IPMA 2007 Conference: More Than OK

LAST MONTH’S In-plant Printing and Mailing Association (IPMA) conference certainly provided a packed schedule of activities for those lucky enough to have attended. It boasted a blend of technology demos, educational sessions, plant tours, networking, baseball, Indian dancing, an Olympic medalist and a small dose of hypnotism.

Digital color printing was a popular topic, with at least four sessions and numerous informal discussions dedicated to it. Other hot subjects were PDF workflows, marketing, best practices and mail.

After the sessions, attendees took strolls along the Oklahoma City Bricktown river walk with new friends from all over the country, then cheered their colleagues during the awards banquet on the last day.

About 100 in-plant representatives attended the annual conference, though their enthusiasm made them seem twice that number. At every opportunity they got together to compare notes and offer advice. A day-long vendor fair brought 27 companies, giving attendees a great chance to see their products in action.

During a business lunch at the conference, IPMA President Mike Loyd noted that replacing IPMA’s director is one of the board’s key goals, though other options are being considered. The board has met with an association management company but has not yet decided whether to go this route. IPMA has gone through several directors of various titles in recent years, and has not had one in place since John Hurt left in January.

Loyd also revealed that, for the second year in a row, IPMA has ended the year with a profit.

In-plant Tour a Hit

On the second day of the conference, attendees visited University of Oklahoma Printing Services, where Manager John Sarantakos welcomed them with kettle corn (not popcorn) and showed off his impressive operation. The in-plant, winner of both IPMA’s Mail Center of the Year award and its Promotional Excellence award, moved into its new facility just a few years ago.

It has two five-color presses, which it used to print nine award-winning pieces in this year’s In-Print contest. It also boasts an Agfa Galileo eight-page platesetter, four wide-format ink-jet printers, an eight-pocket Muller Martini saddle stitcher with a cover feeder, and numerous other pieces of equipment.

Enthusiastic Keynote

Kicking things off on the conference’s first day, after Mayor Mick Cornett welcomed the group, was keynote speaker Josh Davis, a five-time Olympic medalist. He talked about his chance entry into swimming (he joined the team because all his friends were on it) and how his first coach urged him to drop out because his strokes were so bad.

“You’ve got to be really careful with negative attitudes,” he cautioned. He overcame that coach’s negativity, found a better coach and went on to make history.

Davis listed his ingredients for success—attendance, attitude, technique and integrity—and told the audience that having an “attitude of gratitude” for the good things in his life has helped him persevere through the hardships. He also shared some observations of metaphoric intent.

“What’s more important, the color of the medal or that you did your best?” he asked, rhetorically. Granted, his medals were mostly gold, but not always. He shared a cliffhanger about one of his fourth place finishes, a defeat that discouraged him. He persevered, though, as we all must do when faced with setbacks.

“If you do your best with what you’ve got, that’s what makes you a champion,” he said.

Industry Roundtables

Attendees broke into three industry focus sessions (education, insurance, government/utilities) for informal discussions of common problems. Among the discussions held by the education group was one on the value of copier management programs. Those who have implemented them extolled their virtues and urged the others to do a study of current copier costs and show it to accounting. This led to a discussion on the benefits of multifunction devices over standard copiers. One manager said her college fell in love with the scan-to-e-mail feature.

A conversation on the merits of leasing vs. owning equipment brought out the fact that outsourcing companies boast they can continually upgrade to the latest equipment, so in-plants should lease their systems, giving them the same flexibility.

The insurance group talked a lot about the impact of the new postal rates and noted that some marketing people will continue to design larger pieces, despite the higher rates.

The government group discussed the merits and pitfalls of storing government records digitally, which would leave them open to tampering. Other topics included the fuel charge that paper companies are tacking onto their prices.

