MSU Printing Services Does What it Takes

IT IS a tale told over and over. An in-plant expands its technology, adapts to the times and survives.

For Carmen Crist, however, the expansion of Printing Services at Michigan State University has not been a matter of survival. Rather, it has been entirely about serving the university in the best way possible.

For Crist, director of both Printing Services and Administration and Planning at MSU, the role of his 17-employee in-plant has evolved from printing words on paper to any form of communication that benefits the university—even if it means less profit for his department.

“Measuring success only by a bottom line number misses a lot of the intangibles that in-plants bring to their organizations,” Crist relates. “We offer our expertise. That saves departments—and in turn the university—a lot of money. We also suggest alternatives that will have greater impact but make us less money. For example, we may suggest to a customer needing to promote an event that they send an e-mail instead of a printed postcard. The e-mail can link directly to an electronic registration page on the Web. This suggestion is cheaper than print and often yields better results.”

Changing Directions

This repositioning from straight print shop to communications hub began when Crist joined Printing Services in 1994. At the time the in-plant was losing money. Crist, an MBA graduate of MSU, was hired to fill a financial manager position in the division that included Printing Services. He and then in-plant manager Bruce Clark began working closely together to cure the ailing in-plant. When Clark left, Crist was put in charge, and having done the research, he knew the direction he wanted the in-plant to go.

“It was really the time when you started hearing more and more that printing was starting to be displaced by more electric means of communication,” he recollects. “I would say the first five years were about understanding how to position the print shop as compared to other organizations. The last five years are about repositioning ourselves as [a] communications production and distribution service.

“We’re a part of the communications process,” Crist concludes. “We’re not just a print shop.”

Valuable In-Plant

Crist believes that the value of an in-plant is not always found on the ledger.

“Saving departments, and MSU, money by choosing more effective alternatives does not appear in our bottom line,” he says. However, finding ways to serve the university the best way possible keeps the in-plant viable and productive. The focus of Printing Services is on the university’s needs, not its own.

“We’re not profit or stockholder value motivated,” he points out. “Printing Services’ staff has a vested interest in the success of the university and takes the time to understand communication objectives and seek the best solution to achieve those objectives. We don’t just take print orders and produce printed products.”

With this mission in mind, the in-plant began a technological expansion that spans all walks of electronic communication. Traditional printing functions on the digital end include low- and high-volume digital black-and-white printing, low-volume digital color printing, digital ink-jet addressing, wide-format printing and CD duplication. The in-plant does offer computer-to-plate for offset print production, although the shop has reduced its focus on offset in recent years.

Merger with Marketing

Recently, Printing Services merged with the University Relations Department, which is responsible for marketing and media communications. Since the merger, the in-plant focuses heavily on services geared towards marketing and communication.

In addition, the in-plant has expanded its contact list management capabilities, Crist says.

“We developed a Web-based database program to manage contacts,” he explains. “It offers departments a better way of managing contact information compared to using programs like Excel without the added complexities of using sophisticated contact management or CRM systems.”

Printing Services also offers E-marketing through recently purchased e-mail campaign software and E-commerce via an online store at shop.msu.edu, which targets MSU alums.

“These three services [contact list management, E-marketing and E-commerce] sit at the core of many solutions for customers,” Crist enthuses. “For example, we used to just print brochures to market training programs to executives for MSU’s Executive Development Programs (EDP). EDP was not satisfied with enrollment levels, so we suggested cross-marketing using print and e-mail. We then deployed our contact list management system to capture and manage contact information and preferences. We’re currently working on incorporating pre-populated forms to make it easier to sign up for a program.”

Customers have noticed the expanded capabilities offered by the in-plant.

“We know the perception is changing because administrators and customers have told us,” Crist states. “Over the past year or two we’ve had people comment that our name, Printing Services, doesn’t accurately represent what we do anymore. They recognize that we’ve evolved and are doing things that are adding value.”

Of course, this shift in focus to electronic communication meant the right employees needed to be in place to implement it.

“We brought in technically talented people who understand how technology can be used for communication purposes,” Crist says. “Without those people we probably would be a print shop trying to figure out what else we can be. They were very instrumental in us figuring out how to reposition.”

Existing members of the staff were then cross-trained with the new technology to better equip them for working within a digital workflow.

Give and Take

Crist has noticed one drawback to the e-communication boom.

“Declining volume has to be the most important issue affecting the shop. For the past decade, it has been a challenge to keep up with the declines. At the moment it seems to have leveled off, but we’re not counting on this continuing. All areas of the university have made efforts to move centrally printed documents onto the Web or distribute them electronically, most often as PDF attachments to e-mails. Most notably, almost every business form and a majority of classroom materials used to be printed by Printing Services.”

Crist says most business documents are now available online.

“If the documents need to be printed, they are printed at the point of use,” he says. “There also is growing use of learning management systems by professors. Classroom documents, once printed in any one of seven MSU copy centers are primarily put in ANGEL, MSU’s learning management system, and also are printed at the point of use.

“These trends aren’t going to reverse,” Crist predicts. “This is, in part, why Printing Services sought to merge with University Relations and is focusing more on the marketing/communications segment. The Web has become a primary communications tool for marketing, but print and other methods of communication are needed to drive customers to the Web.”

So what does the future hold for this in-plant?

“Our vision is to be an integrated part of the marketing communications process, focusing on production and distribution, using print, e-mail or other forms of content distribution,” Crist says. “We are working to make Printing Services an extension of the marketing department. The vision also includes integration with customers’ processes through automated workflows between departments.”

Crist admits Printing Services still has a ways to go before the vision is realized. For instance, he feels the 20,000-square-foot in-plant could be better situated.

“The print shop is wedged between where two railroad tracks meet. Talk about not glamorous,” he jokes. Lying next to an Amtrak station, the in-plant is rocked roughly every 10 minutes by a passing train. “If you’re in the conference room the projector shakes,” he says.

Still, Crist believes the in-plant is headed in the best direction for the university.

“Five years ago we were just another print shop taking print orders and putting ink on paper. We weren’t doing anything that differentiated us from external print shops, and there was a perception that the movement toward electronic alternatives…would minimize the need for print and lead to the demise of the print shop,” he says. “We recognized this and assessed our strengths and weaknesses and proposed a new business plan to the administration that included new services, diversified capabilities, an alignment with the University Relations and a public effort to change the perception that we were just a print shop.”

Printing Services not only made itself viable again, but it did so in a way that will ensure its value to the university for years to come.

Sidebar: MSU’s Mailing Strategy

MSU has two entities performing mailing services: Printing Services under Carmen Crist and University Stores and Mail Processing under Manager Karyn Pearl. The two provide quite different services, yet both are essential.

Printing Services handles most of the bulk mailing (roughly 500,000 pieces per month.) It provides mail list processing services (CASS certification, National Change of Address and Delivery Point Validation) as well as addressing and inserting with a four-station B