Workflow automation is the holy of grail of many businesses both within the Print Industry and beyond. One of the key areas that web to print ecommerce can offer you 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, improving your business efficiency and helping to eliminate errors.
Orders can be placed directly on your website by clients and can be 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.
A comprehensive web to print ecommerce website can also offer additional benefits when it comes to supplier automation. For example, the ability to trigger an email to be sent directly to your client from your website, when the chosen trade printer despatches the client’s order.
From a client perspective, they will have received an email directly from you and there is no need for you to manually intervene to keep your client informed of progress on their order. Minimising the need for you to engage in the simple customer communication tasks, frees you up to work on more comprehensive and stimulating tasks.
Web to print software can also allow you to choose whether to outsource production of an order based on simple rules such as the order quantity. This allows you to make print order fulfilment decisions that will help you to maximise profitability.
For example, if producing a product in house is cheaper for you for the first 1000 units, you can build in a quantity break, to ensure that every order under 1000 units remains an in-house order, and every order over 1000 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 from a 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 gain maximum benefit from the automation of production workflows. For more information on the benefits offered by Flex4’s Online Print Solution visit www.onlineprintsolution.co.uk.
