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If you are a commercial printer, you are probably thinking about (if you haven't already transitioned to) a marketing services provider model. If you are a creative, your printer is likely laying the groundwork for (if it hasn't already) getting you to recognize and appreciate its knowledge base beyond print production.
The idea is to move beyond a sterile "order print, pay when it's delivered" relationship, into a more dynamic one. In this relationship, the printer works closely with the client's creative and marketing teams, often at the earliest stages, to bring its expertise in key printing applications to improve marketing effectiveness and strategy.
The key to success is collaboration. Unfortunately, while many small and mid-sized print shops have growing knowledge bases in Web-to-print, one-to-one marketing, transpromo, and many other high-value print applications, the collaboration part is something at which they often have little practice, and for which they are technologically unprepared.
And yet, the "printer turned marketing services provider" model works best when there are dedicated processes in place for brainstorming, file sharing, schedule-coordinating, and more. Unfortunately, the cost of collaborative solutions is traditionally out of the range of small and mid-sized businesses (LotusNotes, for example, is a $20,000 investment), and especially for printers just moving into this arena, this appears to be a "luxury" they can't afford. The result? They under-invest in an aspect of the business so critical to helping it get off the ground.
SAAS Benefits
Enter SAAS (software as a service). Increasingly, software solutions are being developed that give small businesses the benefits of applications like Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus, but without the capital investment. A good example is CatalystWeb, which released its flagship product, Catalyst Office, in January. CatalystWeb has also just become available for Mac using the Firefox browser. Price? Starting at $25 per month.
What does collaborative SAAS offer? It offers all of the features of enterprise productivity, including online document sharing and storage, business-class e-mail, companywide address books, online calendar, contacts, tasks, company or project-wide messaging, collaborative work spaces, guest user privileges, and more.
These solutions are not designed for hosting extremely large volumes of high-res files, however, so printers and creative firms are unlikely to use them as company intranets. What they do offer is a collaborative workspace. Essentially, CatalystWeb becomes a project server, with open access to everyone on the team (employees, clients, marketing partners, suppliers). Think of it as an office meeting that can occur at any time of day, with people attending whenever they want, but everyone staying on top of deadlines through coordinated scheduling.
Think 'Virtual Meeting'
Here's how it works. You have a call to discuss strategy and brainstorm some ideas. You agreed to sketch out some ideas, send them around, and continue to discuss. To get started, you set up a collaborative workspace called NewProgram, where you assign guest users (clients, freelancers, printers, database houses, mailing partners) who will share files, comment by e-mail, upload revisions, review proofs, and schedule meetings, with the entire process transparent and accessible by everyone involved.
The creative team sketches out ideas and uploads them to the NewProgram. The marketing team and the print provider review the files. Marketing annotates the files from a marketing perspective, and those files are automatically resaved to the Catalyst Web server. The printer also annotates the file, marking locations where the design could be optimized for the unique needs of one-to-one, which is also saved back to the server, where it is reviewed by the database management house. Suggestions are offered.
The mailing house adds its input, as well. Questions and comments are based by team e-mail, so everyone stays in the loop. All files, revisions, proofs, e-mails, and comments are saved and accessible by all members of the team. Gradually, ideas are hammered out, revisions are made, databases are purchased or appended, and all of the pieces are collected in the NewProgram folder. With common scheduling and e-mail, everyone knows where the project is in the process.
It's a very different way of doing business, but if printers are going to move into the world of business development and marketing solutions, this collaborative workflow is part of the deal.
What's exciting is that, with SAAS, the cost is surprisingly low. The provider charges by the space a company needs. The number of users is unlimited. For 10 GB, it charges $25 per month. For up to 100 GB, it's $125.
Compare that to purchasing a dedicated file sharing server. This might cost $50,000 to $60,000—amortized at $600 per month. That doesn't include maintenance, back-up storage, or software licensing. Plus, those solutions are designed to be obsolete in three years. You also have to worry about backing up the data and retrieving it if something goes wrong. With SAAS, your service is continually maintained, backed up, and upgraded over time.
CatalystWeb is not the only SAAS option, of course (GoogleApps and Microsoft Office Live are also competing in this space), but it is the only option that offers both Mac and PC platforms, a critical component in the printing, publishing, and creative marketplaces.
Whether it's CatalystWeb or another option, SAAS is a growing software category. If you are small to mid-sized printer or creative firm looking to broaden your involvement in applications like Web-to-print, PURLs, transpromotional, one-to-one or any application that benefits from the collaboration of many suppliers, you need to keep an eyeball on it.
Heidi Tolliver-Nigro is an industry writer, an analyst specializing in digital workflow and technologies. Her e-mail address is htollvr@aol.com.
author: By Heidi Tolliver-Nigro