How to Automate Your Print Outsourcing to Print Partners

More businesses and organizations, including small print shops, are choosing to outsource their printing needs to external vendors instead of investing thousands of dollars to set up an in-house printing department. Similarly, marketing companies and fast-scaling online print providers also prefer printing outsourcing, enabling them to process more orders.

However, with increased orders and vendors list, manually managing quotations, design approvals, invoicing, and fulfillment becomes an arduous task. Automating the print outsourcing process optimizes the processes by reducing redundant tasks and increasing the organization’s overall productivity.

If you are looking for streamline your print outsourcing, this blog will help you understand the challenges and guide you to automate your print outsourcing.

What Is Print Outsourcing?

As the name suggests, print outsourcing involves using external vendors to fulfill business printing requirements. Through outsourcing, businesses can directly access advanced printing resources and infrastructure at a fraction of the cost.

Depending on the vendor type, the businesses outsource printing services, like brochures, flyers, banners, signage, 3D product package, and other complex printing projects. The improved end-product quality and faster turnaround times make print outsourcing an attractive option for businesses.

Why is Print Outsourcing needed?

One of the most significant advantages of print outsourcing is its flexibility. Higher flexibility allows the companies to instantly pivot their print marketing strategy depending on the volatile market conditions.

This is especially true in the case of small print shops and marketing companies that market print products and transfers to print vendors.

Small print shops usually have relations with multiple local printers, and getting quotes from all suitable vendors, let's say vendors who can print large format products like banner, is a very tedious and time-consuming task.

Sending the email with the specification and waiting for the reply, adding the commission on the top, and then communicating the same with the end customer usually take lots of time if you are receiving more than ten quote requests.

This delay usually leads to losing the order, as a recent study shows that customers are 21X more likely to order from a print vendor if a quote is provided within the first five minutes.

If you are a marketing company with a large number of orders and outsource all the products to nationwide trade printers like 4over or sina lite, you might face different challenges, one of it might be having up to date pricing and transferring the order to their system.

All these bottlenecks can be mitigated with a proper vendor outsourcing system that automates getting quotes from multiple vendors, adding commission, and transferring the order details and artwork to the vendors.

Automating Print Outsourcing with Vendor Modules

Automation is no longer a luxury; it has become a necessity for printers wanting to expand their business. Even more so for online print shops that have to communicate with multiple print vendors regularly. In such cases, OnPrintShop’s vendor outsourcing modules help you bring all the vendors under one roof and streamline the process through automation. Here are a few steps on how to print outsourcing can be effortlessly automated using vendor modules.

Ease of Configuration

Vendor modules make it easier to add new vendors and monitor their jobs. Add details of the print vendors like name, address, and FTP details which automatically transfer the artwork file to their hot folder, and you can also set up rules which allow you to assign a certain product to the vendor automatically.

Enhanced Commission Management

The printer module displays the commission due for each printer. The same admin panel monitors unpaid, paid, and canceled commissions. And the commission set for different printers can be customized according to your business policies. Some W2P portals can be integrated with business ERPs and initiate payments through a single click.

Improved Communication with Business Partners

The last step of automation involves optimizing the communication channels with the print business partners. For instance, the printer module automatically updates the print partners' job board with assignments based on set parameters. As a result, the partner need not be in constant conversation with the company’s management.

Elaborate Printer Dashboard

With the business partner’s login credentials, they can log in to their vendor admin area. They can see assigned jobs, order status, amount of commission paid, and pending commission. On top of that user interface allows them to directly raise concerns about any particular order or problems with the commission. Then, the admin can directly address their concern without any significant delays.

Benefits Of Using Vendor Modules for Automation

Increased resource savings

Manually juggling multiple vendors is resource-intensive and increases the chances of human-prone errors. Automating your print outsourcing helps you consolidate all your vendors under a single interface. Through consolidation, streamlining your workflows become easier. Eventually, the decreased workload enables your employees to focus on more high-value tasks.

Greater Adaptability to volatile market conditions

As mentioned earlier, print outsourcing automation protects you from the unpredictability of the print markets. The company can immediately shift and introduce new product designs without much investment.

For instance, a company used to sell printed merchandise, like clothes and customizable cups. But the onset of the pandemic made it difficult for them to attract new clients. Instead of panicking, they leveraged the flexibility and faster turnaround times to introduce new products and pandemic appropriated designs, like face masks and face shields.

Access To Better Printing Infrastructure Without Investment

As the company scales, it requires access to better digital and physical infrastructures. Print outsourcing enables the company to access advanced tools and printing features without any major investments. The cost-savings boost the company’s ROI and encourage them re-invest in other areas to increase the organization's functionality.

Tackling Material and Labour Shortage

The global paper shortage due to the increasing scarcity of paper-making pulp poses a serious threat to small print shops. However, print outsourcing lets smaller shops deal with material and labor resources by letting them outsource their products.

Automate your Print Outsourcing with OnPrintShop

OnPrintShop, a Web to Print Provider, offers all the above mentioned features. Let's have a closer look at some of the features you get while using OnPrintShop’s interface apart from the Vendor Management Module.

1. Access to web to print online editor enables you to sell any print product, from T-shirts and business cards to flyers, signs, and packaging products.
2. The print product cost calculator, an estimation tool, helps the customer get accurate estimates in realtime.
3. Third-party integrations with 300+ ERP, payment, and business management offer betters control over your printing process.

Conclusion

To summarize, the end-to-end automation of print outsourcing saves money and time and, more importantly, helps the small print shop tackle labor and material shortage. The orders are automatically populated in your vendor's systems. And lastly, the entire process from quotation to fulfillment is tracked in realtime. Therefore, if you want to keep your company ahead of the curve, consider automating your print outsourcing process.