Apr 8, 2008
The Million Dollar Question: Does Ad-hoc Document Generation Really Add Up?
Think that only transactional documents are candidates for production printing?
Think again!
Web-based document correspondence systems open up the workflow to allow even individual documents to become part of a larger production print run.
Keeping expensive production printers busy is the goal of any organization who has invested in volume printing hardware. The more these printers are utilized the higher their ROI. Historically the print jobs are high volume runs that represent an individual document type such as transactional statements or any document that is distributed to a large group of customers.
The benefits of this type of production are many and among them, the savings on postage because such large quantities are sent through the postal service in one pass.
This super efficient print production and mailing process is in contrast to similar processes happening throughout most organizations. That is in the creation, proofing, production, and mailing of individual correspondence such as letters, invoices, and other lower quantity communications. Unlike centralized production print, in many companies corporate communications are being generated from nearly every department.
Although this local ad-hoc document generation gives the business worker the flexibility of generating the document when needed, it can frequently be disproportionately expensive because of how it’s processed.
The typical process does not involve a production print professional. Instead it is done by a departmental worker whose primary responsibility is a business activity focused on servicing customers – not document generation. This is someone who should be customer-facing most of the time but instead is spending considerable time on letter writing, printing, mailing, and of course maintaining their little desktop printer which is not always the most efficient device for the job!
If you think of this scenario as occurring in a few isolated places in the company, it doesn’t sound like much. In reality, these little “production pockets” are tucked away across the entire organization and the costs and inefficiencies can really add up.
Web-base document correspondence systems can increase the efficiency of this process, save on postage and other mail-related costs and still allow the departmental employee to generate the documents.
Here are some benefits that could be realized by adding a web-based document correspondence system:
- Postal savings for all documents
Sending individual letters to the production print queue means that smaller print jobs can be printed as part of a larger run, reducing mailing costs by getting bulk mail rates.
- Reduce number of local printers; maximize departmental employee time
It’s costly to maintain local printers on each worker’s desktop. Ideally the technical group should maintain the company’s printers but many times it is the departmental employee who ends up buying and changing toner, etc. This is not a good use of this employee’s time. Centralizing document printing whenever possible can reduce the number of local printers needed and/or ensure that desktop printers are being used efficiently.
- Reduce maintenance of local printers; maximize technical team’s time
Many desktop printers cannot economically print customer-level correspondence. The toner is expensive and seems to always run out at the worst time. And if the printer is being used outside the scope of its intended production levels, IT is making house calls fixing the variety of small things that get in the way of the paper coming out the other end. Again, it’s these small things adding up.
In essence the entire document generation process (small and large quantities) can become a centralized process with all documents sharing in the benefits. This further leverages high volume print devices, saves money on postage, and gives the company additional criteria as to when a local printer is needed.
How does this add up?
Ad-Hoc Costs
Let’s use $2.00 as an average when you consider postage, paper, ink, and time and measure a company with 5,000 employees generating 500 ad-hoc mail pieces a day.
500 pieces each day x $2.00 each = $1000/day or $5,000/week or $260,000/year
Production Print Costs
Let’s use $.50 as the average to get that same letter out the door in a central production facility.
500 pieces each day x $0.50 each = $ 250/day or $1,250/week or $ 65,000/year
Comparison
Ad-hoc: $260,000
Production: 65,000
Savings: $195,000 annually (and over 5 years nearly a million dollars)
Either way you can get to a million dollars really quickly. It just depends if you want to save it or spend it.