For the average citizen who wants to print their own holiday greeting cards or party invitations, a simple web-to-print service is usually sufficient. The parameters are simple, there are relatively low expectations for quality, and the quantities are small. Any Internet based service provider or even the local drugstore is probably capable of handling the project to the customer’s satisfaction.
Clearly, that is not the case with an organization that needs a long-term print service provider. That kind of partner needs to be able to handle large print volumes, print materials at very high quality levels, and flex to accommodate whatever special requirements the client brings to them along with their project. Unfortunately, many organizations find themselves linked to a print provider that is limited in their abilities, leaving them unable to accomplish what they really need to.
Here are five reasons that you need a print provider that offers a team with plenty of real-world experience. Equipment is important, but there’s no substitute for the knowledge and skill that come with years of hands-on work.
1. Ability to Anticipate Issues
There is an enormous difference between fixing a problem after it occurs and preventing the problem from occurring in the first place. In most cases, the major factor at play is experience. If you submit a design for a mailer, catalog, postcard, or other piece of collateral, an experienced print manager may be able to take a look and let you know that some adjustments may be necessary to get the final result you want.
On the other hand, having that realization once the printing is complete is not nearly as helpful! At that point, the decision is between sending the piece “as is” even though it’s not really satisfactory, or discarding the printed materials and starting over at significant expense.
2. Suggestions For Improvements
Even if there are no potential issues with the design you submit, it may be that modifications or enhancements to the design could take it to a whole new level of effectiveness. The Spectra print facility, for instance, uses advanced HP Indigo presses that offer capabilities for many special ink colors and textures. A simple enhancement like raised printing can make a postcard stand out from the other mail in the mailbox and give it a much higher chance of getting the recipient’s full attention.
3. Catching Mistakes Earlier and More Often
Do print managers make fewer mistakes the longer they work in the industry? Yes, but more importantly, they learn that as human beings, they will always have the potential to make mistakes, no matter how experienced they are. A healthy respect for our own imperfection as human beings leads us to implement quality control measures that counterbalance any mistakes that we might make along the way.
A great example of one of these measures is the use of barcodes to link official pieces of mail with the corresponding envelopes addressed to the right individuals. We don’t trust any single team member to get a document with an individual’s private information on it into the correct envelope. Instead, the barcode on the document and the envelope must match when scanned, verifying that they belong together.
4. Integration With Fulfillment
The fulfillment division at Spectra is a world-class facility serving clients from small e-commerce startups to national and global corporations with hundreds of B2B clients. Having both fulfillment and print under the same roof means that our experience extends not only to print, but also to integrating print and fulfillment tasks for our clients. Organizations that choose to combine these services and have Spectra handle them in this integrated manner find that they save surprising amounts of time, capital, and communication with every project.
5. Mail and Distribution Savings
The average shopper at an e-commerce website may be baffled by how shipping costs are calculated, but the truth is, they are only aware of the tip of the iceberg! Working with UPS, FedEx, the US Postal Service, and other distribution partners is incredibly complex, and there are many potential factors that can raise the total cost dramatically by the time a project is complete. Accessorial costs related to weight, timing of pickups and deliveries, and other factors often “sneak up” on print service providers and their clients, and at the end of the project, those unexpected expenses have cut deeply into profits.
Again, an experienced team like the one at Spectra knows what to look out for, what questions to ask ahead of time to eliminate potential surprises, and how to plan the project from end to end such that it remains within the designated budget.
Our experience with the Postal Service also allows us to use advanced strategies such as commingling to give our clients access to discounted bulk postage rates. These discounts are significant, and over the course of a long-term partnership, they add up to real savings in capital that can be applied to other areas, rather than paying higher than necessary costs for postage!
Experience Pays Off
Of course, these are not the only areas in which experience on the part of your print services team pays off. With a partner like Spectra that has years of success behind it, your organization can conduct print projects that you may not have thought were possible. Books, magazines, catalogs, training materials, calendars, welcome packets, and other advanced projects are all well within our capabilities, and we regularly work with organizations to execute specialized, highly individual print projects.
If you would like to explore how Spectra’s experience could take your organization’s print materials to the next level, book an appointment with one of our experts. We’ll show you examples of what we’ve done for organizations like yours and help you visualize what a partnership with Spectra would look like. With our help, you can bypass the “learning stages” and jump straight to having an experienced, knowledgeable print services provider at your side to make all of your printed collateral look and feel incredible.
