IPMA Makes a Splash in Kansas City

Nothing wakes you up in the morning quite like a football flying toward your face. That's what greeted attendees of the recent In-Plant Printing and Mailing Association (IPMA) conference during the opening keynote session when speaker Nick Lowery, Kansas City Chiefs' Hall of Famer, began tossing a ball randomly into the crowd as he delivered his inspirational message.

Peppered with anecdotes from his football career, Lowery's entertaining talk focused on how to avoid the fear of failure and perform at your very best. Despite eventually becoming the most accurate kicker in NFL history, Lowery noted that he was initially cut 11 times by eight teams. But each time, he learned from his mistakes.

"I knew I was getting better," he said, even as teams were cutting him. His message: don't let others determine whether or not you're a failure. He went on to kick 100 percent of his extra points over 10 seasons.

This was a fitting way to kick off the conference, since IPMA has experienced a similar success story in recent years, rebounding spectacularly after a few years of modest attendance. Nearly 150 managers attended the in-plant gathering, up from 135 last year and 100 the year before. There were about 50 first-time attendees this year, some of them from organizations that had not previously been to an IPMA conference, such as Amway, Blue Valley School District, Olathe Public Schools and Michigan Farm Bureau. President Tony Seaman noted during the business luncheon that the association remains financially solvent and is in growth mode.

Those in attendance at this year's Kansas City event were certainly eager to learn. Shop talk filled the air at the receptions and lunches, and managers quizzed each presenter about his or her in-plant during sessions. They swarmed the large exhibit hall, where an impressive 34 vendors showed off their wares. And they even had a rare opportunity to tour the sleek, glass building housing the pressroom of the Kansas City Star, to watch its KBA presses crank out the next day's paper.

A Hot Time in KC

Temperatures in Kansas City nudged past 100 degrees every day of the conference, keeping most managers indoors (though the arrival of Def Leppard saw a few groupies loitering around the rock band's tour bus). But indoors was a great place to be, with plenty of informative presentations to attend each day. Two recurring themes were changing your in-plant to stay relevant (and in business), and finding ways to make print work with digital communications technologies.

The former was well handled by Matt Doughty, whose session "How to Swim with the Sharks" detailed how his in-plant at the University of Kansas Medical Center has survived and thrived amid cut-throat competition. He noted that his shop is so deeply entrenched in the organization's culture that closing it down would be painful. As for the multiple local printers that want his business, he competes aggressively with them.

"Let them know that you are here; you're not going away," he advised.

He offered this advice to other managers:

• Use your home field advantage: attend meetings, visit customers and make yourself visible.
• Know your costs and share them with your staff: "If they know the costs…they're going to think about ways to help you drop those costs," he noted.
• Keep your in-plant equipped for your customers' needs.

An In-plant Makeover

Along similar lines, Sally Roberts, with the University of West Georgia, gave a presentation on her in-plant's "extreme makeover" from a cost center to a profit center. It started, she said, with increasing her shop's visibility. After presenting (personalized) note pads to dozens of deans and administrators, she was invited to give a presentation during new faculty orientation, which immediately brought in new customers. She followed this by attending new student orientation and student government meetings.

"We've increased student use of our facility by at least three times," she reported. The in-plant started offering student business cards, after partnering with Career Services, and has a work station in its lobby where students can design their cards.

"There's a line for that thing," she noted.

An in-plant open house drew 200 people, including the university president.

Adding new services, like wide-format printing, graduation invitations, printing on CDs/DVDs and bus signs has also helped. The in-plant also raised its click charges, while still keeping them lower than competitors' rates. Roberts said the in-plant has generated $100,000 more in revenue over last year.

Waste Reduction

Generating revenue from a different angle was Alvin Griffin, of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, whose 16-employee shop saved about $64,000 by reducing its waste 90 percent in a one-year period. It did this using the Lean Six Sigma philosophy.

To determine how much waste it was generating, the in-plant identified four categories of waste:

1. Machine (misfeeds, poor quality)
2. Personal (misread directions, bad math)
3. Overages (setup sheets, trim waste)
4. Design (incorrect margins, etc.)

