Washington State University: Doing It All, Only Better

SET ON a land grant on the Idaho border, Washington State University welcomes 20,000 students to its Pullman campus each year, despite being a little...well, off the beaten path.

"It's rural wheat country and really big football players," laughs Steven Rigby, director of printing at the school's Office of University Publications and Printing. Several hundred miles east of rainy Seattle, Pullman is usually pretty dry, he says. But it has been pouring on and off for days when Rigby and Director of University Publishing Mary Read take a moment to discuss the strategies that have made their award-winning in-plant such a resounding success.

University Publications and Printing left the International Publishing Management Association (IPMA) conference this year with a total of six In-Print awards, making it one of the top winners.

"Quality is always our goal, but staffing is the key," says Read, explaining why she thinks the in-plant never leaves the In-Print Awards empty-handed. "We're well-staffed with people who have been in the business a very long time."

The staff, and the community it is drawn from, is the backbone of this university in-plant. Most of the press operators on the WSU payroll have been with the in-plant for more than 15 years, and the majority of employees plan to retire from the shop. But with 52 full-timers aided by 35 student employees, it might seem difficult to drum up expert help in a remote college town.

Not so, says Rigby.

"Because there's not a lot of industry here in Pullman, the talent in this area tends to gravitate to the college, so we attract the most talented people," he says.

Read points to what she calls a "community of talent" that surrounds the WSU campus.

"Often we'll have a faculty position whose family member or spouse has experience," she says.

Once inside the shop, the staff has the opportunity to work with some of the best equipment in the printing industry.

"We are a Heidelberg shop," says Rigby, noting the in-plant's three Heidelberg presses, accompanied by a Hamada envelope press. The in-plant also has at its disposal a bank of Macs in its design area, a Delta front end, a Heidelberg imagesetter, and a Fuji film processor. Plus, its bindery includes a pair of Stahl folders, a Muller Martini saddle stitcher and a Horizon perfect binder.

The in-plant's purchasing budget has dipped with the economy, and for the moment, Rigby says, the shop is focusing on equipment maintenance over new acquisitions.

"But we try to keep our design computers updated every other year with the latest and greatest Macs," he says. Still, with a new equipment budget fluctuating around $75,000, Rigby says the in-plant is keeping its eye on digital printing equipment.

But both Rigby and Read are quick to point out that the Office of University Publications and Printing is far more than the college's in-house print shop. For starters, the facility offers Web design.

One Web-savvy In-plant

Read says the in-plant has been looking very carefully at ways to integrate print and electronic media.

"We realized quite some time ago that the Web is going to be everywhere, and we saw print volume moving to the Web, so we wanted to position ourselves to be that [service's] supplier to the campus," she explains.

To stay two steps ahead of the game, the in-plant trained or repurposed a section of its staff to handle Web design—an easy fit for a team well adjusted to graphic design.

"We now have what we consider a talented Web team, including a Web coordinator," says Read. "So when a client comes in for a print job, we now ask if they want both print and Web applications."

IPMA members may be familiar with the strategy, as Rigby introduced it during a seminar at this year's conference in Salt Lake City.

"And we actually put that presentation together as a marketing tool for the campus," adds Rigby.

The Office of University Publishing and Printing's entree into electronic media doesn't end at Web development, though. Housed in the university administration building, the in-plant is in an ideal position to aid the school in its push toward e-commerce systems.

"The university controller had to decide on someone to handle the school's e-commerce, and we were a natural place to come," says Read, adding that the administration is especially interested in providing an online book-selling service for students.

"Our office shows that if this campus needs information published and distributed, we can do it," she explains. And now the distribution of information includes financial data between sellers and buyers on campus.

"This makes us more visible to the campus," adds Rigby, "and also allows us to recapture lost revenue."

But helping to change the way a university does business is no small undertaking.

"Security was the first challenge," says Read, referring to the need to keep sensitive financial data, like credit card numbers, under electronic lock and key. The work was split up with the university's IT department into a two-level security system, Read says, so the departments that lacked the necessary technical support can now rest easy.

The other challenge is a common one for any in-plant trying to introduce a new service to its clients.

"Often people had to learn how to work with the new process," says Read. "There was a lot of learning to do."

Keeping In Touch

One of the best ways to keep clients updated about the new services offered by an in-plant is to host an open house—or perhaps simply to visit other open houses.

"We held a major open house back in 2000," says Rigby. While it was a success, he says the in-plant just wasn't in a position to put together another big show.

"So in 2002, we followed that up with a customer appreciation day," he says. "This was just a scaled-down version."

But while an open house can be a valuable marketing tool, Rigby says it's often easier and more effective to pay attention to other open houses on campus.

"We attend open houses that the faculty holds," he explains. "We go to those shows and show online ordering and other services."

All of the involvement on campus and in the community underscores what Read says is the most important focus of the in-plant's business model: Customer service.

"We take customer service very seriously, and we operate two customer service committees," she says.

An "external committee" is made up of the in-plant's own customers. It provides valuable feedback to the "internal committee," which then implements the changes needed to keep up with shifts in customer demand.

Right now, customer demand is shifting toward the need for a digital workflow, says Rigby.

"We're going to respond more quickly to the move to a digital workflow," he says. "We're totally digital in our proofing systems, but we're not quite there yet in our press room."

Staying on top of customer service has allowed the Office of University Publications and Printing to expand to include a copy center, a mailing center and a copyright center. This expansion, represented most impressively by a 900,000-impression boost in the copy center in 2000, led the shop to an IPMA Management Award in 2001.

"It sometimes sounds pedestrian," says Read, "but we're here to serve WSU. So our vision, my vision, is that we stay nimble so we can quickly respond to any change."