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The debate over whether to charge for digital services is evolving into a "how" and "what" issue now. A guide to charging for digital services was adopted by The International Reprographic Association (IRgA) in January, 2007, and includes what digital services typically charge and best practices for reprographers and reprographic customers.
Charles A. Gremillion III, who chaired the IRgA committee, gave his rationalization: "Anything that is free has no value and if we're providing digital services that are free, in the customer's mind, it has no value. Until you charge for it, that's when it starts to register value in [the customer's] mind."
Some digital services seldom have charges. Missing fonts are one example, said Curtis Thornton, director of product development and corporate learning for Thomas Reprographics. But what about when customer-selected colors are not accurate or graphics are too low-resolution?
"If we have to go in and fix it or go find the graphics for them or go back into our archives," Thornton said, "those are the type of things that need to be charged."
A high percentage of files need some setup work to print properly, hence the need to charge for digital work.
"Most everything involves some intervention," Gremillion said. "You do, occasionally, get some work from customers that you can send straight to the printer, but that's more the exception rather than the rule."
Sometimes the major challenge is deciding what digital services warrant charges. Thornton gives the examples of fixing files when a customer has an older version of software or the customer may not know how to prepare files. Eventually, production may complain to sales about the extra time processing this customer's files.
"Sometimes the printout problem is minor, such as missing instructions," Thornton said, "but probably at least 30-50 percent of your digital jobs are not ready and something has to be done to them. Some things, you charge for, and some things are real minor and you're not going to charge for that. But a lot of time, you need to charge something, because they're not ready to print."
"There are always markets where maybe there are a lot of people competing on equal footing and sometimes pricing becomes a commodity," Gremillion said. "Those are the markets where I think people have a hard time passing on digital-services charges."
Under such circumstances, both Thornton and Gremillion agreed that wide-format reprographers shouldn't treat digital charges as a commodity.
"Reprographic companies pride ourselves on customer service and building a partnership with our clients, so we would rather give it away than charge it an extra fee," Thornton said, "and a lot of times, I find our sales reps give it away because they don't understand. They think, 'Computer time at $100 an hour? That's outrageous. It's just a few buttons you push.' "
The Rationale for Digital Charges
Today's accounting or invoicing systems easily charge for digital services. Workflow sometimes has a coding system tied to accounting for the digital charges, said Dan Tangredi, marketing director for Cyrious Software. "If it's time spent, they need to make sure they incorporate that into the cost," he said, "and they can do that on the fly."
But any change in how you bill a customer, and especially new charges, are hard for the customer to accept, Gremillion said. "In an architect's case, they'll be passing that charge on as a reimbursable. In a general contractor's case, they just look at it as additional expense. So you have to be prepared to educate the customer on the value that we're bringing to the table."
"It's not just the AEC market," said Gremillion. "We do business in wide-format color, as well. And for the most part, if we're doing good work and the customer perceives that we're providing value to them, they accept that."
Changing to a system of charging for digital services is sometimes accomplished through training, Thornton said. "I spend a good part of my training on teaching people to understand the perspective of sales and production," Thornton said. "I think most of the breakdown in digital services and not charging for it is because of a breakdown in sales and production understanding. Production wants to do the right thing and so sometimes they overextend without even asking the customer. Then they like to complain about it. And salespeople don't want to have to go back to their account and say, 'Well, it's going to be an extra 200 bucks, because your files aren't right…' "
When customers are told why the charges will be added, most understand, Gremillion said. "We have to explain to our customers what it is we do in order to produce the output they want," he said. "Many times, they don't comprehend that, but once you explain it to them and take them through the process and show them, then they become much more understanding."
Neal McChristy is a freelance writer who has written about the office-equipment industry for 12 years. He welcomes feedback about the articles he writes. Contact him at nmcchristy@cox.net or via his website at www.ezsnailmail.com
author: BY NEAL MCCHRISTY