Richard Griffin

As you hang up the phone, you're engrossed in thought. This offer from a potential vendor, like similar ones before it, was tempting: they'd like to audit all the printers and MFPs in your organization to give you the picture of what you're really spending for printing. Of course, they'll do all this work for free, and of course, they'll make recommendations that will save your organization some serious cash.

"ARE THERE any studies that demonstrate the superiority of an in-plant as opposed to outsourcing printing?" That request was sent to one of the e-mail listservs I participate on.

JOHN CAMERON’S grimace slowly turned into a resigned smile. He had only worked at Central Piedmont Community College’s (CPCC) Campus Printing Center for five months, but he was already aware of how things were done at the in-plant. If there was any reasonable way to exceed customers’ expectations of the timeline or quality of their jobs, Campus Printing would do it. He looked again at the project that had crossed his desk that morning. It was 14 different files—a mishmash of PDFs, Word documents and PowerPoint presentations. The customer wanted that unruly mess melded into one book, of which she wanted 19—and oh, by the way, could she get them this afternoon?

REWORK. Man, that’s one word I really hate. Now, I love working in the printing business just as you do; if you didn’t, you’d be reading Car and Driver or O, The Oprah Magazine instead of In-Plant Graphics. But we both know that printing can be a tough way to make a living. Fussy customers picking you to death about their project and your prices; files that won’t RIP correctly to your devices; folds that crack even after they’ve been scored…you know what I’m talking about. It can be like hanging off the edge of a cliff by your fingertips. And, then, when you

OUR IN-PLANT just made a big change in the way it does business: we sprang for “Big Color”—a digital color press. Over an eight-month period we considered the Canon C7000VP, the HP Indigo 3050, the IKON CPP 650, the Kodak NexPress 2100, the Konica Minolta bizhub PRO C6500, Océ’s CPS900 and CS650 Pro, and Xerox’s DocuColor 6060, 7000 and 260. Many of you are considering a similar acquisition, so I will share some aspects of our experience with you.