Then they set up boxes to collect samples of each type of waste, and continued working as usual. Griffin notes that his biggest challenge was convincing staff he was not trying to find people to blame. After collecting waste for 10 weeks, they used paper scales to measure it and convert it into a dollar figure. They calculated that waste cost them $72,000 in lost revenue.

Much of the machine waste, employees eventually realized, was caused by operator error. To bring about waste reduction, the shop implemented standard operating procedures, revised work orders, added quality checks and stressed employee accountability.

Print and Mobile Technologies

One of the conference's most vocal proponents of the cross-media message was Barb Pellow, of InfoTrends, who tossed out the startling prediction that, out of all the modes of communication currently available, only two will be left standing: print and mobile.

"You've got to look at how you're going to make paper and mobile devices work together if you're going to be competitive," she proclaimed, during the second day's keynote session. She pointed to mobile codes and augmented reality as technologies in-plants should be investigating. In-plants, she noted, are lagging behind commercial printers in offering cross-media marketing services. Yet their customers are demanding it.

"Those departments are getting those services someplace," she reminded them. If it's not from your in-plant, then you're missing an opportunity. Your job, Pellow stressed, is to help your customers reach their market better, and the way to do this is by leveraging digital channels of communication, like mobile technology, video and social media.

Pellow encouraged in-plants to frequently assess their changing marketplace. Who are your competitors today? They're not the same ones you had a year ago. What new areas of expertise do you need to develop? Which cross-media services are being outsourced right now?

Integrating Print and Web

One in-plant that is already deeply enmeshed in cross-media is University Publishing, at Washington State University. Director of Printing Steve Rigby gave a session detailing how his in-plant has integrated print and Web, with designers working in both mediums. His team handles html e-mail templates, Web site design, content management, custom Web applications, event registration/payments, PURL campaigns and more.

Rigby described one PURL campaign for the football team that included a personalized printed piece, a personalized Web site showing the recipient's name on a football uniform, along with a video; an html e-mail for non-responders; and a custom die-cut postcard to season ticket purchasers.

"It was a very successful PURL campaign," remarked Rigby. "We actually filled the seats…and still went two and 10."

Stayin' Alive

In his session on combatting threats to in-plants, NAPL's Howie Fenton noted that customer surveys must be "actionable" if they are to do the in-plant any good. They should not only ask how the in-plant is doing, but how it compares with the competition. In his work, he said, he has kept in-plants from being shut down by using customer feedback showing the shop is better than its competition.

He urged successful in-plants to challenge their success. Find out why you are successful and assess how likely it is you will continue to be. Ask yourself how you can improve. Constantly benchmark your performance, he added, and report your progress.

Richard Silver, of George Fox University, gave an animated and interactive presentation on customer service, sharing examples from his lifetime of experience providing it. He asked the audience for examples of good (and bad) service and discussed the importance of effective communications skills, such as good eye contact, body language, listening and asking questions.

"Your customers don't care how much you know about your business until they know how much you care about them," he said.

In-plants are always seeking new services, so Mike O'Hara and Rob Lingard, of Deseret Mutual Benefit Administrators, offered a session detailing their mail scanning operation. Each day their in-plant picks up incoming mail, opens it and sorts it into more than 25 categories. These batches are prioritized by customer needs, and a barcoded separator sheet is placed atop each document. Batches are scanned, adjusted for quality and sent to customers the same day, greatly enhancing the company's workflow and productivity.

One interesting session covered the idea of building "social capital" by broadening your networking efforts. Doranne Hudson, with the Bloch School of Management at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, revealed that men are actually better at networking than women because women tend to value more intimate relationships, while men like shallower, broader relationships. This leaves many women with fewer people in their networks, and thus fewer opportunities.
She advised attendees to push out of the comfort zone of their peers and broaden their networks to include more diversity and different levels of seniority.

IPG Editor Bob Neubauer offered a session that recapped the latest IPG research on the in-plant industry. He also showed video highlights of his recent tour of Canon's facilities in Japan and China.

The conference wrapped up with the annual awards banquet, in which IPMA awards winners were honored, along with winners of Gold, Silver and Bronze In-Print awards.

Next year's IPMA conference will take place in San Mateo, Calif., near San Francisco, June 2-6.