Competitive Challenges Transform In-plants

Managers must stay ahead of developing trends, while offering higher levels of quality and service than ever before—and don't overlook taking in outside work.

Competitive pressures in all industries have companies focusing on their core businesses. Companies that once sought diversification as a means to success are narrowing their focus.

In-plant managers face a unique challenge in this environment. They must find innovative ways to help their organizations communicate better and faster. And they must rapidly transform a cost center into a profit center—all while making the necessary investments in technology, people and end-user satisfaction.

Let's look at the factors driving these forces of change.

Corporate Environment

As organizations drive for profitable growth, they are increasingly focusing on satisfying the needs of their current and potential target customers. This has created a resurgence of the emphasis on marketing the organization's brand, its personality, the relationships it values most with its customers and the benefits its products and services deliver.

As companies trim their staffs, employees are gaining more power, coupled with greater responsibility. Each employee is being asked to perform more tasks without sacrificing quality or cycle time.

This situation creates an opportunity for dynamic in-plant managers. Managers should realize that they will be asked to provide higher levels of quality and service than ever before. Marketing—as well as how an organization communicates with its customers and employees—will also play a larger role in helping organizations achieve performance goals.

After assessing these challenges, the in-plant manager must act decisively to improve customer communications. Most organizations, for example, need to upgrade the processes by which they communicate. Producing customized marketing materials on-demand will help increase sales. Adding color to standard business documents will enhance readership. Producing process color documents, with computer-generated graphics and photographs, will increase comprehension of the message.

Employees struggling to perform more tasks and gain better results in less time are looking to work more closely with their customers and with external resources. An in-plant can provide value to an organization by offering to become a single point of contact, willing to do whatever it takes to define more effective ways to communicate and meet end-user publishing needs.

Trends for the Future

Technology by itself is not all-important; the process by which it is utilized is. Merely automating existing work processes may not yield measurable or sustainable improvements. Combining emerging digital imaging technologies with new ways of doing things will facilitate more powerful communications. Reader comprehension will improve and cycle times will be shortened. In-plant managers must stay ahead of developing trends so they are positioned to better serve their customers and justify their existences.

Concentrate on the needs of the receiver, not the sender. How many people does it take to create a document? Usually less than a handful. Yet how many receive the document? Generally five to 10 times as many. As organizations strive for improved productivity to achieve enterprise-wide gains, the focus of communication must be on the receiver more than the sender. What do your customers' customers want to see? How do they want to view it? Who do they need to share it with? Do they want it in black-and-white, two-color or four-color? On paper, CD or on the network?

In the future, many documents will be output on formats other than paper. Why? Because each receiver has different needs. Training or maintenance manuals might be stored on a CD. Marketing presentations might be created in PowerPoint or produced on 35mm slides or overhead transparencies. Important legal documents should be archived on optical disk or film. In-plant managers can—and should—provide or have access to these value-added services.

Customized communications will help companies reach their target audiences. On-demand printing gives end-users the ability to personalize their communications for each intended receiver. To keep documents dynamic, most will be created on PCs and adapted continuously.

In-plants that accept electronic files will eliminate the time-consuming intermediate step—and cost—of printing the document on a local area network printer and hand carrying the original to the copier. Why should users distribute second-generation documents when they can have higher quality, first generation originals?

Proposals that today contain some pages with full-color will soon supply all pages with some color. Remember that process color is not the only method of color reproduction. In-plants can offer customers efficient, less-costly methods of adding color to business documents, working with either black-and-white hard copy or electronic originals. Digital free-form color printing unleashes the color capabilities embedded in most word processing and publishing software.

Documents will include more graphics, illustrations and photographs. A picture can communicate 1,000 words at a glance. Providing the format and media of the receiver's choice will effect better and faster communications within an organization. As a result, in-plants may need to redesign processes, relationships and investments to provide improved image quality and cycle time.

Upgrading Processes and Equipment

As in-plants begin to offer innovative new services to their customers, many will install high-speed, multi-function devices. As you upgrade technology with new hardware and software, make sure processes are evaluated and upgraded as well. How easy is it for your customers to do business with you? How quickly can you turn around important jobs? Is the delivery of documents efficient? Do you offer multiple forms of output media?

Technology alone does not solve problems. Customer relationships and processes that take full advantage of new-found abilities to improve cycle time and delivery options are where your priorities should be.

Initiate Insourcing

In-plants with upgraded processes and equipment are in an excellent position to insource work, especially if current assets are being underutilized. One way to turn an in-plant from a cost center into a profit center is to assess the opportunity and benefits of taking in work from the outside. Since incremental costs are minimal, profits and value-generating growth can be substantial. Insourcing might also facilitate additional investments in other capabilities, technologies, people or processes.

Some large in-plant managers are already finding insourcing a viable and valuable paradigm shift. One major utility company's in-plant was operating at 60 percent capacity. The manager had not overbought; the current equipment configuration was needed to provide same-day turnaround on the majority of projects.

Still, excess capacity existed. So the in-plant manager decided to recruit work from the outside. He talked to smaller companies nearby that were sending work out. He gained their business by offering better quality, overnight service—and lower prices. Now the in-plant is well on its way to operating at peak capacity while making notable contributions to its bottom-line.

By increasing volume and attracting revenue from outside the company, in-plants are able to offer their internal customers increased service and support levels. The resulting higher end-user satisfaction keeps customers from looking elsewhere. And improved performance keeps managers from looking at outsourcing the in-plant itself.

The competitive environment poses hefty challenges. Progressive in-plant managers will adapt to these changes and build a profit center that is a value-creating asset to their organization.

This story was supplied by Keith M. Nickoloff