What Are the Common In-Plant Document Printing Challenges?

Summary: Do you face challenges like inconsistent print branding, missed deadlines, and material wastages – despite having your own print facility for printing documents? Organizations performing in-plant printing often face a lot of document printing challenges that can be solved using online document printing solution. Keep reading to explore in-depth about these challenges and strategic ways to solve them.

A recent research states that printing and document-related expenses are often the third-largest business expense, following rent and payroll costs. Also, printing expenses can make up as much as 3% of an organization’s total expenditures.

Doing in-house secure document printing without any modern system in place can not only be complex but also expensive. Let’s understand this with a scenario.

Imagine an educational institution has an in-house print center where it prints documents like exam papers, certificates, and other education-related prints. The institution utilizes traditional methods for this on-site document printing.

Things were going smoothly until the demand for documents grew quickly due to increased admissions. This led to missed priority print jobs and deadlines, costly expenses, and overworked staff.

Does it sound familiar to your situation or any online document printing services you know? Well, such complex in-plant printing challenges can be solved using a high-tech document printing solution that is developed for organizations and print businesses. Want to know more about the challenges in in-plant document printing and effective ways to solve them? Then, keep reading!

What is In-Plant Document Printing?

In-plant document printing is the action of printing documents within an organization. These documents include research files, resumes, legal content, articles, personal notes, booklets, educational projects, and more.

In short - Instead of relying on external print vendors, the organization does on-site printing of documents. Such operations can be done within several organizations in the education, government, and healthcare sectors.

It helps the organization to have complete control over the printing process, maintain confidentiality of the documents, prioritize print jobs based on the urgency levels, and ensure cost-efficiency.

Why In-Plant Document Printing Still Matter?

In-plant document printing is a great way to reduce outsourcing costs, achieve greater operational efficiency, and control price and supply. With several applications of this type of printing in schools, hospitals, and large companies, here are a few reasons why this type of printing still plays a vital role in today's business world.

1. Ensure Confidentiality of the Documents

Documents like HR records, examination papers, legal documents, and financial reports contain sensitive information and are prone to data leaks or unauthorized access when handled by external print vendors. Utilizing in-plant document print operations can keep the entire printing process within the organization and maintain the confidentiality of these documents.

2. Control Costings and Profitability

External print vendors often charge extra for minimum order quantities, shorter delivery times, and shipping, which increases the expenses for organizations. With in-house document printing, this issue is eliminated as the organization manages the entire process from start to finish, utilizes online print estimators, gains flexibility in production, and significantly reduces the costs associated with outsourcing print jobs.

3. Maintain the Speed & Flexibility of Printing

During situations like urgent or last-minute print requirements, relying on an external print vendor might not be a good choice as it can be expensive, lead to printing errors, and shipping delays. In-house print operations can effectively meet internal print needs by printing on-time and delivering the documents at no extra cost, ensuring zero interruption in the departmental workflows.

4. Provide Better Print Personalization

Every department including marketing, HR, administrative and others in an organization often deals with diverse print requirements like different formats, sizes, and finishes. The internal flexibility that is present with in-house document printing allows the organization to effectively cater to these requirements, prioritize print jobs, and provide personalized output.

5. Achieve Brand Consistency Across Prints

Since external print vendors do not provide greater control over design and production, maintaining a professional and cohesive brand identity with the correct formats and styles across print materials can be challenging. When employing such forms of printing, enterprises often use custom w2p solutions to maintain brand consistency via standardized and pre-approved templates that align with brand guidelines.

Key Challenges in In-Plant Document Printing and How to Sove It?

In-plant document printing teams often face several operational hurdles that can significantly impact productivity, cost-efficiency, and print quality. Let’s dive into the most common challenges faced when doing this kind of printing and tactical ways to solve them.

Challenge #1 - Manual Order Intaking and Approval Delays

Many in-plant print businesses still use manual methods like email and paper forms to intake orders and approve proofs. The absence of an automated system can lead to miscommunication, costly errors, and delays in order approvals.

Solution

Utilizing an advanced order management software with online design proofing tools can solve this challenge. This software allows you to centrally manage all orders in a single and unified platform. It simplifies collaboration between designers and customers, making approval workflows easier.

Challenge #2 - Disorganized Workflow and Lack of Job Tracking

On-site document printing does not have an organized workflow or job tracking capabilities, which results in order delays and frustration. Manual methods do not provide visibility into order queues or the progress of print jobs, which can result in jobs getting lost in the queue and priority tasks not being completed on time.

Solution

This challenge can be solved using a scalable print workflow automation software that offers automation-based features for job tracking. It can streamline your workflows from start to finish, provide a dashboard for tracking print jobs in real-time, thus giving full visibility over the job status.

Challenge #3 - Slow Turnaround Due to Legacy Systems

Organizations using legacy systems for in-plant document printing have limited speed and performance, which results in slower print job processing, and less productivity. Since these legacy systems require more manual work, printers may find it difficult to meet tight deadlines and handle the rising demand of print orders.

Solution

Upgrading to a custom document printing solution can automate key stages like pre-press, file imposition, batching, and scheduling. This not only speeds up production, but also reduces manual errors, allowing your team to focus on other value-added tasks.

Challenge #4 - Difficulty in Handling Variable Data Printing (VDP)

Finding the challenges in variable data printing and overcoming them is crucial as manual methods can slow down the print personalization process. Manually personalizing each document with unique names and addresses is not only time-consuming but also tedious and prone to errors.

Solution

These challenges can be easily tackled using a W2P solution with variable data printing capabilities. It offers pre-designed templates for adding variable information, provides robust content merging capabilities, rule-based personalization options, and more.

Challenge #5 - Sustainability Concerns and Print Waste

Meeting sustainability goals while performing in-house document printing operations is a major challenge for many organizations. Paper wastage due to running test prints and overproduction, as well as manual proofing methods, not only raises environmental concerns but also increases operational costs.

Solution

Online document printing solutions offer eco-friendly capabilities like on-demand printing and digital proofing methods. These capabilities eliminates the need for physical test runs, and resource allocation, thus reducing material wastage and a negative impact on the environment.

Why Choose OnPrintShop’s Document Printing Solution?

OnPrintShop’s document printing solution offers several features and functionalities, making it a perfect choice for in-house document printing. It allows your customers to auto detect the page count of documents, and have complete control over the format, pricing, and layouts.

The solution allows to create custom pricing logic for different types of documents, adjust the costings based on sides, colors, paper types, and finishing. It safeguards the documents by proving privacy and access controls. The pdf print software allows your customers to upload PDFs to the portal and conveniently print them.

OnPrintShop’s document printing enables you to offer premium add ons like section dividers, binding, and lamination to cater to the unique customer requirements. Furthermore, it allows your customers to personalize documents with precision by defining rules for file size, formats, page layout, and binding.

The capabilities mentioned above make document printing a breeze for in-plant printers, solving the majority of the challenges and enabling to deliver accurate prints.

Wrapping It Up!In-plant document printing is an asset for organizations of all sizes wanting control over the production, costs, speed, and confidentiality. However, adopting a futuristic document printing solution for printers like the ones offered by OnPrintShop can solve complex in-house print challenges and streamline operations.It modernizes print workflows, delivering benefits such as cost savings, reduced turnaround time, improved speed and accuracy, enhanced security and sustainability, greater control over print personalization and production, and more.Want to tackle your in-plant document print challenges like a pro? You are just one click away. Unlock a smarter way of printing by scheduling a demo with OnPrintShop today.