Web-to-print Helps Small Shop Excel

The small but hard-working staff at the Olathe Public School District's Graphic Communications and Printing Department was facing a tough situation. The number of in-plant employees at the Olathe, Kan., school was decreasing while the shop's customer base and printing demands continued to grow year after year.

"When people have retired or left the shop, they haven't been replaced," explains Manager Erica Derrington. "We went from a staff of 10 to a staff of eight."

Meanwhile, the shop's customer base ballooned to more than 4,200 faculty members and multiple PTO/booster clubs. Providing educational services to nearly 29,000 students in approximately 50 locations throughout the area, the Olathe Public School District is growing by as many as 400 students per year.

Derrington had to figure out how to keep up with the increased workload efficiently and provide the same quality the in-plant's customers had come to expect. She turned to technology to make this goal a reality.

Customers now order print jobs digitally through EFI's Digital StoreFront, thanks to personalized portals where their own individual documents and orders are stored. Derrington reports that the in-plant can now receive, print and ship orders with an average turnaround time of less than 24 hours.

"A lot of times when the teachers are sitting there contemplating [whether] to send a job or not, if they know it is going to be a slow turnaround they won't send it," Derrington reveals. "So we need to crank it out. And like most customers they have a lot of last-minute requests. We have to be able to fill them."

Additionally, Derrington notes that electronic original documents print cleaner and neater, re-ordering is now fast and easy for school district employees, and previously hard-to-read, hand-written orders are no longer a problem to decipher.

"We had someone whose only job was billing and invoicing," Derrington adds. "That is now done in one hour every month."

And thanks to Digital StoreFront, creating reports is a breeze. "We are able to create a spreadsheet based off of the jobs that were completed in StoreFront and send that off to our business and finance office," she says.

In 2011, the billable services to the in-plant's customers increased by more than $18,000. In 2010, the shop charged back $293,115 to customers—a figure that jumped to $311,395 in 2011.

Digital and Offset

To handle the workload, the school district's printing facility relies on a mix of digital and offset equipment. (See sidebar.) Offset presses are used to produce NCR forms and longer runs of brochures, enrollment materials, single-page calendars and fliers.

"We still find a cost savings with offset," Derrington explains. "That's why we are keeping it around."

The in-plant also boasts five digital monochrome Ricoh 1107 MFPs (three with inline Plockmatic square-edge booklet binders), one Ricoh PRO C900s digital color printer, and three smaller color Ricoh MFPs for short-run office use. The shop averages approximately 1.9 million monthly impressions on the monochrome MFPs, and 54,000 color and 70,000 black impressions on the C900s, Derrington reports. The offset presses average approximately 250,000 impressions per month.

The addition of the C900s last year was a new experience for the in-plant employees, who were used to working on smaller machines.

"I was a little worried at first because I thought I was putting another machine on their to-do list," Derrington admits. Before, all digital color work was done by one employee, but now it is spread out among several employees.

"I was worried that they would be mad to be given extra responsibilities, but I was shocked when they were excited," Derrington relates. "It was something totally new for them, so there was a huge learning curve. Some of our customers want specific spot colors, and our employees are now dealing with bleeds and other issues they never had to deal with before. But they have stepped up huge, and so far I think they have enjoyed it."

The Ricoh PRO C900s is being used to print color covers for booklets, brochures and posters. This work was previously handed on the offset presses or on a smaller digital machine.

"This is where our customers were leading us," Derrington says. "They wanted more color."

Derrington says she was looking for more speed and a more reliable piece of equipment.

"We do a ton of brochures," Derrington says. "The C900 has a nice feature that you can impose several on a sheet, and we don't have to go through a lot of setup in advance."

Large-format Printing

Another new service the in-plant is offering is large-format printing, thanks to the addition of an Epson Stylus Pro 9700. The shop now prints on adhesive paper and mounts on foam core for jobs that need to stand on an easel or display; produces vinyl banners for indoor use with grommets; and provides posters for a variety of school events. The Epson 9700 prints up to 44˝ wide and 90˝ long. All of this work was previously outsourced.

"If anybody asked for a poster, we were calling another company to do it," Derrington recalls. "And I saw all this money going out the door and thought we needed to bring that back in and keep the business here and do it for cheaper for the schools."

Even though the in-plant didn't advertise the addition of this machine, word-of-mouth spread quickly and the production schedule filled up. Derrington sees large-format printing as a growing area of opportunity for the in-plant and feels there is already a need for additional equipment.

Derrington notes that there has been a positive customer response to the addition of large-format printing due to the cost savings the in-plant can now provide.

"They are happy. They have smiles on their faces," she says. "They are getting exactly what they are looking for, and they don't have to spend lots of money getting it."

Training Customers

Derrington stresses that keeping the school district customers pleased is her main objective. One way she does that is by going to staff meetings and providing training courses on a variety of topics, including Digital StoreFront, Photoshop, In­Design and producing electronic forms.

"We are not blind to the fact that people are moving to online applications," she says. "Those things are out there, so we are going to help support [them]. We are going to be able to show them how to design a form and then make it electronic to go on their Web sites."

It helps that Derrington is a graphic designer by trade. She has been with the in-plant for 12 years, the first four as a designer before moving up to the management post.

Offering training sessions at various school district meetings and events helps teach customers about the wealth of services the in-plant provides, Derrington adds.

"A lot of people before didn't even know we existed," she points out. "So I have been getting out and going to meetings, and getting our name out there. You have to market yourself in your own corporation otherwise it's not going to work for you."

Derrington also has a plan to increase the shop's marketing efforts by producing printed marketing pieces like paper sample guides, brochures and posters for the start of the next school year.

"Marketing ourselves has been one of my objectives for the department," she concludes. IPG