Print price: low. Service: free of charge.

Print
Many graphic arts companies forget the balancing act between price pressure
and increasing customer demands, the cost of acquisition and processing.
For many graphic arts companies
Despite an overall improvement in the economic situation, the
changed: Tough price pressure, especially for standard orders,
stagnating market volume, mergers, consolidations,
Business closures and downsizing.

Companies are responding to this development with rationalization and
Reduce production costs. You invest in more efficient devices
and machines and often take great risks in doing so. But what in
remains untouched in many companies, the process costs in the
Order management (order acquisition, control in production).
But this is precisely where there is great potential, because it is precisely these
Overheads for administration and sales in many graphic arts companies amount to
companies between 20 and 30 percent of the cost price. You can even
observe that these costs are being driven up, as many print customers
are becoming increasingly demanding in terms of care.

Changing customer needs
The widespread desire of customers for the cheapest offer
Many industries are countering this with cost-saving
order management processes and new sales channels. Banks have
already established in the nineties that private and
small customers incur high costs, but for advice, service and
want to pay little for account management. They started looking for ways and means
to meet these customer wishes to a degree that is acceptable to them.
and indirectly urged small savers to keep their savings.
transactions themselves. At the same time, the
Financial institutions Advice and service for the wealthy and less wealthy
price-sensitive private and business customers. An expansion of service was
also with airlines, travel agencies, insurance companies,
large distributors, newspaper publishers, etc. can be observed.

Customers in the graphic arts industry are also increasingly divided into two
groups: The first group represents the price-sensitive customers. They
award simpler and standardized advertising and commercial print products
such as business stationery, simple leaflets, brochures
etc. You could call them "self-service customers", because they deliver
often have print-ready data and have the necessary
Manufacturing know-how.

These include, for example, print brokers and advertising agencies,
Graphic designers, but also direct customers with well-developed pre-press departments.
These customers look at the price and often attach little importance to
Advice and support. The second group could be described as
"consulting customers", as they have less manufacturing expertise
or have complex and consulting-intensive or periodic
printing projects. Consulting, service and support are
important to them, and they pay a reasonable price for it.

However, for fear of losing orders, many graphic designers treat
companies treat all customers the same. They let self-service customers from the
benefit from the same service as consulting customers, although they hardly
cover their costs. The costs for extraction, processing and
and control of a print job with a job value of 4000
francs easily cover the pure production costs (without material)
exceed. If you just think about it, which
individual processes are required for a simple, eight-page brochure,
until it can be printed, processed and delivered, then
it quickly becomes clear that with a streamlined and simplified
order management process can save a lot of money and resources
could.

Solution approaches
So the question is: how can graphic companies manage the balancing act?
between self-service customers and advisory customers? In addition
there are three possible solutions:

Focus primarily on a
and offer them customized services: This means
Concentration on either self-service or advisory customers.
The balancing act between
Standard orders with low prices and cost-covering prices
project orders: For the first customer group, the
process costs can be reduced, with more efficient customer and
Order management (for example, more cost-effective distribution channels using
e-business, etc.), coupled with more effective sales management
(Deploy sales staff where time and know-how are worthwhile).
Developing new offers and corresponding services tailored to the respective customer group.
 

Andreas Käppeli is the owner of Andreas Käppeli Consulting, Dielsdorf.