Awareness –
What You Don’t Know Can’t Help You

By Greg Cholmondeley
Segment Marketing Manager,
Ricoh Americas Corporation

In the previous issue we talked about “taking the outside view” to consider your in-plant operation as a business. We discussed looking at productivity, volume and opportunity and how you could become an “intrapreneur” within your own organization. In this article, we’ll sharpen our view and delve a little deeper into one aspect that can have a tremendous impact – awareness.

When looking at ways to be intrapreneurial with your printing operation, try segmenting your thinking into five areas:

Getting a handle on productivity is essential before anything else should be attempted. If you can’t efficiently handle your volumes, have difficulty meeting your deadlines, or are turning away work – then you really aren’t ready to be looking for more. Likewise, if you have reliability concerns with your production equipment or inefficiencies with a manual workflow, attempting to grow your volume at this time is probably premature.

Your Ricoh Production Print Specialist is a much better resource than an article to help you understand and address your productivity, reliability and workflow needs. Give your Ricoh Production Print Specialist a call to discuss your productivity situation. In this article, we’ll focus on awareness.

Who knows what you do?
Do your clients know your full offerings, capabilities and prices? For that matter, do you know whether or not your clients understand your offerings and capabilities? Many in-plants have a relatively small number of large clients requiring several types of applications. Most in-plants have also invested over the years in digital production equipment, design software and expertise and, increasingly, in variable data design packages. These investments are usually justified for one or two key client applications yet they could benefit others.

You may be surprised at how much of your organization doesn’t know of these new in-plant service offerings. Your top customers might not realize that you offer services or capabilities beyond what they regularly use. Many potential client organizations might not know the extent of what you offer. Still others might not know that you even exist!

You have competition today. Competition comes in the form of departmental printers that people see every day, as well as in the form of outside vendors who advertise and market their services. To compete with these other choices you need to answer the following:

Words like “compete”, “sell” and “market” may sound out of place in a discussion about in-plants, but consider this: The reason you exist is to deliver secure, reliable and effective production services for your organization at the best price. The only way that can happen is if the people in your parent organizations are aware of your services and can make informed decisions whether to use you.

Ask yourself first
Before you ask your clients if they know your services though, you need to know the answer yourself. That sounds incredibly obvious, but it is tougher than it sounds. You can probably rattle off the equipment and software you own … but can you create a list in terms of what you can do for your clients?

You can probably list the services you offer … but can you describe the value you provide? For example, a hallway printer might very effectively print 2,500 mail merge letters … including the typos or formatting errors. Your quality assurance would probably catch mistakes like that … adding the value of saving time and money. As another example, just about anyone can write a cover letter or design a simple brochure with high-quality photos. You, however, might have designers or writers who understand graphic design, color psychology and effective writing techniques … transforming “form letters” into effective documents.

How about your costs? Do your clients know what they are? Do you know how your prices compare to outside vendors? What about departmental printers? Most people probably view printing on the hallway printer as “free” because they don’t see the charges while they see a line item expense for using a CRD. What do those “free” copies really cost? What is the total cost when you add in the time away from their work and the delays of others who are forced to wait?

Prepare yourself with your answers, then go ahead and ask. Start with your top clients. Learn what they know and don’t know about you, educate them and look for new opportunities. Then meet with your second tier customers. Use examples of how others are using your services. Then you can begin working on the ones you’re missing.

Be sure to focus on the value you provide as well as the services. Also listen for other needs these organizations may have. You may find places where you need to augment your capabilities because people are forced to go outside. You may even get to the point where you become the first stop for all production needs becoming the prime negotiator for work that needs to be outsourced. Doing this might result in more streamlined workflows and, perhaps, better negotiated rates when you do need to outsource work.

Once you can clearly state the capabilities, services, prices and, most importantly, the value you offer, you are ready to start marketing your in-plant. In the next article we’ll explore ideas of how to do this … and how not to do it.

An expert in production printing environments and solutions, Greg Cholmondeley is responsible for in-plant marketing for Ricoh Americas’ Production Printing Business Group. He brings 25 years of engineering, systems architecture, solutions development and industry marketing experience to this assignment. Greg can be reached at Greg.Cholmondeley@Ricoh-USA.com or at 561.516.0238.

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November 28, 2007
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