Think both sides of the press – Print21 magazine article

So you’ve decided which digital press you want to invest in. Now your troubles really begin because, in order to make money out of it, the aspiring digital printer must also ensure that everything which comes before and after the press will contribute to profit – and not pain. Warren Davey explains how.

Making a move to digital print is not just about being able to get to print more quickly by avoiding plate-making and press run ups; it is to do with the supply of short-run, quick turnaround jobs - and making money while doing it. There is no point in having a digital printing machine if the jobs it produces are held up either side of the press, resulting in the labour involved rendering such jobs unprofitable. Therefore, analysing your needs before and after any digital press is a serious proposition.

This requires an understanding of the limitations of digital production. For instance, digital printing is generally more expensive to produce when compared to longer offset runs, so digital runs are usually much shorter, unless complex variable data printing is involved. The format size is usually limited to A3 extra and the choice of stocks is often limited in weight, texture and finish. Also, even with the very best equipment, not every job can be printed digitally to achieve a high enough quality without modifications to the job, and not every digital job can be finished easily, especially if the finishing involves varnishes, foils, die cuts and complex folding.

The major implications of these limitations are:
* Shorter run lengths mean more of everything except money, necessarily. Shorter runs translate into more jobs, significantly multiplying all administration from sales to workflow to logistics to accounting.
* A limitation in available stocks by comparison to conventional printing processes means that designers can’t choose stocks that they may have become used to or like for whatever reason. The result is that printing sales people have to advise and educate customers on what they can or can’t do with any particular stock. Stock limitations also impact on how well or easily a job can be finished.
* Not being able to print all jobs digitally means that they need to be scrutinised for their suitability for digital output and there needs to be a ‘Plan B’.
* Format size can restrict the option of digital completely. If the job doesn’t fit on digital machinery, no matter how short the run is it can’t be done digitally. Again, a ‘Plan B’ is needed.
* Not being able to finish every digital job easily means that rules need to be applied to keep jobs within what can be achieved realistically with the equipment you have. Often printers find out after the job has been accepted and printed that the finishing will take longer than the printing because it has to be done by hand, or the profitability is lost due to having to outsource.

Needless to say, having solutions for these points is crucial for a successful outcome with digital printing and, more importantly, to ensure that you don’t let your customer down with either a substandard job or a missed deadline that could jeopardise your relationship and all the other work you may do for them.

Equally important is making sure sales staff are setting the correct expectations when it comes to digital. Is it realistic to suggest that jobs can be done equally as well via digital? Focusing on profitability is, of course, paramount otherwise, even if you manage to satisfy your customers by performing miracles, you’ll be making a loss and soon may not be there for it to matter. While high margins are achievable with short run work, there is no margin for inefficiency or error; the mark-up percentage may be high, but smaller jobs mean the job value is low. One slip and the profitability is gone; one major slip and you are losing money.

In other words, to ensure profitability for every job, the amount of time spent on each job has to be kept to an absolute minimum.

Eliminate the human touch
So when pondering your move into digital print, make sure that you look closely at both sides of the press. Do your current systems allow for your jobs to move seamlessly through to the press with little or no human intervention? This means having a system that is capable of addressing as much of the administration as possible, ideally to a point where a job can be submitted online through an electronic pipeline that can analyse the job content, decipher its appropriateness and, from there on, apply any number of rules to the job to ensure a correct result at the digital press. Concurrently, it should be generating an invoice and delivery slip automatically.

Meanwhile, finishing equipment suited to the output of your digital press needs to be in place to complete the job. For example, dry toner-based systems nearly always require scoring before folding, especially where heavy coverage of toner goes over the fold, to avoid cracking. Other issues include scuffing, static, poor adhesion of laminates and varnishes and where accuracy is required for complex folding or die cutting. It can be tempting to have inline finishing but this is not always the answer unless you are doing a lot of the same sort of work. Also the sort of work that can be finished using inline equipment is often not as lucrative.

So while narrowing down what machinery your business should choose is one thing, making sure you have what is needed to make a success of it is another. When thinking about digital production, a holistic approach is a wise one. A completely new and totally separate business plan should be created rather than striving for solutions to augment or plug holes in your current one.

You may think the answer to gaining more business is to simply drop a new digital box into your business as it currently stands but in reality, more often than not, it definitely isn’t.