1. While pondering this letter, I began to think about all of the
tools we use to communicate. Not just in our industry, but
also in our everyday lives. Recently, I had the opportunity
to attend TWTRCON in New York City, a one-day conference
dedicated to the use of Twitter in business. Sitting in
the conference room was a unique
experience. The audience consisted
of a number of agencies, media and
individuals hoping to learn more
about promoting their small business
on Twitter. Almost everyone sitting
at the round conference tables
had their laptop plugged into the
charging stations and logged onto the wireless. Next, they
pulled up their social media dashboard of choice to update
their followers regarding the discussion of Twitter use by
organizations such as Whole Foods, Newell Rubbermaid,
Comcast, TurboTax and NASA. As speakers were interviewed
on stage, TWTRCON’S live feed of tweets updated instantly
on a large projector screen next to them almost as quickly
as the content left their lips. It was fast. It was furious. It
flowed seamlessly. It was, I reminded myself, just one other
aspect of communication in the 21st century.
As we have all seen in recent years, our businesses
must change to provide our clients with the tools they
need to communicate. It is an exciting time to be involved
in the future of print. The theme for this issue, “Print Shop
of the 21st Century” is fitting because our clients want
faster turnaround, more product options, multi-channel
communication and informed consultation. It is about
providing the right message in a seamless, relevant way. To
provide this customer experience, we need the right tools
and processes in place within our business to ensure we can
deliver what we promise. This issue will visit part two of one
company’s journey integrating business systems, as well as
discuss the aspects of choosing an automated workflow to
meet your business needs. You will learn how one company,
immersed in a natural disaster, used social media not only
to communicate with clients and employees, but also to
set up an e-commerce site to sell posters with proceeds
going to the community. This disaster also prompted a
discussion regarding disaster recovery—do you have plans
in place in case the unthinkable happens? In the business
section, you will learn how one company is reaping the
benefits of lean manufacturing. Finally, round out the issue
by learning about digital finishing technology for label
and large-format.
Having belonged to this community a little more than
a year, I continue to be amazed at the power of members
who are willing to share both triumphs and stepping
stones in the path to growing their companies. We also
have some great Partners who can help us implement
programs, automate processes to meet client demand and
help us show value in combining the power of print with
other communication vehicles. As always, the content in
Dscoop Quarterly can only be as relevant as the feedback
we receive. If you would like to see a particular issue
addressed, please e-mail us at news@dscoop.org.
Sincerely,
Krista Fischer
Director of Marketing,
L&D Mail Masters, Inc.
Technical Reviewer, Dscoop Quartlery
Volume 4 – Issue 3 | august 2010
Workflow
Automation
Solutions
page 3
issue sponsors
Technical
2 — Disaster Recovery
After the
Tennessee Floods
3 — Workflow Automation
Solutions: The Key to
Profitability and Client
Integration
4 — Dscoop and InfoTrends
Offer Guidance in
Purchasing Decisions
5 — Path to Progress,
Part Two: Making the
Transition to Marketing
Service Provider
Label Packaging
6 — Production Automation
8 — Digital Finishing
Technology
Large-Format Signage
9 —Digital Die Cutters
Save Time and Money
Business Sales
9 — The Impact of Lean on
RT Associates
Disaster Recovery
After the Floods
page 2

2. Making the Transition to Marketing Service
Provider by Integrating Major Business Systems
By David Smith, Director of Business Development, Williams Visual Solutions and Technical Chair, Dscoop Board of Directors davidsmith@wmsco.com
This is a follow-up to an article first published in the Dscoop Quarterly
in the summer Issue of 2009. To read the original article, visit
www.dscoop.org/dscoopquarterly and log in to access the Archives.
Along with a rebranding of the business and realignment of resources
internally, a significant investment has been made at Chattanooga,
Tenn.-based Williams Visual Solutions in technologies to provide
marketing solutions products and services, and to engineer scalable
and refined processes and further optimize production. Meanwhile,
we continue to struggle in our traditional market space (the ultra-
competitive and overcapacity 40” offset market) and have lost some
opportunities that have damaged the traditional
business base and required a thorough
re-analysis of our strategy and its execution.
While we are still very much committed
to the new products and services program, we
have not aligned our messaging to the customer
and prospect quickly enough, and as a result
have not made as much progress as hoped in
delivering new business. Williams Company
(rebranded as Williams Visual Solutions) is
now truly in the early stages of leveraging the
newly installed technologies for our internal
use while implementing limited but important
developments for our customers and prospects.
Currently, resources and activities are roughly
split between our own marketing programs and
ongoing customer project engagements.
It is important to realize that the process
of developing programs for customers and prospects involves
a significantly larger capture of customer requirements then a
traditional print job, one of the factors in its longer sell cycle. As a
result, sales discipline and focus, customer service retraining and
continual internal production process development are crucial to the
process and must be an ongoing effort.
Implementing the technologies we have added has been a
struggle at times due to resource constraints and business challenges.
While the Web-enabled print and media services platform we chose,
Online Print Solutions (OPS), is an extremely robust product and has
a wide variety of capabilities, it (like all Web-based workflow toolsets)
presents a challenge to plug into existing MIS systems, especially
legacy-based systems. Integration into existing workflows can be very
challenging and requires taking a step back and determining if existing
workflows are appropriate. Nonetheless we are making good progress
and have great expectations for our portal-based products.
Ongoing Sales and Marketing Efforts
The addition of Web-to-print and multi-touch, multi-channel media
capabilities have opened new doors for our sales and marketing
resources team. However, so often the immediacy of need is much less
than with a typical traditional print project requirement, resulting in
frustration with the sales and management team. Almost without fail,
our conversations with customers and prospects migrate to social
networking, websites and e-mail communications. This is the way of
life today for companies with $20 million to $80 million in sales, the
prospect size that has traditionally been the target of many small
to mid-size commercial printers. Budgets have been slashed and
remaining resources have been moved away
from print. This trend has accelerated during the
economic downturn and traditional collateral
likely will never recover to pre-recession levels.
