Web-to-Print Business Model Stirs Controversy

In recent years, web printers have taken a large share of the market for standard business printing such as business cards and letterheads. Being able to handle a large amount of similar work every day means enterprises can make good use of proof sheets, and this requires a wealth of technical knowledge in data preparation, positioning, prepress technology and shipping. The business models of large-format printing and advertising printing differ slightly. Sometimes, for small-format products such as business cards, the web printer's trick lies in knowing how to make good use of proof sheets and how to combine printing data into print-ready PDF files. In some cases, web wide-format printing and advertising printing can handle final-product data from as many as 100 different sources.

The formats of typical advertising products range from mouse pads to giant outdoor billboards. This initially gives rise to the problem of systematizing a great variety of possible final products, and then how to screen out the profitable ones, and then how to standardize the products as much as possible in order to set prices the market can bear. Next to be considered is what kind of cooperative arrangement makes sense in order to have partners produce the products you cannot produce.

Offset or digital printing?

Genuine web printing should, technologically speaking, manifest as a streamlined flow of data - that is, from data receipt to shipping, print job data should be processed as automatically as possible. Manual intervention at every step reduces profitability. However, in commercial sheet-fed offset printing this is merely a single step of choosing the substrate, whereas in LFP and advertising printing all of this is much more chaotic. That is why offset printing handles poster printing with ease. The Heidelberg Speedmaster XL162 can print a format of 1190×1620 MM and the KBA Rapida 205 can handle a format of 1490×2050 MM, and both can print cardboard as thick as 1.6 MM.

This proves that ordinary offset processes can still be applied. When different kinds of advertising materials or large posters need to be printed, however, the technology becomes diversified. A large number of substrates such as fabrics, films and glass join the ranks, and these require different presses to print - from flexographic presses to screen printing presses and even large-format inkjet printers. These differences must be carefully listed to ensure accurate data and a zero-error whole process, so that products of the size and quality required by the customer can be printed on the given substrate. At the same time, the breadth of the printing range must be taken into account, so that customers are satisfied with the products and do not defect to competitors.

Different printing vendors have fragmented the entire market. On the one hand, traditional web printing service providers have expanded their service scope to include LFP and advertising printing; on the other hand, many enterprises provide an even broader range of wide-format advertising printing business; and finally, container printing service providers such as glass printing, and providers of 100-square-meter value-added printing services, are also taking part.

The top priority: business model

In any case, the business logic that web printing provides is important to its success and to other aspects. Industry leader Flyeralarm.com spent many years developing and improving its back-end software; today, customers at the call service center can learn the current status of production tasks at any time; the system automatically identifies error messages, such as problems where fonts cannot be embedded; and product distribution at Flyeralarm's production sites is mostly automated.

However, there is absolutely no need to develop everything yourself. A large number of web printing solutions are available, and many of them can handle LFP well through add-on modules. The good operation of the customer relationship interface and inventory management system for web printing is also very important. Alternatively, enterprises can have their software service providers develop proprietary modules with open interfaces suited to them, for connecting to web printing software.

In essence, the application of web printing should allow customers to choose process content regarding print quantity, materials and product composition, and then convert their printing details and printing data. The back end then needs to verify the customer details and transfer them into the customer relationship management (CRM) system and inventory system; at the same time it verifies the consistency of the printing data and transfers it into the product system. Also, to allow customers to design or edit product text and image data online, web printing should provide such add-on modules as well. Visual simulations such as WYSIWYG are also helpful - for example, a large banner placed on the outside of a building might be more intuitive. All of this shows that the commercial form of web printing will not be a problem for laggards such as wide-format printing and advertising printing.

—This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn); original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-361967.html