The Inventory Insight Advantage of Web-to-Print
Managing the supply chain of marketing goods is a challenge for many organizations. Enterprise-scale companies must meet the ever-changing needs of marketing and sales teams across dozens of locations. Web-to-print offers an enticing shortcut to inventory management for these brands.
This is the third in a series of articles on the far-reaching benefits to business that web-to-print has for the clients on the storefront side of the equation. In the first two articles, we looked at how web-to-print helps companies achieve brand consistency and a slimmer marketing budget.
Now, let’s look at the ways in which web-to-print marketing portals can be used for inventory management. Web-to-print gives brands valuable data, insight, and control over their materials and inventory that can be leveraged in a multitude of ways.
Small Batch Orders
Perhaps the most significant value that web-to-print brings to your customers is on-demand short-run print. The capacity to spin up customized collateral and order or reorder small batches any time is huge for marketers. It opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Got new branch-specific logos you want to put on letterheads? Want to print a small 250 copy run of event-specific flyers? No problem. Many web-to-print solutions offer customers the option to upload their artwork and instantly generate a proof or even apply digital assets from a DAM module (digital asset management) on the fly.
Brands can avoid wasting money on holding excess inventory and wasting materials on large print runs by ordering just what they need when they need it.
A Running Record
It can be tricky for companies with large marketing departments to collect and dissect data on their supply chain. This is especially so for those that rely on multiple vendors to produce and fulfill their marketing catalog.
With many modern web-to-print solutions, brands can connect all their favorite vendors to one platform. By doing so, they make their marketing assets traceable and gain access to data and insights that were invisible before.
In effect, web-to-print gives companies both a control dial and a temperature gauge for their inventory. Marketers can get notified when certain products will need restocking, see what types of products are moving through inventory quickly and what’s slowing down. They can reduce waste by putting old materials to new uses and anticipate when the best time is to introduce new branding or campaigns.
Inventory Control Panel
Web-to-print doesn’t just give marketers inventory insights and analytics. It also gives them the power to quickly act on these insights. Many modern solutions give administrators inventory management tools so they can place purchase orders from any device. Other specialized tools include the ability to manage customer-owned assets like monitors and tradeshow equipment. Propago’s version of this is called Fixed Assets and it enables users to book out reusable assets for a scheduled time.
In this way, the web-to-print portal becomes more than a lens to see how inventory is moving but also a control panel to make use of that information.
Marketing portals are more than just an online ordering tool for enterprise clients. They provide valuable data and tools for managing inventory that can transform the marketing department’s strategy. From tracking the usage of top SKUs to ordering short runs of custom print on-demand, web-to-print is the ultimate multipurpose tool for modern marketers.
