest automaker. printCafe provides print management systems for publication, commercial and print-on-demand printers, as well as custom-branded and configured web sites for print procurement.

Superior Business Solutions Partners with Four51

Kalamazoo, Mich.-based distributorship Superior Business Solutions adopted Four51, a Minneapolis-based e-solution provider, as its enterprise e-commerce solution. With Four51's WildFire

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XML transport module and because of Four51's interoperability with TopForm

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Software, Superior will automate inbound and outbound order processing among customers and suppliers.

httprint Partners with KBA

San Francisco-based e-commerce supplier httprint formed an alliance with Fairfield, N.J.-based manufacturer KBA to deliver an internet-based e-commerce solution that allows customers to digitally send files directly to presses. The system eliminates the need for press reproduction departments. Both companies plan to set up two beta sites in Germany.

iPrint Reports Sharp Revenue Drop

iPrint Technologies Inc., an e-commerce printing firm in Palo Alto, Calif., reported second-quarter revenues of $2.5 million, down 46 percent from the same period last year. The company said the results reflected its focus on controlling costs. iPrint reduced its staff from 118 to 80 during the quarter.

SMARTworks.com Partners with Intelitech

SMARTworks.com Inc., an e-business solutions provider and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dayton, Ohio-based manufacturer Standard Register, announced that Intelitech Print Management LLC, an operating unit of Intelitech International Inc., will market the company's SMARTworks technology platform to its Fortune 1000 customers. Intelitech is a document management consulting firm based in North Salem, N.Y., that specializes in print management, fulfillment, records and forms management, and document imaging.

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Table of Contents

Galaxy's New Launch

ePrintDistributors.com helps printing pros promote their online capabilities.

BY DARIN PAINTER

When operations software supplier Galaxy Solutions LLC launched its web-based Satellite e-commerce platform in April 2000, Dominick Malgeri noticed an opportunity.

"Many of our clients and prospects didn't have web sites," says Malgeri, president of the Shrewsbury, N.J.-based firm. "Many companies didn't have high-speed internet connections. Many others were being burned by expensive web designers." Document pros who did have web sites often neglected to promote them, he says. "Lack of web site promotion was—and still is—one of the industry's biggest challenges," Malgeri says. "More than anything, we wanted to provide a way to help distributors become more internet-ready."

To that end, Galaxy formed a partnership in December 2000 with InterWeave e-com LLC, a Folsom, Calif.-based firm that offers web site design and hosting, interactive database design and hosting, browser-based application development, custom web content management, and more. Last February, the firms launched ePrintDistributors.com, a business-to-business web portal that includes a variety of services to help distributors and manufacturers launch or promote their online capabilities.

The first feature Galaxy and InterWeave included on ePrintDistributors.com was a searchable list of distributorships. "If an end user in New Jersey needs a document firm that can provide e-commerce, he can type in a few keywords and find our portal right away," Malgeri says. ePrintDistributors.com is highly ranked on major search engines and directories such as Yahoo!, he says. Galaxy customers receive free listings on ePrintDistributors.com; other distributors pay a fee. Manufacturers accepting electronic orders also can be listed on the site.

Perhaps the most popular service ePrintDistributors.com offers is speedy web site creation. Distributors can choose from one of three site templates, then customize pages with logos and available products. "We had difficulty designing our web site in house because we required lots of links," says Jane Grimm, vice president of administration at Bend, Ore.-based distributorship Centro Business Systems Inc. "ePrintDistributors took over, and essentially took our trouble away. They had our site up and running in four days, which was incredible. We're very pleased with the result." Centro's password-protected web site (www.centro.com) enables end users to view and order stationery, business forms and other printed products online. (See related story on page 60.)

"We wanted to provide a way to help distributors become more internet-ready."
Dominick Malgeri
President
Galaxy Solutions LLC
Shrewsbury, N.J.

ePrintDistributors users also can gain access to a broadcast email service to aid in web site promotions, high-speed internet service (through a partnership with AT&T) and a slide presentation that end users can download. "Distributors can be out of the office, calling on new customers, while prospects essentially qualify themselves," Malgeri says. As ePrintDistributors expands, he says, companies will have the ability to create online quote requests and deliver them to select manufacturers, as well as view updated e-commerce research.

Malgeri concedes that ePrintDistributors.com is targeted primarily toward Galaxy software users who don't have e-commerce web sites (and thus aren't using the company's Satellite module). But he says the portal's services can be used by any company looking to boost the promotion of its e-services—including firms that aren't Galaxy customers.

"If you're a distributor, and you don't have any plans on getting involved with the web or e-business, than you won't fit into this solution," Malgeri says. "But any customer-focused companies that want to use technology to build or market their sites can benefit big-time."

ADVICE

Look Beyond Online Sales

Not every visitor comes to your web site to make a purchase. According to a return-on-investment study by internet research firm Jupiter Media Metrix, companies with fairly successful transactional sites are likely to extract nearly two-thirds of their total web benefit from non-transactional capabilities, such as improved payroll productivity and online-influenced sales. According to the study, ROI is 65 percent higher for companies that correctly analyze more than just online sales.

Market Research: Add Focus

If you want an indication of how well your new products or services will be received, consider focus groups. These exploratory meetings allow companies to collect consumer interpretations of specific products, services, sales techniques, advertising campaigns, logo colors and more. Focus groups can be question-and-answer sessions, group discussions, collaborative interactions or independent reviews.

Keep Partner Promos Simple

If your web site includes promotions from partners and affiliates (a good idea), keep the text and graphics simple so they don't detract from your own capabilities. Also, promoting too many third-party offers can be detrimental. Stay focused on your visitor's main interests.

Let Words Do the Selling

Editorial or product reviews--even in the form of short customer testimonials or quotes--can enhance the content on your site. A quick review of a featured product or service can show visitors, instead of just telling them, why the product or service is worth purchasing.

Use Meta Tags

If search engines play a role in your marketing strategy, understand the importance of meta tags. Meta tags, which are part of HTML code, can increase search-engine rankings of web pages that lack text. The most important meta tags for search engine indexing are the description and keywords tags. The description tag returns a description of the page in place of the summary the search engine ordinarily creates. The keywords tag provides keywords for the search engine to associate with your page.

Thwart Online Fraud

If you're worried about the risk of online fraud, consider subscribing to an address verification service, which can authenticate delivery information and speed up fulfillment. Also, prominently display warning notices on your site that stress prosecution to cyber-thieves.