Search results

Are You a Grown Up? By Noel Ward, Editor@Large You’re out of the office on a Friday morning sales call when your production manager learns that the guy running your Baltindicoh 8600 XL is moving to another state and the Baltindicoh is having major problems. Downtime is about to occur. The...

Got Endpoints? Cyber-threats are coming to get you By Noel Ward, Editor@Large A few months back I was talking with the CTO of a company that prints and mails a couple billion bills, statements and direct mail pieces every year. I called him because I was writing a story on cyber-attacks and...

Because Listening Matters An exclusive interview with Canon EVP Francis McMahon By Noel Ward, Editor@Large Interviews are a great way to hear how people in our industry think because listening matters. I managed to catch up with Francis McMahon, EVP at Canon Solutions America in Boca Raton...

A 30-day Fix for Managed Chaos By Noel Ward, Editor@Large The only thing I would have done differently was doing it sooner,” said Chuck Frymark, looking back over the recent installation of PressWise software from SmartSoft USA at Heritage Printing in Brookfield, Wisconsin. The installation...

The Direct Mail Opportunity By Noel Ward, Editor@Large Direct mail gets a bad rap. Sometimes it’s deserved, like those generic monthly mailings from cable companies, cell phone novelists, banks, utilities, and more. Same offer every time. If I did this back when I was a marketing director I’d...

Turning Sustainability into Cash Your press may be costing you money By Noel Ward, Editor@Large It is always interesting to talk with people who do different things for a living. Builders, fishermen and ski patrollers, for example, spend most of their time outdoors and have different...

It’s Still About Making Money by Noel Ward,Editor@Large Back in the days of film and plates, mechanicals and Rubyliths, my assistant Diane and I were having lunch with Hal, sales guy for the printer where we spent nearly a million bucks a year. Hal was talking about an employee in his shop, a...

Cutting Costs with a Smart Workflow By Noel Ward, Editor@Large We print everything from business cards to flyers to stickers to banners to signage,” relates Chad Sims, CEO and co-founder of Prima Printing in Atlanta, Georgia, a shop that runs about 250 jobs each day. “We print most jobs the...

Always Follow the Money. Always. Digitalization leads to Profitability By Noel Ward, Editor@Large You could not help noticing that the press operator was a little tense. “It sure would be useful,” he remarked, making sure you heard him, “to know ahead of time about the jobs in the queue so I...

Unfortunately, the experiences you site are not uncommon! Transactional mail, which is all first-class, is really tricky. Standard Mail (aka Junk Mail) is easier, but list quality can be an unending problem. I do work with a group of both types of service bureaus. The moving parts of mail and...

Against Gravity Adding Print and Mail? Good idea. But be careful! By Noel Ward, Editor@Large I’ll begin this new column with a question: Is the address of the 11,517th person in the mailing you have going out on Thursday correct? How do you know? This is not an idle question, because if the...

Unbox This! By Noel Ward, Editor@Large A couple of years back, much to the chagrin of his board, Yvon Chouinard, founder of and chairman of outdoor apparel company Patagonia noted, “You don’t need a $500 parka to climb that mountain.” In doing so he attacked rampant consumerism and the notion...

Maybe it's just me, but I never install the new version of any software. I wait a few weeks until the first dot rev comes along. There are still "issues" but some of the more obvious ones have often been dealt with. FWIW, over the years I've found that Apple and Adobe do not always play well in...

What do you do When the Dragons Come to Call? By Noel Ward, Editor@Large A few sips into the second beer many business owners will start talking about the things that crawl out of the dark in the wee hours and make sleep an elusive pursuit. You’ve probably attended a conference or two where...

Are you a Can Person or a Can’t Person? Either way, you’ll convince yourself. By Noel Ward, Editor@Large AT A RECENT CONFERENCE OF PRINT PROVIDERS I heard an interesting talk about leadership and the challenges of running a business today. I thought you might be interested. The talk was...

Propelling Your Business Forward—Part 4 Positioning Your Commercial Printing Business for Success By Noel Ward, Editor@Large Every business plan is predicated on success, but our turbulent times make success, which is different for every type of business, a moving target. What are other Print...

Propelling Your Business Forward—Part 3 Pinpointing and Pursuing High Growth Applications By Noel Ward, Editor@Large Self-confidence is key to growing a successful business but must be combined with the right product mix, knowing what customers value, and meeting their needs and expectations...

Keith1... Have done somewhat the same. Nowadays I only do business with people I like and who pay promptly. Less revenue but less stress and I don't have to chase anyone for money or kiss any butts. Have fired a couple clients over the years. Was always a relief. Semi-retired works well and I...

What? Fire a Customer?! By Noel Ward, Editor@Large Sooner or later the moment of reckoning arrives for every business-owner. There are always customers that cost you money, are too aggravating to work with or simply not worth the revenue they bring in. So what do you do? If the customer were...

I agree that both quality and customer expectations can be objective but without sufficient research data in the report I was writing about I cannot back up that perspective with any data. My job in this case was to report on the data provided, not editorialize or make assumptions about...