So why is it that if two-thirds of UK businesses use the internet for buying, so many printers don’t see any need to meet customers’ demand for online trading?

According to the InfoTrends report, there was a high level of uncertainty in the UK (40% of respondents) about what the term actually meant, with job submission seen as the main function of web-to-print. This misses the bigger benefits of the technology, which is simply about making it easy for customers to trade with you. Think of how you buy anything these days – it starts on the web, and invariably with Google. You can’t underestimate the importance of that, says John Murphy, managing director of web-to-print provider ROI.

To start on the web, the least a company needs is an online presence, though this can become more sophisticated in line with the potential for growth. A lot of printers start by talking about sorting out their website. At that point, what they want is essentially a digital brochure, adds Murphy. There’s no one, once they’ve looked at their strategy, who hasn’t gone for web-to-print.

Moving online is about providing a better service while reducing your own costs by streamlining customer service, production and administration processes. Peter Lancaster, director of consultancy W2P, says: I use the analogy of travel; the internet has made us travel more by making it cheaper and easier because the business model has changed. He says that e-commerce offers a similar panacea for the printing market by taking away the pain that any non-expert feels when he buys print.

Crunch time
It also offers a recession-busting ability for clients to control their costs, while printers can even make more money. Lancaster adds: It’s about the client recognising that they will save in their own order processing costs, and it offers a chance of increasing prices through offering higher value services such as versioning for branches. The real money is in templates for marketing collateral.

ROI’s Murphy also believes that the current financial climate may be an added incentive for customers to invest in web-to-print. Everyone gets a downer because of the economy, but web-to-print is opening doors as customers look for efficiencies.

Despite the obvious benefits of e-commerce, there is a need to take a strategic view and consider its impact across the business. It’s not cheap and it’s not easy, says Lancaster. You have to plan, and most people don’t have the strategy. Too many people take a buckshot approach to the type of products and services they’ll offer. You need to understand who you’re going to target: will it be existing business or will you be looking to add new business? If new business, who and what?

The Direct Printing Company (TDPC) has grappled with its web-to-print strategy and is in the midst of rolling out a system from fellow Northants firm RedTie. I think it is inevitable – everyone will have to use web-to-print or fall by the wayside, says commercial manager Rachel Tait.

We wanted to secure our customers using web-to-print before someone else did. We see it as a tool to retain customers and to win new ones. In fact, we lost a client to a rival with web-to-print while we were deciding what route to go down. Once a customer has embraced web-to-print, it’s hard to make them change their mind.

Having opted for RedTie, which is a remotely hosted service, Tait says she didn’t have problems sourcing in-house IT skills. Installing the system hasn’t been a struggle; it’s sitting down and putting prices into the system and uploading the artwork that has taken time, she says.

If I’ve learnt anything, it’s that you need someone to manage administration and pricing and someone to do the artworking.

TDPC is taking a phased approach to web-to-print. It has trained its entire staff and is now training the first tranche of customers. We identified the right customers to get on to the system early; charities and other organisations that are bureaucratic, and financially are sure bets, says Tait.

The firm is an ideal web-to-print user because it produces lots of low-value orders, and has immediately reduced its administration costs. As well as phasing the introduction of customers, she has also prioritised what jobs will go online first, focusing on digitally printed books. They can be priced on a matrix, whereas we think litho will be more of an issue, so we’ll encourage a follow-up on the phone.

It’s not just the ordering and administration processes that have changed, TDPC has installed label printers and barcode readers throughout the factory to enable the web-to-print system’s real-time order-tracking tools to work. Tait’s next task is to set up the firm’s online payment processing, which will be handled by Sage division Protx, enabling TDPC to roll out web-to-print to new business and existing customers without credit facilities.

This approach of putting in place appropriate order processing and payment options for different customers is essential, says Lancaster. It’s important to understand your deployment model. In a franchise market the franchisor won’t pay, the franchisee will pay, so you’ll need credit card processing, he says. If it’s a branch network, you’ll need the correct back-office workflow to provide consolidated monthly invoices including proofs of delivery and everything assigned to the correct cost centres.

Perfect your processes
Forget print production – this is business process automation. Lancaster argues that while it may involve unfamiliar processes, they’re not difficult to learn and provide fantastic differentiation. In fact, as print in general shifts toward shorter runs and lower-value orders, streamlined and integrated order processing is a vital defence. When the average order value is £80, you can’t use an estimator who handles 15 jobs a day to process it, he says. If you’ve got 200 branches each ordering five things, that’s immediately 1,000 orders per month. You’ll need a load of people to input that if it’s not automated.

ROI’s Murphy reckons that many firms struggle to find the manpower to implement web-to-print. In March, it launched ROI 360, which provides comprehensive services from developing an e-commerce strategy right through to providing web-to-print. Most people’s time is taken up with running the business, he says. Finding a spare moment to come up with the strategy is tough.

To do web-to-print, we estimate you need a team that includes IT and sales skills – it works out at a team of about 2.5, which will cost in the region of £10,000 per month to support in house. Skilling-up will take them out of the picture for a couple of months, so offering it on a service basis can be very attractive. We can offer something costing from £500 per month up.

ROI hosts all the software and it can provide the necessary staff including project managers, sales support and application development.

Murphy estimates 90% of his customers use some aspect of the service. Firms that were already using its web-to-print and cross-media products now use it to test concepts and speed up project deployment. Other web-to-print suppliers also offer support to make the most of the online opportunity, including the digital press vendors as part of their business develop-ment services. Canon, for example, has a web-to-print module in its Business Builder range, which is delivered by Lancaster. The consensus is that once a firm understands the basics of online business and the growth potential if offers, web-to-print becomes a central plank of its online offering.

STEPS TO SUCCESS WEB-TO-PRINT
1 Familiarise yourself with how you can use the internet to improve your business. The Business Link website has advice including links to additional information, training and funding
2 Speak to equipment and web-to-print suppliers to see if they offer training and consultancy
3 Analyse your business to establish which products are suitable for trading online and how customers want to deal with you through the internet
4 Identify the areas where you will need additional skills and establish if you want to outsource them as a service or bring them in-house, remembering to consider recruitment and training
5 Once you have an e-commerce strategy that includes details of the type of products, customers, routes to market and the method of payment, start talking to suppliers to select the appropriate products
6 Plan and phase the implementation throughout the business in order to ensure the maximum benefits from integrating
e-commerce with the sales, administration, production and despatch processes
7 Phase the roll-out to customers, including training their staff to use the system, to give your team time to iron out any teething problems