How to Create a "Print on Demand" Production Process (Part 2)

The e-commerce solution has facilitated the cooperation of all parties and made it easier for everyone to come together, thus eliminating intermediate links, reducing duplication of work to a minimum, achieving higher quality, faster production, and saving time and money.

Whether or not most print service providers implement e-commerce solutions, their users will certainly implement it. According to some authoritative sources, 89% of medium-sized companies in the United States (ie, companies with revenues between 10 and 25 million yuan) have used the Internet for procurement, sales, and banking in the past 12 months. Dealing with 1/4 of the company's online shopping. In addition, according to surveys, 59% of the interviewed persons had purchased online in 1998, or planned to purchase online during the year.

According to Forrester Research, the business-to-consumer e-commerce market has increased from 7.8 billion yuan in 1998 to 1080 billion US dollars in 2003, an increase of 1400%. But even more powerful is BtoB's e-commerce. The amount of online business in the United States soared from 43 billion in 1998 to 1.3 trillion in 2003, accounting for 9.4% of commercial sales. The growth rate in the five years was almost 3000%. According to analysis by the Boston Consulting Group, by 2003, e-commerce among enterprises accounted for 24% of all inter-company commerce. But in many cases these companies just advertise themselves online, and sales are still done offline. It is expected that soon they will start a one-on-one transaction on the Internet, weaving the world of e-commerce. In addition, people are increasingly using the "package shopping" plan. With an e-commerce interface, print service providers can bring their service content to market through other types of Internet sites, thus providing new sales channels. For example, online mail-order services combine the power of the Internet with the target of direct mail-order. Users can use the PC to generate electronic files, then transfer the files to the supplier's server for printing, stapling, and then send them to the mail order line for delivery.

All these data come from the relatively economically developed United States. Some business models are still in their infancy. However, in an increasingly internationalized country, this is also an inevitable trend. Undoubtedly, the era of digital printing will come. People need digital printing, which is profitable.

2. Select equipment (scanning equipment, PC Mac, digital printing machine).

In the process of market research, it can be found that the price, quality, and speed of digital printing equipment are all very different. Enterprises should do what they can, adapt to local conditions, and choose equipment according to their own strength and geographical characteristics. On-demand color printing can be roughly divided into two types according to the market demand: one is that the color capacity is less than 3,000 copies, the contents of these print products are the same, and the printing time is calculated in days; the other is not large, personalized Very strong, printing time is calculated in hours. In the two situations mentioned above, the following printing methods are recommended. The first way: using DTP system color separation laser phototypesetter output film, and then proofing, printing. This method is the shortest printing method with the lowest cost in China. The second method: scanning, color separation, editing, typesetting using a DTP system, and outputting on any one of a zinc oxide plate, a water-based plate, sulfate paper, or a special film base coated with a hydrophilic layer using a 1200 dpi laser printer Printing plate, the printing plate is directly hung on the small offset printing machine to print the text or image. The advantage is that there is no need for film and less investment. The disadvantage is that the image quality is not high, color images need to be overprinted, and the overprinting of the monochrome offset printer without side and front gauges is not allowed. The third way is: using a digital printer. This method still requires a scanner or a digital camera to capture the image, and then sends the captured image to a computer for color separation using image processing software (such as Photoshop) and graphic imposition and page design software (such as PageMaker). Editing, retouching, page designing, etc., and then transfer the graphic information to the digital printing press to output the color print.

In coastal cities and developed inland cities, business activities are relatively frequent, and the advanced technology is more solid and can be selected with higher quality and higher quality equipment. Underdeveloped cities should choose equipment based on customer conditions.

3. Operational mode, hybrid operation plan - integrates various services into a seamless combination of document management, purchasing, and delivery. The hybrid combines the best combination of internal and external resources to meet a variety of business needs. It creates a collective production printing team. The printing equipment can be in-plant printing, part of the network, or domestic. Or anywhere in a commercial printing facility.

4. Cultivate markets and customers

The second major trend in the three trends (also known as megatrends) affecting the mode of business activities in the next 10 years is the use of personalized technology and one-to-one marketing tools to establish effective user relationship management. program.

User relationship management (CRM) refers to a set of technologies that enable organizations to collect data about users, transactions, services, and demographics from internal and external sources of information and analyze them for effective access, retention, and Serve users.

CRM can predict the needs of users and deliver them through the appropriate combination of products and services when the users need them. The concept is to serve the users' lifelong needs and ultimately sell more products and services. The four goals of CRM are: to win users, retain users, cross-sell (sell new service content to existing users), and upgrade sales (services that will be sold to users are upgraded)—in other words, to expand Market share, but also to expand the user surface.

For example, a car dealer sells a car to someone, while also providing a regular maintenance and insurance package (where the seller provides a "service" product, and since insurance is not his core business, this service is Cooperated with insurance providers). With the passage of time, the automobile dealerships regularly send personalized car maintenance information to the owner, and even send a coupon to the required service content. For this kind of value-added service, the owner will provide information about his personal lifestyle, car usage, etc. to the car dealer. Other detailed information can be obtained through the service of the car. This information of the owner can be used to tailor the service content, such as modifying the time of sending the data, or improving the service content provided.

Finally, when the owner wants to buy a new car, he will receive a specially-made pamphlet for him. The products introduced are designed according to his lifestyle, driving habits, and personal preferences.

The responsibility of the printing supplier is to provide users with tools such as variable data, one-to-one market sales, and data collection to help them implement CRM plans.

5. After equipment installation and debugging, employees (management personnel, sales personnel, and operating personnel) are trained.

6. The above five items are successfully completed before trial operation.

Fives. to sum up:

On-demand printing production processes and traditional printing processes, whether from the process or operating policies are too different, but the process of printing on-demand has a relatively flexible, more suitable for today's personalized social culture. How to effectively organize an on-demand printing process and how to achieve the highest profits is a requirement for deeper research on the ancestors engaged in printing business.