Steelcase Inc. adds Rochester Software Associates' WebCRD to streamline workflow

Organizational Education

To ensure adoption of WebCRD by Steelcase employees, Al Schmidutz, manager of Global Output Services, and his team developed a training plan with employees in mind, splitting the effort into two groups: in-plant operations and internal customers. Due to the in-plant’s familiarity with workflow, print production and software in general, training was fairly straightforward.

The operations team understood the benefits of this new workflow because of their close involvement with these processes. WebCRD automated the tasks that were previously handled manually, so the operators focused on understanding the process nomenclature and adopting the internal workflow.

For internal customer training, Steelcase chose a phased approach, training the most frequent users first, followed by those remaining, based on their level of usage. The training was customized to accommodate numerous levels of technical and print knowledge by helping customers understand what they want as an end product and how to order the expected result with WebCRD. It took about 3-6 months to train the majority of users on WebCRD and achieve the desired adoption rates.

As new jobs, workflows, and applications are presented, Steelcase is continuously finding better ways of doing things, sometimes requiring the creation and adoption of new processes. Training, therefore, is ongoing for operations and customers.

For Years, the in-plant at Steelcase Inc. received jobs in a variety of disjoined ways: e-mail, FTP and even physical drop-offs. Back in 2006, only about 40 percent of jobs were submitted electronically to the Grand Rapids, Mich.-based in-plant, mostly via e-mail. This had begun to take its toll on the productivity of the five-employee shop.

Steps for Successful Implementation

The use of a Web-to-print solution can significantly improve an in-plant’s operation. Before investing, an organization should take Steelcase’s lead and consider the following actions to ensure a successful implementation:

Clear communication of the goals of the implementation, both internally and externally.
Creation of a strong implementation plan, including the consideration of future applications to assure long-term effectiveness and ROI.
Initial and ongoing education and training program for the print shop and end users. Training is essential to customer adoption and the sustained success of online print job ordering.
Select a Web-to-print vendor that is prepared to actively participate in the installation process as a technology partner. This is not a one-week installation.

Find Out More

Here’s a short list of companies offering Web-to-print systems: