Are you Digitally Commingling Your Print Jobs? The Savings Are Potentially Huge

Printing is almost more of an art than a science; there is a finesse to managing a production print floor. And with the varieties of print, every Print Service Provider (PSP), In-Plant and Commercial printer shop is a little different. At Solimar Systems, we have focused for years on digital production printing with high-volume throughput generated in most cases by companies that need to communicate with their large customer base many times a year. Often this is referred to as CCM or Customer Communications Management. Your banks, insurance, healthcare, government, utilities, retail and entertainment; and on the PSP front, they are taking the jobs from these organizations as outsource providers.

It is in these environments where we have seen a continued uptake on digital inkjet printing presses, a move away from toner-based print and smaller cutsheet boxes. It is a trend, one that is driving events like the Xerox Inkjet-setters Summit, Canon’s thINK Forum and the Inkjet Summit. Printers are intrigued by the idea of whitepaper in and variable jobs out the back. The challenge is the workflow changes. If it isn’t efficient, the machines don’t return the ROI that a print shop would expect. Basically, you have dead time where the machines sit idle, or waste of materials add up to losses.

It sounds complicated and expensive, but you might be surprised at the efficiency you will find. Recently, we heard an organization speak at the Canon thINK Forum where they described a 5x improvement with their automation implementation. And indeed, we have case studies we invite you to check out too. But back to digital commingling; consider these three areas of improvement:

• The ability to track and monitor orders helps to eliminate missed SLAs, which are costly. Many organizations incur stiff penalties when mail has missed a deadline by even one day. The alerts and automated processing in our solution can eliminate that problem. When there is unused production time available, it can even reach forward and select a batch of work due in the future that can be mailed early, which helps even out equipment utilization and production times. THE BENEFIT: reduced costs by using labor more efficiently.
• Digitally commingling the mail together can bring a greater geographic concentration to each new total batch or group of mail. The Post Office refers to this as presorting. They provide generous discounts if a batch is delivered to them with more concentrated like mail pieces together. This process allows mailers to skip using either mechanical sorting machines or sending their mail out to presort shops which doesn’t allow the mailer to benefit in the total postage savings. And with Solimar, you can track each job within a commingled batch. THE BENEFIT: greater postal discounts.
• Household mailings together into one envelope. Matching based on business rules content going to the same house or person saves not only the cost of envelopes but more importantly the cost of postage on multiple pieces. THE BENEFIT: dramatic savings.

This is the crossroads for 2018 and now is the time to get more information. Recently, we recorded a podcast on our Client Assessment process. We have a philosophy at Solimar Systems that building a relationship, understanding our clients’ needs and helping them develop a plan for the future is not only important but the only successful path.

Our unique assessment process helps clients define their current production processes and highlight the areas that they have been unable to improve in the past—that would create significant change if updated in the future. And this process of looking inward is recommended by leading analysts like those at KeyPoint Intelligence (InfoTrends).

Contact us today, to learn more about our Customer Communications Management (CCM) visibility and oversight solution as part of our Chemistry Platform—Empowering Critical Communications.