"For 2011, you've got a blank check!" If this is you, then give me a call—I'll make you a great deal on the Brooklyn Bridge. But if you're like the rest of us, then you're probably being told to find ways to get more work done with less money. ROI (return on investment) needs to be achieved in 18 months or less and the business case had better be compelling. And because that's not challenging enough, throw in some new compliance requirements in the healthcare and financial markets and add Intelligent Mail barcodes as icing on the cake.
This means your print-to-mail operations need to be less expensive to operate, more flexible, run on shorter deadlines and demonstrate proof for everything they do. You can invest in all kinds of hardware and software to help support this vision, but unless your workflow is interconnected, and data is well managed, it is all for nothing.
Let's take a step back and evaluate some of the top considerations for building a strong end-to-end workflow. Start by challenging assumptions. It may not be an easy task, but most people who have taken the time to do this find the financial and business rewards are worth the effort. By interconnecting your technologies, you'll achieve synergies—including cost savings and flexibility—that simply can't be addressed by point solution upgrades.
State of the State
First, you need to perform an existing state analysis—you need to know where you are to know where you need to be. You can start collecting this information no matter what your role might be. Document your major operational processes. Talk with your colleagues, and record the biggest problems they see. Then talk to vendors, solutions partners and industry colleagues and understand what they see as market drivers and challenges in the industry. People love to share information, so it likely won't be difficult to get this feedback from them. Changing behaviors is more of a struggle, so start by creating a list of everything you do today, why you do it and the pros and cons. Then create a "what-if" column and list a wild alternative, with the pros and cons to show the contrast (see chart).
Axis of Allies
Next, after you've identified your major processes and created a list of alternatives, it's time to gather stakeholders from across your operations and other owners in your organization (finance, marketing, compliance, etc.) who have a stake in the document being created or the processes being evaluated. When people are aware of your objectives, the options and your impact on the organization, you'd be surprised where you may find allies for change.
Ultimately, you'll need sponsors who can exert influence because your goal needs to be an evaluation of the entire process, including areas you might not directly own—this is a promotion-worthy step many people leave out, but it's critical. Once their requirements are on paper, go back to the process list you built in step one and see where goals may align. Suddenly, what once was considered a crazy idea might make a lot of sense (see chart).
Do this a handful of times, and you'll see the broadest and most influential changes you can make will invoke significant data handling requirements—and with this, you can demonstrate strong business results.
This is where your workflow comes in. A good workflow can't just be a list of simple get-me-to-the-next-step actions that rely on tribal knowledge. It must be a holistic, end-to-end process enabling systems that are physically disconnected (and often come from different manufacturers) to share information with each other. Inserters should share data with printers. Printers need data from composition. Composition needs data from business systems and marketing and mail needs data from darn near everything (for good discounts, at least). These operations may be divided by walls, but an interconnected workflow isn't.
First Things First
Finally, you need to prioritize. Once you have an end-state vision, identify the most near-term objective with the greatest ROI and tackle that first. The vision of a unified workflow is constantly evolving and changing with business demands and goals. If you bite off more than you can chew you're likely to end up choking, so don't feel as though you need to do it all immediately. There's no need, once you know the direction you're going, carefully evaluate the base technologies you will rely on for your workflow. These will become the foundation of your business processes for years, so evaluate this process very carefully.
Pursuing a unified production workflow is a worthwhile goal that can reap tremendous savings, support compliance initiatives and position your organization for future growth. But to get it right, it takes courage to question the status quo, requires a look at the objectives of the business and demands some out-of-the-box thinking to truly maximize potential.
About the Author:
Don Dew is the workflow solutions manager at InfoPrint Solutions Company. For more information on InfoPrint Solutions, visit www.infoprint.com.
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