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Having well trained prepress workers doesn't guarantee profitability in desktop publishing. Today's prepress staff understands the software applications and hardware. Success is road-blocked by owners who ignore the workflow and pricing issues facing prepress. Prepress can be profitable if the management considers it part of the team.
During most of my digital audits, I find the biggest problem is organization. The prepress department may have a "supervisor" inside the department, but that person has little or no power in the workflow. Usually the supervisor is the whipping boy for low prepress sales and bottlenecked production.
Production Manager
It all goes back to the organization of the entire shop. Prepress is part of production and every company needs a production manager. This person's job is to make sure work is produced on time and within budget. Smaller shops may find the production manager also running a piece of equipment, but larger shops should have someone in the organization who has the final responsibility for what work is produced when.
Some shops have a person they call the production manager, but that person has nothing to do with the prepress department. Usually this faux production manager doesn't see a job until it comes out of the prepress department with a due date. Then the production manager has to figure out how to make the delivery date. Sometimes this means overtime or bumping other jobs. Production becomes chaotic because several times a day the production manager has to figure out how to produce jobs he never knew were in the shop.
For a prepress department to be successful, the production manager has to get between sales and prepress. Orders generated by the sales department should go to the production manager who reviews the work order for completeness, makes sure the work can be produced at the price estimated, and can assure the order will be delivered on time. If the order meets the proper criteria, then the job is placed into production. In many cases, prepress is the first stop in the production workflow. The production manager has the authority to reject a job or send it back to the sales staff for more information. The job isn't just passed along unless all questions have been answered.
The simple step of having a production manager who reviews and approves all jobs can help make the prepress department profitable. When the production manager reviews the work order for completeness, he is also looking at the information prepress needs to do its job. If it is a customer-created file, the production manager reviews it to assure it meets the company's digital standards. If it doesn't meet the standards, the production manager makes sure additional dollars have been charged to cover the additional cost of handling non-standard work. The production manager makes sure that the salesperson has collected all the information needed for the prepress workers to do the job. If the job is a non-standard work, then the production manager will allow the prepress staff more time to complete the job and schedule accordingly.
If the work is a design or typesetting job, the production manager reviews the instructions and the price. The price review may require consulting the prepress staff for an estimated time schedule. Reviewing the price helps assure that design work isn't undervalued.
Once the production manager releases the work order to prepress, he will monitor its progress. A production manager should be checking the status of orders several times a day to make sure they are moving along properly and will be delivered on time. Knowing the progress of all the work in the shop will reduce the chaos and eliminate the need for CSRs to make the time wasting search to find out the status on their job. They only need to go to the production manager for the information. Add a daily morning meeting of the staff to discuss production issues and most companies will find jobs will flow smoothly through the shop.
Best for Prepress
So how does having a production manager help the prepress staff? It helps eliminate interruptions that steal productive time from them. The production manager makes sure the sales staff gives prepress the information they need to do the job. Prepress workers don't have to spend time being digital detectives to figure how what they have to do with the job.
A production manager helps the organization focus on pricing. Too often prepress is looked at as a loss leader to get the printing job. Having a production manager who can review pricing and reject jobs if prices are too low helps everyone focus on getting the right price for prepress. The prepress workers no longer have to be victims and just accept whatever pricing the sales staff chooses. Now someone with authority can direct the sales staff to adjust pricing.
Having a production manager also helps establish the production priorities and helps keep jobs from being late. The production manager is watching the prepress schedule and making sure that prepress keeps plates flowing so the press operators will stay busy. If a production manager is scheduling properly, then work should flow at a steady pace. Rush jobs are true rush jobs—not just a rush because the job was stuck in prepress for too many days. The production manager sees the entire production schedule and knows how to schedule jobs so customer demands can be met.
When a print shop organizes, things become easier. Shops should organize around functions. When each person understands his function and its relationship to the other functions, you have a team. Every organization should have a general manager who is responsible for the business, a production manager who is in charge of getting work out, and a sales manager who is in charge of getting work into the shop. Prepress is part of production, but it has to interface with sales. Knowing that a production manager is there to be the final arbitrator lets prepress workers focus on getting their jobs done without chaos and confusion.
Digital Doings
VistaPrint Goes After Business Printing
VistaPrint has launched its VistaPrint Business Solutions, a Web-based service aimed at providing customized and consistently branded marketing materials for customers that have branches spread across the country. The company had been going after business-to-consumer print work successfully.
According to the company, VistaPrint Business Solutions is a comprehensive and customizable solution for the design, production, and distribution of sales and marketing materials. Its goal is to reduce costs and brand inconsistencies that occur when field sales and marketing agents create their own marketing materials using different products, methods, or vendors.
Some printers are worried that their business-to-business customers may migrate to online print buying. I believe the printers at risk are those who don't have an ongoing sales program and aren't in front of their customers asking for the order. VistaPrint will be spending a lot of money to get its name in front of business-to-business customers and get them to the VistaPrint website. Any printer can provide the same services as VistaPrint at a competitive price. VistaPrint isn't going to take customers away from printers; it is going to get the ones that printers have been ignoring.
Be Prepared for .DOCX Files
Just when printers were getting comfortable with Microsoft files, there is another file format that can cause some confusion. Microsoft has added its new .DOCX Office Open XML Formats to Office Excel 2007, PowerPoint 2007, and Word 2007. Office Open XML file is an Open Packaging Convention package containing the individual files that are the basis of the document. It is a combination of XML architecture and ZIP compression for size reduction.
To avoid problems, Microsoft users with older versions are asked to install the Office Compatibility Pack. This will allow users to work with .docx files. The compatibility pack is available to make sure that you can open and save Office Open XML Formats in earlier versions of Microsoft Office. You can install the compatibility pack on a computer that is running Microsoft Office 2003 programs, Microsoft Office XP programs, or Microsoft Office 2000 programs. When you install the compatibility pack, you can open, edit, save, and create files in the Office Open XML Formats.
There is also a special online service at www.docx2doc.com available to convert .docx files to the .doc format for a fee. For more information, visit http://support.microsoft.com/kb/924074.
Contributing editor John Giles is the owner of The Giles Group, a training and consulting firm specializing in digital file issues. Giles conducts digital audits for quick printers to assure they can accept digital files easily and increase profitability. He also conducts training seminars for printing customers on how to prepare files properly for a commercial printer. Giles is the author of "Digital Directions: A digital workflow guide for customer files" and "The DTP Pricelist on Disk." He also serves technology advisor for CPrint. Contact Giles by voice or fax at 304/552-5363, by e-mail at john@johngiles.com, or visit his website at www.johngiles.com.
author: by John Giles