First, the concern about costs and the economy are affecting managers perceptions about everything these days. Managers are really feeling the pressure to reduce costs and employee expense is an obvious source for potential savings.

 

So interest in automation is probably seen as a way to reduce headcount, which makes an instant improvement in the balance sheet.

 

While reducing staff by increasing automation is a quick short-term fix, the strategy tends to have a downside when it becomes necessary to ramp up again and experienced staff are gone.

 

We recommend taking a look at all the other places in a document operation where waste can be eliminated, or other economies can be achieved. This is hard to do with internal resources - they can't see the forest for the trees. But I've yet to walk into a shop where there were not some opportunities for cost savings or productivity improvements. They aren't always obvious, but there is usually something that can be achieved.

 

The ideal solution is where automation not only lowers costs, but also adds value by allowing the operation to process more complex jobs, ensures high integrity, or provides status and statistics that can be used to further refine the operation.

 

The other reason that automation is so interesting is that some managers realize they are going to need better tools and a smoother-running shop to meet the customer communication needs of the future.

 

Highly personalized and targeted marketing documents, householded mailings, transpromo, or other complex document applications can be disasters waiting to happen in a quick-turnaround world where manual methods are the only available controls.

 

Not all shops have picked up yet on the idea that post-recession customer communications may not be able to be supported by the processes and technologies that have been adequate for the last decade or so. These operations can benefit from some education and guidance now, vastly improving their chances to be successful in the future - which is good for them and good for the vendors.