How Web-to-Print Analytics Bring Value to You AND Your Customers
Knowledge is power. It’s a proverb as old as time. And yet it has never been more relevant than in our data-driven modern world. To thrive, today’s print providers must follow the data. This is a three-step process: collect the data, draw conclusions from it, and adapt your business based on those conclusions.
Where does web-to-print come into this equation? Web-to-print is an essential tool for printers who want to attract and support large enterprise clients. When you are dealing with large clients, optimization and automation are the keys to creating long-lasting, lucrative partnerships.
The best web-to-print platforms are built with this in mind and therefore come with powerful analytic capabilities for both you and your clients.
There are three main reasons why you want your web-to-print solution to have a solid reporting and analytic capabilities:
- Improving Your Operations
- Transparency for Customers
- Bird’s Eye View Business Insights
Improving Operations
Web-to-print software is becoming increasingly sophisticated. As it does so, these solutions are shedding their nascent role as mere online ordering enablers and becoming something more comprehensive. Many solutions today combine warehouse management, digital asset integration, production and procurement management, and online storefronts together as a complete package. The key to the synthesis of these parts is the ability to collect and collate data throughout the entire supply chain.
Web-to-print analytics gives printers the ability to attack inefficiencies and errors on a granular basis. Here are some examples of what this looks like.
Inventory Alerts:
Inventory shortages don’t have to sneak up on you. Let the system that knows everything about your inventory automate alerts for your procurement needs. The way Propago does this is with Buyer Groups.
Buyer Groups are essentially notification lists for low inventory alerts. The platform does the work by keeping the right people informed of product inventory quantities so they can buy and restock inventory as demand requires it.
Forecasting:
Predictive analytics can be a powerful tool for printers. This concept can apply to many aspects of the printer’s business, from planning maintenance far in advance as to minimize machine downtime to reducing supply waste. With web-to-print, predictive analytics can be used to achieve JIT (Just-In-Time) inventory management.
Propago employs a feature called Forecasting to help providers “see the future” and order inventory on an as-needed basis. Forecasting goes far beyond minimum inventory alerts. These algorithms are also looking at lead-times and velocities over different periods for the ultimate planning forecast.
The ability to forecast demand enables the printer to run a smarter operation. For example, the printer can decide when to go offset and when to go digital, when to run inventory (high demand products) and when to produce them on demand (low demand products).
The Customer Wants Data
One unignorable effect that the digital age has had on the customer/provider relationship is the demand for transparency. This desire for access to on-demand information affects all industries. Print buyers want data about the business they are doing with their printer.
Modern web-to-print solutions solve for this. Instead of manually fulfilling daily requests for data on inventory, storefront usage, and spending, give your customers the tools to do all the number crunching they desire. Strong reporting and analytical tools in your web-to-print platform are just as useful for the customer as they are for the printer.
The Propago Platform gives both the printer and the customer a full suite of reporting tools with a high degree of customizability. Configurable ad hoc reporting and visual business intelligence dashboards cover all the bases so your customers always have access to the information they need. Once the customer has dialed in their reports, they can create custom “push” report schedules to email this data to whoever needs it.
There is more value here than just data for data’s sake. Providing self-service access to marketing portal data gets the customer engaged in the adoption of the platform.
Bird’s Eye View: Business Insights
In the first section, we looked at how web-to-print analytics can be used specifically to make incremental improvements in the efficiency of your warehouse and operations. Let’s take a broader approach now.
The goal of any good data analysis strategy is to use collected information to make more informed decisions quarter after quarter. This is how the fastest growing companies keep their pace. For printers, this means taking detailed stock of inventory and material costs, production data, and sales data, and making decisions on machines, labor, pricing, and suppliers.
Modern web-to-print solutions give printers unprecedented depths of data to delve into. The best of those solutions make it easy to sort and share this information so you can easily integrate these analytics into your workflow. With the right approach, any printer can leverage web-to-print analytics to enhance their future planning and make better business decisions.
