CROconnect: New Year, New Technology—Make 2019 the Year Your Team is Ahead of the Curve

In my last column, I talked about the importance of taking the time today to step back and review your workflow. For 2019, we start to shift our focus a little bit; the ultimate goal is truly to use the information of reviewing our processes to produce print and digital communications and then leverage it for differentiated competitive advantage. Or in other words, winning work over that other printer down the street.

As a side note, your pursuit in finding the most efficient and profitable process might not be to win out over your competitors…at least not in a sense. You might be trying to keep work in-house so that you can retain workers and provided the best customer experience. In either case, the New Year should be opening the door to evaluating new technology, opportunities, and business partners.
This begs the question: What new technologies should a print and digital delivery provider be considering?

Inkjet and the Workflow to Drive it

Inkjet is still one of the fastest growing areas of print, especially for companies that produce large volumes of materials that have to be delivered every month or quarter. Perhaps even on-demand. Whether you are in financial, healthcare, insurance, telco, utilities or retail, you are likely looking to put in your first inkjet, your next generation inkjet or add to the inkjet you have already implemented in your print shop. And today inkjet printing isn’t just for the large roll-fed presses. The efficiencies and improvements to quality mean we are finding them all the way from the short-run cutsheet market to the larger volume roll-fed units.

That said, workflow becomes a critical part of your daily process. Feed the beast is a common phrase. In order to keep your printer online and moving at rated speed—something it needs to stay in good shape and give you a good Return On Investment (ROI)—having tools that optimize the work going to the printer no matter what state it comes in as is something many people don’t consider until their new inkjet is having issues. This is where the Solimar Chemistry Platform is proven to make a world of difference for inkjet users. With our more than 25 years of experience, you can feel secure that our team not only understands what you need to achieve success, we can make it seamless to do so. Make 2019 the year you make things easier while opening doors to new work and efficiencies by bringing Chemistry to your production floor.

Oversight that fits in your pocket

Following the idea of workflow, another critical ingredient to staying ahead of the curve is making sure you know what is going on in your print and digital delivery environment. In fact, you might have multiple environments in today’s merger and acquisition atmosphere. This idea of visibility is not new. However, we find people need much more than just visibility through a single desktop monitor dashboard view! Our experience with clients around the world is that managers, operators, executives and your customers are looking for information at all times of the day and night. This is where having a mobile view, along with alerts, is a game changer. Moreover, having something out-of-the-box to start with that can then be evolved means quicker startup and ability to realize the benefits of the complete job process view. Solimar offers SOLitrack and SOLitrack Mobile for this very application. With mobile views and secure access for multi-tenant users, it will revolutionize the view you and your team has on the print and digitally delivered materials you have in your shop. You can learn more about SOLitrack in this short video introducing the mobile capabilities.

Technology that Bridges Physical and On-Demand Digital Experiences

Companies of all types are still trying to determine how they want to leverage interactive print technology. Whether this is printable electronics, QR codes, pURLs or Augmented Reality (AR)…the challenge is how to use it to the benefit of the business and customers, not just because it is cool. And it is pretty cool. At Solimar, we focus on interactive print from the Augmented Reality perspective. We truly believe that we have the most well-developed platform and set of use cases for transactional print, direct mail, pharma, commercial print, and even retail. The business benefits can be tangible, which makes them easier to justify in today’s tight budget environment. We invite you to explore with our experts how you can leverage AR for postal savings, reduced call center volumes, regulatory compliance and increased brand awareness and stickiness.

In my last Chief Relationship Officer Connect or CROconnect post, I said, “The Time is Now.” Today, I suggest you let your New Year’s resolution be to look at new technology, discover how it can change your business processes, save you money and drive more business. Our team at Solimar is here to help and we look forward to sharing our expertise to help you achieve results. Click here for our contact details.