The ongoing pandemic has caused many businesses shift operations to include remote or hybrid workspaces and learn to reach consumers through marketing in new ways. However, print marketing remains a powerful strategy to position a business for competitive success.
Statistics show that marketing campaigns that combine both print and digital strategies are 400% more effective. And even 92% of the younger generation — the 19 to 23-year-olds that grew up on digital media — find print easier to read than digital content. Seventy-seven precent of consumers claim that print drives better recall, an important factor for businesses in hypercompetitive industries.
All this is good news for production print shops and businesses that bring their production printing needs in-houseif close attention is paid to the final product. Proper print finishing is crucial for high-quality marketing collateral — or any print end product, whether long or short run. However, bottlenecks at the finishing department can derail finishing efforts and slow down project delivery, a problem for print shops and individual enterprises. The answer? Focusing on streamlining and perfecting your print finishing strategy to assist workflows and create better, more professional print products.
How Tackling Finishing First Pays Big Dividends
It is crucial to direct attention to post-press needs in advance of getting that big workload or last-minute order. Having a high-speed press can’t help alleviate time crunches if work is piled up at the finishing stage. What’s worse, poor quality finishing work can detract from the overall project and contribute to dissatisfied customers, internally or externally. To fix this, consider these options:
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Reevaluate Your Equipment
Many print shops and enterprises with in-house print facilities focus closely on state-of-the-art printing presses, spending most of their budget dollars on more efficient presses. However, having a fast press will not be an asset if your paper folding equipment is twenty years behind the times and it takes you an hour to make ready.
Owners should review legacy finishing equipment to ensure that it fits the capabilities of their existing presses. It should be able to handle not only the sheet sizes used by your press, but also work easily with textures, special inks, media types, and coatings. If your finishing equipment can’t handle the same substrates, speed, and quantity that your press can handle, you might be left having to send out final products for finishing, cutting into profits and/or budget.
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Reevaluate Your Workflows
Encouraging a seamless production strategy starts with taking a close look at each part of your workflow. Removing bottlenecks and pinch points begins with examination of prepress, press, and post press elements to develop a holistic process. Including automation, particularly in the print finishing segment of the print lifecycle can help implement a quicker changeover between segments, greater variability, and a workflow that is primarily touchless.
This highly automated scenario is a precursor to more efficient, error-free production. Print finishing accuracy is protected through reduction of manual touchpoints that reduce the opportunity for human error and contributes to more professional outputs.
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Consider Software, Hardware, and Labor
Configuring your print finishing to play a role in an automated workflow is important, as is having leading-edge finishing equipment to help keep projects running smoothly and to avoid log jams in the process. To do this, many shops and enterprises are turning to third-party partners to help add not only equipment, but qualified personnel to the mix. Experts in print technology can help guide smart purchases, direct budget toward finishing elements that will make a difference in efficiency and ROI and help smooth over inevitable bumps in adopting new technologies.
Let Doing Better Business Make Proper Print Finishing a Breeze
At Doing Better Business, we are laser focused on helping our print shop clients and enterprises with in-house production facilities get the most from their print set-up. With properly configured presses and finishing choices, your business can tackle long or short-run projects without costly bottlenecks. Plus, you’ll be able to focus on output that is exceptional for its high quality and professional finish.
Our team of print and imaging expects has deep knowledge of emerging technologies and tools to help provide an optimized production print environment for every application and budget. And we partner with leading manufacturers of production print products such as HP, Sharp, Canon, and Ricoh to give you a wide range of choices.
Fine tune your production with proper print finishing equipment. Contact a representative from Doing Better Business and explore how our range of products can assist you in streamlining production for better, more effective print output.