Burning Money
Looking to generate more revenue in your in-plant? Try CD burning. Several in-plants are getting lots of new business by offering this service.
by Caroline Miller
To generate new revenue sources for your in-plant, you've got to look in new directions. What's more, you've got to be the first one to make a new service available. One such new service that in-plants are quickly getting into is compact disc (CD) duplication.
"If you don't get into this business then someone else is going to get into it," says West Barton, director of print production and mailing services at Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah. "Paper is going to travel in different directions and it's not going to be toward traditional print services. Just as paper is going to migrate from copy centers to personal printers or networked office printers, print jobs are going to migrate to CDs."
BYU's in-plant produces CDs for its independent course packets and culturegrams (bulletins that provide information on a range of countries for missionaries, as well as for private business organizations). The in-plant also produces promotional materials, magazines, class materials and special projects on CD. One such project on the Heisman Trophy candidates was recently recognized by Sports Illustrated.
This trend away from print volume and toward CDs has also been noticed by the in-plant for national law firm Kutak Rock, in Omaha, Neb. Kutak Rock is outputting CDs containing the firm's legal documents.
"Producing CDs does take away from print volume in the sense we are printing less than we did three or five years ago," says Pat Seier, Kutak's in-plant director. "We are. But that decline is a result of the new technology that is now available out there, whether it is CD or another way to electronically move documents."
While CDs may overtake some print jobs, Seier has noticed that in her operation, clients want both a hard copy and a CD.
"We have some concerns about the life spans of CDs. We don't really know what a CD's life span will be. Until we have a better grasp on a CD's life span we will continue to produce both a CD and a hard copy, because we know that paper will be around forever," she says.
While there may be some concerns about CD longevity, Kutak's clients still like the unique features that a CD provides for them.
"We are able to add some keyword search functions to the CDs," reports Seier. "A lot of the attorneys like the convenience of a CD. They like to show their clients that they are current in technology."
Quick Payback
Barton is sure the growth in CD production will continue.
"When we first added the capabilities to our operation we spent a little over $20,000 in equipment and software, and the payback was pretty rapid," he says. "Our CD business grew by volumes once people got the message that it was available. It kind of opened up a flood gate in our environment."
In fact, in the past year the in-plant produced about 43,000 CDs. Kutak Rock has also seen a growth in its CD production although the shop does not keep track of how many it burns.
Up in Plymouth, Mich., burning CDs is old hat for Unisys, a major service and technology firm. The company's in-plant is in charge of replicating the majority of the software and accompanying documentation for Unisys customers. The 90-employee in-plant will produce about 200,000 CDs this year, all of which will be produced on demand within a 48-hour time period.
Because of the volume that Unisys produces the in-plant has gone to a completely automated system that uses bar codes to control quality.
"We have about 1,000 product masters that we routinely send out," says Gregg Gabbana, manger of manufacturing operations for both print and media at Unisys. "The last thing we want to do is send the wrong information out. It's not like paper where you can check it before it leaves."
A CD request at Unisys comes in via a job ticket. The master is downloaded, burned to the CD, labeled and verified to ensure that replication has occurred correctly, explains Gabbana.
Know Your Audience
There are several issues to consider when developing a CD burning service. The first rule is to know your audience.
At BYU, professors and students tend to create more complex CDs for reproduction, which can lead to difficulties for the in-plant, explains Barton.
"The level of complexity of the CD has definitely improved and you need to be sure that the software package you choose is robust enough to duplicate the CD," he says.
And it's not just software that you need to consider.
"You need good durable equipment and good media," notes Gabbana. "That is really critical. We did a lot of CD media testing and we ended up choosing Imation."
While an in-plant may already have the equipment in-house to begin very basic CD burning, once the service takes off, a manager is going to want to invest in more robust CD equipment and software. For Kutak Rock and BYU, the Rimage Protege II is the hardware and software package of choice. Unisys uses MicroTech replicators coupled with Rimage perfect image thermal printers.
"MicroTech and Rimage are the two standards in the industry," explains Gabbana.
"Our first equipment was a Microtech and it had four CD writers and a print head on it," adds Barton. "It worked pretty well but volumes increased, so we installed the Rimage Protege II. It is an awesome machine. It is extremely fast technology. It has two printer heads and is faster than the other unit that had four heads. The beauty of this machine is the technology that enables us to swap drives."
And swapping drives is going to become increasingly important because Barton plans to add DVD production capabilities.
"I really think that DVD is just out there waiting, and once it happens, boy watch out," he says. "We already have professors that want to put everything in the world on DVD for their courses."
The investment into DVD production is minimal after the purchase of the Protege, Barton says.
"After our initial investment, it cost us $2,700 to buy the DVD conversion kit," he says.
The cost comes down even more when you consider that the learning curve on the machinery is fairly fast, notes Kevin Gowan, the imaging specialist at Kutak Rock.
Barton agrees. He uses his student workers to produce the CDs.
"It took them about 10 minutes to learn how to run the Protege," he says.
Minimal Marketing Required
Equipment and training are not the only minimal costs associated with adding CD burning services. Marketing the service has been fairly simple. All three in-plants have limited marketing to basic word of mouth, although Kutak usually offers to produce the first CD for free to hook people into the service.
"It took a little education on our part, but once people realized what it could do they were interested in the option," reveals Seier.
Unisys took a unique approach by opening up the CD service to employees internally. The in-plant will burn 10 or 20 copies for a Unisys employee.
"We get some money out of it, although we don't make a profit, and it helps to advertise our capabilities," reports Gabbana.
For BYU, though, just adding the service was enough.
"We have very technically savvy people here, and they were asking for this technology before we added it," he says. "We really saw that this was the way the data was beginning to flow."
