The Cost of Selfish Automation

There’s a question every print business owner should be asking: Are we competing on efficiency, or are we competing on value?

For most, the honest answer is efficiency, which may be the problem.

For years, workflow automation has been positioned as the route to efficiency: faster turnaround, lower costs, tighter margins. And in many ways, it has delivered. But efficiency on its own is a weak differentiator. It’s the selfish side of automation. Necessary – but focused entirely on you, the printer. It keeps your operation lean and your margins intact, but only for as long as the work keeps coming in. When it doesn’t, your only remaining lever is price.

Value, on the other hand, is what wins customers – and keeps them. It comes from great people, strong communication, and increasingly, from the software platform at the heart of your operation.

A look back

Over the last 20 years, one of the print industry’s most persistent challenges has been sameness. Too many businesses doing the same thing, using the same processes, and telling customers exactly how they do it.

The result is predictable: large parts of print have become commoditised. Success becomes an efficiency contest – lowest cost wins, until the work dries up.

This race to the bottom has claimed more businesses than most care to count. Even the survivors, highly optimised and efficient, are seeing diminishing returns. It’s a familiar story: a company invests heavily in the latest machinery to shave seconds off production – only to find itself in administration months later.

Efficiency matters. But on its own, it isn’t a strategy.

The pre-press workflow legacy problem

Alongside this, most printers have operated near-identical pre-press set-ups for years – a means to an end, with everything focused on plate output. These systems were often a reluctant cost (or even ‘free’ based on other commitments) rather than a strategic investment. And many have since been neglected by their providers, leaving them ill-equipped for the demands of modern digital print – whether that’s high-speed inkjet or variable page output at production speed.

In smaller and mid-sized printers who have diversified beyond a litho press, there are typically multiple ‘islands of workflow’ – each one acquired with the addition of another piece of kit.  The machine led the purchase, and the software came along with it…’solutions’ upon ‘solutions’ upon ‘solutions’. Ironically, each one adding another layer of complexity to manage.

In larger businesses, pre-press has frequently been absorbed into IT, and with that shift comes a gradual loss of critical print knowledge. IT departments without print expertise tend to “dumb down” print-specific requirements in favour of generic file automation. In some cases, the customer ends up being asked to supply “good” files simply to make life easier for the printer.

That’s not a platform strategy. It’s a limitation – and one that can impact customer retention.

The cloud platform trap

As legacy systems reach end of life, many printers are looking to cloud-based automation platforms as the next step.

On the surface, this appears to be progress. But there’s a fundamental issue: if your platform is the same as your competitor’s – or worse, a shared environment – where is the differentiation?

It’s the same old problem in a new wrapper. Equal value, rather than added value. It would be commercial suicide for a Web2Print business to share its ordering platform with a rival; the same logic applies here.

The Hidden Cost of Automation

The fact that your automation works should never be the measure of success – because it may ultimately cost you more.  There are hundreds of tools available from countless vendors. Some are easy to use, others less so. Some offer APIs, others rely on scripting, and some still depend on rudimentary hot folders to pass tasks between systems. It’s never been easier for printers to build their own in-house automation.

But in selecting these tools, few stop to consider the architecture of the overall solution – its ability to adapt, evolve, and scale over time.

Few consider the underlying infrastructure.
Few consider energy efficiency.
Few consider the disruption caused by updates.
Few consider the licensing implications or the workflow complexity introduced when systems are spread across multiple machines.
And few consider the ongoing cost of managing every tool in the stack – each with its own licensing model, support agreement, and operational quirks.

It’s akin to buying a new press based solely on how a single sheet looks – without ever examining the machine, or technology behind it, or support costs.

Poor decisions at this stage can become extremely expensive, particularly when scaling. Because when you scale automation, you don’t just scale output – you often scale complexity, fragility, and cost.  And by then, it’s much harder to turn back.

Your platform, your competitive advantage

This is where the real opportunity lies.

A print business’s software platform should not simply drive efficiency (selfish automation) – it should underpin the entire customer experience (adding value). 

Importantly, the software architecture is key. Not just what it does but HOW it does it. It should address the hidden costs previously outlined, whilst offering low-cost flexibility and scaling.   At its core, it must handle the realities of print: colour management, process control, calibration, imposition, trapping, approvals, substrates. These are not edge cases; they are fundamental needs where generic IT platforms struggle.

Around that core, a well-designed platform connects pre-press, proofing, job management, DAM, and production – bringing together what are typically fragmented workflow islands.

This is where differentiation happens. Where businesses build their own IP. Where customer experiences are shaped and refined.

The businesses already succeeding understand this. In the large Web2Print players, workflow automation is largely achieved (although some are maintained at great internal cost)  – the differentiator is the customer-facing aspect. Customers expect fast, accurate visual proofing. If they don’t get it, they go elsewhere.

The printed product still matters. But the experience of buying it is what wins the work.

Added Upstream Value

Almost everything that gets printed is part of something bigger – a campaign, a project, a brand rollout. The same underlying data is being repurposed across web, digital advertising, and social media.

Printers are uniquely positioned to extend into this space: image management, video, 3D assets, website content – expanding workflows beyond print files alone.

More importantly, it moves you upstream – closer to the origin of the work, rather than remaining the final link in the chain.

And there’s a simple commercial truth: holding a customer’s data means holding the customer. It creates stickiness, opens new revenue streams, and builds loyalty that isn’t easily displaced by a cheaper quote.

If you can deliver upstream value – combined with a consistent user experience across both upstream and downstream workflows – you begin to blur the line of where your involvement starts. That’s where new opportunities emerge, along with additional revenue streams.

There is little value in building a platform that only handles print files when that same data drives an entire channel mix. The printers who recognise that – and build accordingly – are the ones who will still be here in another 20 years.

Because in the end, automation that only serves you is efficiency.

Automation that serves your customer is value.