Manufacture Opportunities out of E-Chaos - Part I
By: T.J. Tedesco
For: The Binding Edge
Published: Winter, 2001

What a difference nine months makes. Last March, at the Binding Industries Association International Annual Conference in San Francisco, a lot of people were singing the “I’ve missed the e-commerce” blues. E-commerce’s rising star fell faster than Al Gore’s presidential bid. The days of raising millions of dollars on the strength of a business plan scribbled on a cocktail napkin plan are over. Now what? Ignore the Internet and all it has to offer? Hardly. Instead, use it for what it is – a great new communication tool.

Those who thought that e-commerce was the beginning of a new way of doing business were greatly mistaken. Those who thought it was just another tool, albeit a good one, were closer to being on the money.

A few minutes ago (as of this writing on November 13), I noticed on the AP wire that another dot.com is closing its virtual doors. This time the victim is the grocery delivery service Streamline.com. Streamline installed refrigerators in customer’s garages (at no charge), delivered groceries at competitive prices and even took care of dry cleaning and UPS packaging needs. As it turns out, this bloated bundle of services broke the collective back of Streamline’s investors.

Streamline’s demise has caused me a personal problem. For the past year, their service was exactly what my family needed. Now, I’m like a smoker in California – I’m hooked with nowhere to go. The Streamline experience is applicable to us in the post press industry. They created a valuable service, but like many other dot.coms, they forgot about making a profit. Let’s not reinvent the wheel. As we in the binding, finishing and loose-leaf industries plunge deeper into e-commerce, let’s learn from experiences of companies like Streamline.com.

Information Is Everything
In highly competitive service industries like ours, the winners will be those that provide the marketplace with accurate and timely information. Will there be a dot.com business that streamlines (no pun intended) the post press service buying experience? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. But for now the smart money is on post press companies that use the Internet to provide great information. Does this mean posting live production counts online in a secure environment? Probably not.

There are a lot of reasons why bindery owners should be really cautious about making production information accessible to customers online. Some jobs run great, others are dogs, and when things don’t go as planned (as in everyday); it’s up to us to figure out how to meet our business obligations. Customers need their jobs on time and properly done. How we accomplish this is frankly none of their business. As nice as it would be to offer password protected “real-time” production counts to customers, here are two hefty reasons not to:

Assume you’re a bindery customer with the ability to check real time job status online and you discover that your job is behind schedule. Even if your post press services company has a plan to make the due date (i.e., putting your job on multiple machines at a later time), online information access can create unnecessary worry. You will wonder, “Why hasn’t my job been started yet? Or, why are production counts so low this far into the job? The fact that production plans aren’t obvious will result in an increased level of customer fear.

Discovering that your job is ahead of schedule can cause problems too. In this situation, don’t you think your customer will be tempted to let their customer know that they’ll probably get their job early? You bet. What if you stop production for a while? What just happened? Without meaning to, you’ve created a delivery expectation in the mind of your customer and now an on time delivery will be considered late.

These are two powerful reasons why it’s going to be difficult for post press companies to offer their customers real time job information online. Nevertheless, the world is changing. People now expect to buy anything and learn everything whenever they want – 24/7. Present difficulties acknowledged; there is an opportunity for forward-thinking post press service companies to intelligently put some production information on the Internet. It won’t be easy – and how to do it is far from obvious – but as other industries have shown, it is possible.

For example, Amazon.com, Buy.com and a host of other retail sites let you place orders online and notify you upon shipment of product. Both give you an indication, but not absolute answer if a product is in stock. In the case of Amazon, inventory status is hedged by offering the bland online statement, “Usually ships within 24 hours.” Although customers would prefer to see the phrase, “In stock,” Amazon correctly has chosen not to use it. As an Amazon supplier (Amazon.com sells both of my books), I know from their aggressive inventory replenishment programs that they rarely run out of stock.

Selling uncomplicated products like books online is one thing. Selling more complicated, made to order products, is quite another. Let’s shift our attention to Dell. If you’ve ever bought a Dell computer online, you know that this company provides you with an ability to track the status of your order throughout the manufacturing and shipping processes. Like Amazon, they stop short of giving you 100% information. The last time I ordered a Dell product, I didn’t see, “Your motherboard is being installed on machine #1076 in Austin, TX.” Instead, their site told me when my order entered the production department, exited production, entered shipping, etc. Best of all, the manufacturing status was always accompanied with an anticipated ship date. And, somehow, I never had the feeling that the information was static (unchanging). Dell told me exactly what I needed – no more and no less. Perhaps, there is a way for us in the post press industries to do the same. Let’s give our customers some production information without creating false expectations of either hope or fear.

Sales / Marketing Benefits On The Internet
There are a lot of companies out there that still don’t have Web sites. Being in business today without having a website is like not having a business card – you just don’t do it. Don’t let cost hinder you. A reasonable site that functions as an online brochure can be done with petty cash. There isn’t any excuse anymore. Admittedly, more ambitious sites in service industries like ours must wrestle with difficult issues like:

• Changing job specifications, missed schedules, incomplete production information, etc.
• Job shop scheduling
• Staying in touch with customers and their needs

One of my consulting clients – a manufacturer of index tabs – recently launched a terrific e-commerce website. Their secure site allows existing, pre-qualified customers to choose a product, customize it (with the help of a short series of “smart” questions), place orders, receive production schedule information and make payments. Today, Quality Indexing Corporation is writing a lot of business directly from its e-commerce efforts. To see how easily this site works, apply for a User ID and Password at www.qualityindexing.com.

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The e-world isn’t anything to be afraid of. Some activities are working very well in our industry right now … and won’t break the bank. Even considering Wall Street’s disappointment with the dot.com industry as a whole, there are few technologies out there as promising as the Internet. As the folks at Streamline.com so rudely discovered, e-commerce makes people’s lives easier, but the name of the game is still making a profit. Join me in the next Binding Edge issue for Part II, which will discuss setting up your website and creating an opt-in broadcast e-mail program.

T.J. Tedesco is a “hands-on” marketing, sales, coaching and training consultant to the post press industry. He is the author of Binding, Finishing & Mailing: The Final Word, and Win Top-of-Mind Positioning, both published by GATFPress and available at Amazon.com. T.J. can be reached at (301) 294-9900 or tj@growsales.com.