For those of you who do both Digital Printing and Traditional, I'd like to know if you treat the two different?

Workflows aside - do you treat the two differently in most areas from Quoting / Customer Service / Administrative / Bindery / Billing etc....

In essence do you have to businesses running under one roof or do yo truly have an integrated shop? From everything I see they almost need to be treated different. It's a different mindset and different costing structure in my eyes.. Does anyone else think this way?

What are you doing different in your shop or are you?? Ex: Do you have an Estimator and Biller that just handles digital jobs. Do you have a CSR that handle only digital. How do you handle the paperwork from estimating to billing on an account that sends in 20-50 jobs a month? What is you Workflow (as far as people and paperwork)? How do you Bill large quantities of jobs quickly and efficiently?

As always any feedback is much appreciated.


Dale Zahnke

Dale, we try to automate digital as much as possible to minimize the number of hands touching the job. We want to implement web portal job submission whenever possible and automated preflighting, etc. We think that this is absolutely essential to meeting difficult turn times while maintaining profitability. We want to find a system that integrates with workflow (and uses automation) and can pass data to MIS and we would bill all work at the end of the month, and we are investigating online credit card payment options as well (very attractive since you get your money up front).

Thanks Jack I appreciate your input. This is the second time I posted this question, I tried rewording it as I felt it went off topic a little. I understand the benefits to a workflow and automation but I said "'workflows aside". I guess what I'm really asking is, do you or SHOULD YOU run your digital print as a department or as a company within a company. I'm really thinking the latter as I constantly find problems with how people handle or perceive digital work. Some things should be handled differently or with a different mindset such as estimating, billing and scheduling.

I'm hoping for some feedback as to how others are seeing digital work or not work..

Thanks Again!

Dale Zahnke

Dale,
We are a small shop so my thoughts will probably be skewed. We have small offset ABD 9870's for our spot work so we don't offset any CMYK but we do broker it when necessary.

I can say we treat all jobs the same for estimating, billing and sales. It's my opinion that whether it is printed with ink or toner, in the customers eyes it's the same, so why should we sell a digital sheet any differently than an offset. That's if you are comparing the same things, let's say a CMYK offset brochure vs a CMYK digital brochure, same paper, same artwork, same finishing. Same thing for our BW stuff, does the customer really care if you run his 5000 letters on a press or a copier, most don't.

I just think that sometimes more effort is put into this then there needs to be. Let's face it in the end it's a commodity item and the customer is more driven by cost than anything. At least that's what I am seeing here.

I think it is important to integrate and force the offset thinkers to think digital. It will ultimately help the offset business and help grow the company as a whole.