The change has started: Where will it end up?

[mattf]

Over the past few months I've seen an explosion of change within the print industry. Primarily dedicated to a few key areas:

1) Change from just printing to cross-media style of business
a) i.e. - Printing company with its own mailhouse, or printing company with its own designers. Even printing company with its own marketing niche.

2) Single channel type of campaigns to multi-channel
a) Whether it is radio, newspaper, direct mailer, TV
b) Have to become multi-channel to reach the same # of people

3) Cutting of Costs to create the most efficient type of workflow
a) whether it be six sigma or lean

Granted, these changes have been slowly implemented within many years, but it seems many print companies who just do "print" now are looking for ways to become something "more". Such scramble for a more complex identity is mind boggling to me, as it is sadly the only way most print companies can survive in this type of market.

My question is, what tools are being used to develop this multi-channel, cross-media type of printing firm? Can lean help to make such an idea possible? Are small-medium printing companies at risk of going under because of this shift in what is expected of a printing company?

 

[David Dodd]

My question is, what tools are being used to develop this multi-channel, cross-media type of printing firm? Can lean help to make such an idea possible? Are small-medium printing companies at risk of going under because of this shift in what is expected of a printing company?

Matt,

Lean does not provide an analytical framework or a toolset for helping a company determine what business it should be in or what business model it should use. Those kinds of issues fall in the realm of business strategy making. There are several tools that companies can use to help them develop sound business strategies, but lean isn't one of them. Lean focuses primarily on improving existing value streams and processes. Lean can be used to improve the operation of the product development process, but not to decide what new products should be developed and offered.

As far as your larger question is concerned, I have long argued that a printing company must choose between two very differrent generic strategies. A company can adopt the strategy of becoming a "super efficient" print manufacturing company, or it can adopt the strategy of becoming a diversified marketing or communications services provider. Few, if any, companies can successfully implement both strategies.

 

[mattf]

Matt,

Lean does not provide an analytical framework or a toolset for helping a company determine what business it should be in or what business model it should use. Those kinds of issues fall in the realm of business strategy making. There are several tools that companies can use to help them develop sound business strategies, but lean isn't one of them. Lean focuses primarily on improving existing value streams and processes. Lean can be used to improve the operation of the product development process, but not to decide what new products should be developed and offered.

As far as your larger question is concerned, I have long argued that a printing company must choose between two very differrent generic strategies. A company can adopt the strategy of becoming a "super efficient" print manufacturing company, or it can adopt the strategy of becoming a diversified marketing or communications services provider. Few, if any, companies can successfully implement both strategies.

David, when you say "super efficient", I think of many ways that phrase can be defined. Do you mean a company that has very little waste within their workflow or do you mean a company that has constrained their parameters in order to make every job basically the same as the next? I know some companies that are basically vendors for printing, 48hourprint.com comes to mind, but they are just a 3rd party company pushing out jobs to many different printing firms. Any clarification would be helpful.

In terms of marketing provider I can understand. Making print into a multiple media interface in order to market to the largest amount of people is a good way to go. In terms of communications provider, I'm not sure what you are referring to. Do you mean within the print industry you would potentially transport information electronically to specific areas such as telecommunications, entertainment and media, and Internet/Web services?

Actually, in terms of "defining" what they are, would you be referring to the marketing side as "multi-channel publishing"? On the flip side, communication side as "media-agnostic publishing"? To define:

multi-channel publishing - content fed through different channels of media

media-agnostic publishing - Single-source publishing - created through one channel, put into different medias when done. Ex. XML

If you are referring to these idea then a light bulb popped into my head and I have somewhere to go with this mess of a thought process, but if not then correct me where I stand since I apparently am naive to the concept.

 

[David Dodd]

Matt,

As I used the term "super efficient" in my earlier response, I certainly meant a company that has reduced waste (non-value-adding activities and their related costs) as much as possible. But, I also meant something else. To produce reasonable earnings, most pure manufacturing companies need to operate at something approaching full capacity. And, I don't mean full capacity for one shift. I mean full capacity based on 24 hours a day, seven days per week, 365 days per year. This is important because pure print manufacturing produces low margins, and one way to improve those margins is to spread fixed costs across more revenue dollars. One good example of this is the contract manufacturing companies like Flextronics and Solectron. These firms built successful businesses by taking over inefficient manufacturing operations from their customers and by running their plants flat out.

Marketing services and communications services can come in many forms, and I really didn't have a specific flavor in mind. One simple (and overly simplistic) way to look at this issue is this: You know that you have become a marketing and/or communications services provider when more than half of your total revenues are derived from non-print services. These services might include the development and execution of direct marketing campaigns (whether in print or another media), or the development and management of web-based print procurement systems (aka "web-to-print"), or a variety or other services.