Marketing with Variable Data

In another session, Debbie Pavletich, Graphic Services manager at Briggs & Stratton, (and also IPMA’s president elect) showed her in-plant’s Web-based customer marketing program and discussed the benefits of VDP. The in-plant’s job, she said, is to help its parent organization’s success. You can do this by using VDP to attract new customers and increase retention rates.

Her in-plant developed a custom marketing program allowing customers to go to an Internet storefront, choose from a repository of relevant marketing materials and personalize them. The in-plant then prints the pieces on its HP Indigo 5000. (See IPG’s September 2006 issue for a full description.)

Another in-plant with an HP Indigo press gave a session explaining how the in-plant teamed up with its college’s academic program to jointly acquire the press. John Reinders and Chuck Petersen, of Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, told how they got approval for the press by stressing its benefits as an educational tool (see story in April issue, page 6).

They met with each vendor three times, visited sites to see their equipment in action, drew up pro/con lists and had each machine print the same sample job. Then they awarded each vendor points based on price, service/support, fit to the curriculum and other factors.

Workflow changes were the biggest obstacle they encountered. To date, 75 percent of all impressions are produced by the in-plant and 25 percent by the academic program, most of those done for non-profit groups by the students. Applications for the printing program have increased since the installation.

“Our partnership has shown other departments how they can work together,” noted Reinders.

Digital Color Booming in Iowa

Two Des Moines area in-plants teamed up to give a presentation highlighting their success with digital color printing. ING Document Management Center runs two HP Indigo 3050s while Principal Financial Group’s Print to Mail facility now has 10 Kodak NexPress printers (see story, page 5).

ING’s Jim Geneser related his in-plant’s path to digital color, from its first DocuColor 40 to its two HP Indigos 2.5 years ago. They are used strictly for sales collateral, not for transactional printing, and the operation prints about 300,000 sheets per month, he said.

Long-time Xerox users, ING hired a consulting firm to handle the RFP, so they would get an objective point of view. The firm scored vendors on pricing, quality and service. The most important customer requirement? The ability to hit “ING orange.”

Principal’s Rex Brooker explained how the need to improve the company’s 401K statements got his in-plant into digital color. He talked of some of the hurdles to prepare for when adding digital equipment (humidity control, sensitivity to various papers, parts availability). His operators, he said, do most of the maintenance on the NexPresses.

Digital printing has saved time, particularly for field personnel in need of documents. It has also reduced waste and increased brand awareness due to consistent use of corporate guidelines.

Brad Johnson, an engineer with the LDS Church Printing Division, gave two popular presentations in which he tried to simplify some of the technology that managers use every day. He spent a lot of time on PDFs, explaining how they work.

Presaging a discontent that would erupt in the weeks ahead, he noted that the latest versions of Adobe Acrobat and Reader have drop-down menus allowing users to send jobs to Kinko’s. Still, he left managers hopeful with this thought: “What if you could get your name in there” instead of Kinko’s? IPG

A Real Open Door Policy

The old wooden swinging door was a serious obstacle to good customer relations. Tim Mulvey inherited the door, the entrance to Arapahoe County, Colo., Printing Services, when he took over as manager. He also inherited the aura of fear his predecessors had cultivated. Customers were afraid to come into the shop—and that thick wooden door didn’t make it any easier.

So he removed it.

And still, they had to be coaxed inside.

Slowly, though, he managed to draw them closer, while at the same time improving the morale of his own staff. At the IPMA conference, Mulvey detailed the steps he took to transform his shop from “good” to “great.”

He had the shop’s grungy walls repainted, moved out unneeded tables to open things up, brought in new workstations, replaced the old fluorescent bulbs that were casting a dingy glow on the place, and—best of all—encouraged customers to come into the copy area, from which they had previously been banned. It was a big change for his employees, but eventually they warmed to the new way, especially after he began empowering them to make decisions.

When Mulvey held an open house, about 200 people showed up, some who had never known about the in-plant. And with his new positive message that Printing Services can help them with their projects, it’s a sure thing many of them will be back.