Business cards, letterhead, brochures, catalogs, labels, banners, postcards...these are all common collaterals that companies need to print to support their employees and market to their customers. With the ease of today’s online printing sites with drag and drop proofs and point and click ordering, many organizations think outsourced printing is their best option for both efficiency and price.
The most common reasons we hear when we ask clients why they outsource instead of printing in-house are:
“It’s a large job.”
“It’s more cost-effective to send out the door.”
“We lack of space for all the equipment.”
“We’re not staffed with the knowledge or time to compile a complex project.”
“We want to maintain the professional quality of our printed materials.”
“We have to match specific colors for a logo or brand.”
These common perceptions about the benefits of outsourcing printing aren’t always the case though. If printing is managed internally, it can actually cost less with the same quality results.
We look at the costs of both outsourcing and in-house printing options for every type of document and help guide our customers to what makes financial sense – which yes – is sometimes a recommendation to continue outsourcing some collaterals.
Here are three key points to consider:
Cost
Short Run typically refers to jobs of 5,000 printed pages or less. These jobs are the first ones to consider bringing in-house to save costs. In fact, most printers are running short run jobs on a similar digital printing press you would be if you brought the job in-house.
If you are running a 500,000 page job though, an outsourced printer can leverage offset printing technology that can likely drive your cost per page down much lower than you could print in-house on a digital press. Often times, organizations will order a larger quantity to do just that – drive the price down – only to find they need to make a change to the document six months later and still have hundreds of thousands of copies that are now obsolete. The ability to print on demand when running jobs in-house allows you to print only the quantity needed, nimbly make updates to the document, work under tight deadlines and produce new editions without the costly premiums of setup, proofs, large run sizes and waste.
Color
Coca-Cola red, McDonald’s yellow, Starbucks green, Tiffany & Co. blue – these colors instantly come to mind because of brands’ zealous maintenance of color consistency across all of their marketing.
Most organizations have specific Pantone colors in their logo and branding colors, and the ability to replicate those precise colors when printing in-house is often met with skepticism. By working with a tool such as Fiery, colors can be matched accurately time after time regardless of which application or program the jobs are being printed from.
Workflow
Have you ever outsources a training packet or annual report? How about a job that involves compiling different sections and printed tabs, or that requires GBC punch or booklet finishing for that professional, polished look?
Even though the job might look extremely complex and not a project that would be time- or cost-effective to take on in-house, today’s technology allows for advanced in-line finishing such as booklet making, GBC punching and trims that create the look of a full-bleed booklet, all with the simple push of a button. Workflow capabilities allow you to program the job before you print, so that when compiling different sections and printing on tabs, everything comes out in one final piece without the need to hand-piece the sections together.
We probably won't tell you it makes sense to bring every item you print in-house.
Sometimes it might, but more commonly, it’s a blend of in-house and outsourced printing to maximize efficiency and costs as a whole. When you support some of your printing internally with Xerox digital printing solutions, it’s also going to open the doors to a huge variety of new applications and medias you never thought about doing before paired with the nimbleness and on demand benefit of not having to constantly coordinate last-minute or short run printing with a 3rd party.
today for an assessment of your current and wish-list printing needs and we’ll show you the benefits of bringing some or all of your printing in-house with a Xerox production printer. If you’re skeptical that you can get the same professional quality output from a digital press, come in with your files your sending out and we’ll print on our demo floor and show you the incredible capabilities on the new Xerox line!
Guest post by Jennifer Ferguson, a Sales Executive at Lewan with a focus on helping organizations reap the benefits of bringing their printing back in-house.