But the argument remains strong for a company
that provides superior service and has enough
differentiators to create space in the market.
And the opportunities exist, but they require
perseverance and diligence in the prospecting
and sales process. Using our own technologies to
market and develop business is a renewed focus.
Current Projects
Current projects underway include: a retail
(Williams-branded) Web portal for ad hoc job
submission, an event and activity triggered
multi-channel and multi-touch programs portal,
and a conventional Web-to-print catalog-based
application for print-on-demand and pick and pack.
Our first traditional OPS-based pick and pack and demand
print Web portal is scheduled to release in late July. The Web-driven
inventory reporting and flexible workflow and shipping options
that we are creating with OPS will offer a very competitive system,
comparable to more traditional logistics software systems, and provide
many optional marketing resource center-like services to develop
for our customers as their familiarity with the portal technology
grows. We have had early success with multi-channel campaigns and
are perfecting our process and workflow with both our customer
campaigns and internal campaigns.
Implementation is a Full-Time Job!
In the first article, I wrote about our aggressive plans for systems
integration. Our progress on implementation of integrations
mentioned in the previous article is as follows: Server switching,
data and backbone systems including VOIP (continued on page 6)
5
Path to Progress
P a r t T w o

3. 6
Path to Progress(continued)
telecommunications platform was completed in early
2010. Server and workflow implementation across
the organization has been phased in starting with
the creative and new technologies teams. Ongoing
resource requirements to fully implement a solutions-
based architecture must be acknowledged and
planned for in the business growth plan.
Next Phase:
Process Automation and
Further Work on Integrations
Our integrations still in progress include OPS
(Integrated Web and Print Services) to Logic (MIS).
This integration is several months behind schedule,
but it is mostly our fault for not devoting the
necessary resources to this issue earlier in the year.
Also the depth and complexity of such an integration
requires a clear and well documented path for the
handling of transactions. Like many other Web-
enabled technology providers to the industry, OPS
has continually updated their product and has added
an integration to preflight software (Enfocus PitStop),
a workflow solution and integration to PressWise for
imposition and workflow management, and is working
on a prepress link into the Screen Trueflow workflow.
Originally we had planned to use an offline imposition
system tied into the various output streams from OPS
and our other workflows, but in light of the above
integrations and partnerships, we are reconsidering
our plans.
Lessons Learned
Several valuable lessons have been learned from
this process that are important in any project of this
scope and multiple vendor activity.
Be sure that you have a clear scope of project
and a detailed listing of what you will receive in
hardware, software and services. If you plan to redo
your core IT infrastructure, it is critical to identify
upfront a detailed network plan including network
naming schema, IP and domain naming conventions
and machine types and operating systems. We have
had to backtrack and rework configurations because
network names and addresses in the Windows domain
have clashed with default setups on Apple servers
and Apple Bonjour technology.
It is also critically important to ensure your
marketing plan is in step with your new product
offerings, and timetables are set and adhered to for
marketing communications, sales team and business
development objectives.
In the last 24 months, there has been a renaissance in label and packaging convertors
needing to radically update their Management Information System (MIS) solutions.
The MIS market is highly fragmented, but it can be generalized as providing the functions
of business management and overall management of end-to-end production for any
production type.
Almost every packaging converting site has some kind of MIS at the most basic level
of job planning and billing, if not more. Recent research shows that in the commercial
printing market, the adoption of MIS solutions reaches 55 percent of printers. In the label
and packaging market, it reaches almost 100 percent, and yet we see a change in the way
convertors look at MIS and what they expect to gain from it.
Drivers and Motivations
Two main challenges are driving this new interest in modern MIS systems. One relates to
the maturity, even commoditization, of analog printing pages. Fierce pricing competition
and eroding margins of packaging printing drive the need to be more efficient, and
efficiency means automation.
The second challenge comes from wide adoption of digital printing, and the market’s
needs for short runs, resulting in a need to deal with hundreds of stock-keeping units
(SKUs) per day. In a world of manually touching each and every job, and dealing with it—for
planning or prepress—even as little as 10 minutes can cause bottlenecks in production
procedures and workflow. Converters must automate entering orders—if not all of them,
then at least those that are reprints of successful past jobs.
Market data shows that the MIS market is highly fragmented and geographically
distributed. More than 100 MIS solutions are available in the market today. None of those
vendors have more than 10 percent market share, and almost all of them are either
available in the U.S. or in Europe. In addition, 70 percent of the MIS solutions at packaging
convertors are home-grown, meaning that they were developed by the convertor for his
specific needs.
Home-grown MIS systems gained popularity in the past decade due to the high prices
of standard solutions (in many cases, the final price was twice the originally assumed price
because of the integration price component in MIS buying), and the long and excruciating
process of implementation. The worst part was that at the end, many users felt it wasn’t
exactly what they wanted. A huge barrier was the need to integrate such a system with the
existing devices, software components, and manufacturing tools that each site had. Every
site had to start the process almost from scratch.
At those terms, no wonder most of the market preferred a tailored solution—built for
them, according to their own requirements. But home-grown solutions are hardly ever built
to grow. They are perfect for a highly known production environment and capacity, but in
most cases, implementing changes requires so much effort that it’s like starting over again.
Such a change in production habits and the environment drives many owners of old MIS
systems to look for a new or upgraded solution.
Production Automation
in the Label and Packaging
Environment
LabelPackaginggg
By Sharon Rothschild, HP Indigo Strategic Marketing, Labels and Packaging Workflow
sharon.rothschild@hp.com