Dear ,
 
Ryan McAbee, InfoTrends 
In last quarter's Tips newsletter, InfoTrends' Ryan McAbee wrote about increasing efficiencies. In this issue McAbee shares his 5 tips for reducing costs. Because efficiency and cost reduction are so critical, we have dedicated two issues to these topics.

For more about reducing costs and other top in-plant issues, download our eBook "The Five Leading In-plant Issues (and How Top In-plants Solve Them)."

Until next time,  
Elisha Kasinskas 
Marketing Director 
5 Tips for Reducing CostsReducingCosts

  1. Bring work back inside.
    InfoTrends research found that 35% of enterprise's total print budget was being outsourced to external print providers[1]. Bringing work back in provides a number of benefits in addition to saving the parent organization money and generating revenue for the in-plant, including: adding new services, filling idle equipment time, recovering costs and paying for shop improvements.
     
  2. Minimize waste.
    Consuming additional time and/or materials during production results in waste which naturally increases operational costs. Labor, utilities, and paper[2] were the three areas considered to the major areas of waste. Half of in-plants cannot accurately identify or quantify their waste because they simply do not track it. Start measuring it so you can manage it.
     
  3. Minimize re-work.
    Re-work is a particularly costly form of waste since the most, if not all, of the costs to produce the job are duplicated. The gap between the customer's expectations and the delivered product can be lessened by an online ordering system. The customer can "see" an accurate representation of the job, including finishing options, and verify it before printing ever occurs. 
     
  4. Shift labor to more value-added tasks.
    Reducing the amount of labor needed in production frees up resources that can be utilized for more value-added tasks. In-plants experiencing growth have, on average, less production/administrative staff and more creative/marketing/sales staff than those in decline. Getting to that point requires as much end-to-end automation as possible, especially for standardized print products.
     
  5. MFP doesn't stand for My Floor's Print shop. Employees likely overuse department-level multi-function printers (MFPs) due to the control and convenience of doing it themselves. Save labor costs associated with making copies by implementing a scan-to-print shop option for those MFPs.
[1] Micro to Mega: Trends in Business Communications, InfoTrends 2015
[2] Production Print Services in North America - Understanding Industry Transformation, InfoTrends 2014
 
Separator 
RSA's workflow solutions like WebCRD and QDirect can increase your in-plant's costs. Utilize WebCRD's production automation rules engine (AutoFlow™) and ticketing to printers to move jobs through the production process with little or no operator intervention. Use QDirect's output management capabilities to increase utilization through load balancing, flood controls and intelligent routing to further reduce costs. Contact us today to learn more.

Contact us today to learn more!