If you aren’t already using an e-commerce portal to archive, order, and manage your print materials, you are leaving money on the table. How? Let’s look at five costs associated with manual print ordering and management and how you save money using an online storefront instead.
1. Administrative time. How long does it take one of your employees to place orders for 1,000 copies of your product brochures, 500 business cards for six employees, and 5,000 full-color direct mail pieces? It’s not just the time it takes to place each order. It’s what these employees are not getting done while they do.
2. Outdated inventory. How much inventory do you waste yearly because you order in large quantities to keep the cost down, then throw out because the materials go out of date? Through an online storefront, you order what you need, as you need it, in smaller quantities. If you are warehousing these materials, you will also save money on warehousing.
3. Errors. The branding elements are locked in when you approve and centralize your materials in an online storefront. No matter who places the order, at what time of day or night, your brand colors won’t get messed up. You won’t use the wrong image, last month’s offer, or an outdated logo. You save money on remakes, brand erosion, and embarrassment.
4. Design. Repeat jobs can be transferred to templates while still allowing you to customize, update, and segment them without sacrificing creativity. You can handle these jobs in-house without compromising your brand by using templates.
5. Faster turnaround. As the saying goes, “Time is money.” By starting with a brand-approved template, you can turn around projects in hours rather than weeks, even when you need to make changes. This allows you to respond more quickly to market changes (such as moves by competitors) and make your marketing more agile.
These are some of the top benefits of digital storefronts, but they are by no means the only ones. How much money could you save by setting up your own?
