Outside In: How Insourcing Helps In-plants Thrive

Insourcing is a tricky word. If you look in the dictionary, it’s defined as, “the practice of using an organization’s own personnel or other resources to accomplish a task that was previously outsourced” — in other words, exactly what an in-plant does every day.

In the in-plant world, however, insourcing has come to mean something more: printing for customers outside one’s parent organization. So, when a university in-plant prints flyers for a local nonprofit to promote an upcoming event, that’s insourcing. When a state government in-plant prints signage for a municipality, that’s insourcing.

When In-plant Impressions surveys in-plants, more than 60% of them say they are insourcing print work from outside organizations. Though it’s often just a small amount of work, some report that up to a third of their income is generated this way — revenue that offsets their costs, saves their parent organizations money, and enhances their value.

Success Stories

One in-plant that does a significant amount of insourcing is Wartburg College’s Digital Print Center in Waverly, Iowa. Becky Bottorff, print production manager, estimates that in the last fiscal year, as much as 25% of the in-plant’s work came from insourcing.

“It’s a wide assortment of things,” she explains. “We have business cards. We have brochures, postcards, invitations, envelopes, flyers, large posters. We do have wide-format, so we can do bigger things and laminate them. Just about anything that we do on campus, we will do for an off-campus customer.”

Another in-plant making great use of insourcing is the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire (UWEC), where Tina Wolfgram, manager of Printing Services, says as much as a third of her in-plant’s work comes from insourcing.

“I was just looking at numbers, and I’m like, ‘man … it is crazy,’” Wolfgram laughs. “It’s definitely helping us stay alive. That’s a third of the actual jobs, and a third of the revenue.”

The Printing Services team at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire (from left): operators Tim Johnson, Denise Kujawa, and Megan Burmood; Amanda Wolfgram, financial specialist; and Tina Wolfgram, manager. | Credit: UWEC

This business has come despite not being able to advertise its services to the outside world. “If people find us, they certainly use us,” she says.

A lot of this work comes from state entities and contractors. The local police department is a big customer, for example. A good portion of the work is color printing and booklet making.

At Wartburg, Bottorff says, most external clients are local businesses. One of them, The Larrabee Center, runs a vintage and thrift store called Trinkets and Togs, which sells donated items.

“Their workers there may have some form of a disability, or they can’t necessarily do a full-time job, but they’ll have them help sort the stuff,” Bottorff says. “We help them with printing. We just did a large order for them for some postcards, and they’ll have us do brochures. We also did some large-format posters for them.”

The in-plant also prints for other nonprofits, like All In Mentoring, as well as the county historical museum. Other jobs originate with former students or faculty.

“We just have people that used to go to school here or used to work here, and they might be with a different company, so they’re bringing some of their jobs here, but it’s literally just a variety of people,” Bottorff says.

Letterhead and business cards are popular applications in those cases, she notes, but the in-plant also prints items for organizations not affiliated with the college, but that are hosting events on campus, such as summer camps.

“Right now, we have a youth basketball camp going on,” Bottorff says. “That customer sends us everything he wants for the camp to print, and then he’ll just pick it up when he gets here.”

Business From Afar

Getting work from previous students is something Wolfgram has seen as well.

“A significant amount of our customers are students who actually used to go to school here, and they live elsewhere now,” she notes. “My assistant in the front just mailed a package to Washington, for example. So it’s not just the community around us that we’re helping.”

Bottorff works with a local printer and makes sure that company knows her in-plant isn’t trying to take away its business. If the in-plant’s equipment goes down, she will reach out to that printer to get jobs completed. She recently learned the owner plans to retire soon, so she intends to ask how the in-plant can help with the transition.

A Balancing Act

While insourcing can be a great source of additional revenue for an in-plant, there is a delicate balancing act that must be maintained. After all, the parent organization’s work always has to come first.

“We make sure all of their work is taken care of before we’ll do any outside work,” Wolfgram stresses.

“There’s always been plenty of time to fit it all in, but we’re coming to a point where we might start looking at hiring another person. Not quite yet, but possibly soon.”

UWEC Printing Services has a staff of five, including Wolfgram, and depending on the time of year, can employ as many as 12 student workers. The shop runs three Ricoh printers — two color and one monochrome — as well as a Canon Colorado wide-format printer, a Xanté flatbed printer, and a Graphtec contour cutter.

At Wartburg, Bottorff doesn’t have an issue balancing in-house and outside jobs.

“We work closely with our marketing department, and they generally handle anything that needs to be ordered for the college itself,” she says. “They’ll ask us how our schedule looks if they have a mailing that needs to get done. If it’s something last minute, they are really good working with us, but we generally base everything off of when the deadline is set.”

The priority of the project is always the determining factor, she explains, rather than whether or not the job originated on campus. So far, she adds, there haven’t been any conflicts or missed deadlines.

The in-plant recently installed three Ricoh printers, including one with fifth color capabilities and inline Plockmatic finishing, expanding the types of jobs the shop can do.

Revenue Benefits School

As for the benefits of insourcing, the chief one for Bottorff is the revenue it generates.

“The profit that we make actually goes back to the school, and helps with scholarships and that type of thing,” she says. This increases the value the in-plant brings to the school.

For Wolfgram, insourcing helps keep the in-plant’s pricing low for university customers.

“We haven’t had price increases for quite some time for campus because we mark up,” she says. “The people from outside, they pay a premium. They pay higher than what our departments pay. And so, with us having that revenue come in, it helps us keep our pricing for campus pretty status quo. And outside people are still getting a great price, it’s just higher than if they were a [university] department.”

Insourcing ultimately opens new options, helping in-plants better serve their parent organizations by providing the resources to install better, faster equipment that enables them to print new applications.

Insourced work can fill in gaps and keep in-plants’ equipment running instead of idle. And the extra revenue helps in-plants keep costs low. While it might not be right for every in-plant, insourcing can be a valuable source of growth that many are currently overlooking.