BAPC Leader Summer 2021

SUMMER 2021 — BAPC LEADER 22 As purchasing trends shift rapidly towards products being specified and paid for online, key sector technology developer Flex4 makes the case that printers can capitalise on this shift to expand their services and prosper. Web-to-print empowers print efficiency and profitability comprehensive and stimulating tasks. Web-to-print software can also allow you to choose whether or not to outsource production of an order, based on simple rules such as the order quantity, enabling you tomake print order fulfilment decisions that will help you to maximise profitability. For example, if producing a product in house is a cheaper option for you for the first 1,000 units, you can build in a quantity break to ensure that every order under 1,000 units remains an in- house order, and every order over 1,000 units is routed directly to your chosen trade supplier. If you wish to use multiple suppliers and know that a product can be obtained at a better price froma certain trade printer, you can ensure that all orders on that particular product are routed to the supplier that will give you the best overall margin on the order for that product. Flex4’s OPS solution provides supplier automation and integration with both trade printers and smaller specialist suppliers, allowing you to gainmaximum benefit from the automation of production workflows. OPS is a modular web-to-print solution that can be configured to meet your exact needs today, and includes flexible upgrade paths to ensure that the solution can grow and adapt to future business needs. It includes modules that will help you to both promote your print business and sell your design and print services online. Workflow automation is the holy of grail of many businesses both within the print industry and beyond. One of the key advantages that web-to-print e-commerce can offer among its extensive benefits is in the area of supplier automation. If you outsource some or all of your print products, supplier automation with trade printers can negate some of the administrative burden and remove double keying, thereby improving your business efficiency and helping to eliminate errors. Orders can be placed directly on your website by clients, and automatically passed to the trade printer designated in your website back office, without any need for re-keying the orders into your chosen trade printer’s website. Acomprehensiveweb-to-print e-commerce website can also offer additional benefits when it comes to supplier automation. For example, the ability to trigger an e-mail to be sent directly to your client from your website when the chosen trade printer despatches the client’s order. There is no need for you to intervene manually to keep your client informed of progress on their order. Meanwhile, from the client’s perspective, they will have received an e-mail directly from you. Minimising the need for you to engage in the simple customer communication tasks, frees you up to work on more Web-to-print opens up a universe of growth possibilities when connected to an eCommerce facility