Personalization: Data-Driven Print and Internet Communications

6 Corporate Communications: In-Plant Print Shops and Transpromotional Documents

119 CHAPTER six CorPorate CoMMuniCations: in-Plant Print shoPs and transProMotional doCuMents While the emphasis of this book is primarily on the marketing function of personalized communication, there is also a great deal of personalization being implemented through corporate communications to employees, stockholders, and influencers such as publishing media. Many large corporations and government entities maintain in-house printing services that print, distribute, and mail these documents. Corporations that provide financial and health care services also use in-plant services to communicate with customers . The first type of personalized corporate communication was transaction printing—the printing and mailing of statements, bills, and other documents to confirm or facilitate transactions between customers and the companies they do business with. Transaction documents were first printed digitally with early dot-matrix printing devices. While these mechanical printers printed variable-width typefaces, their low resolution limited their applications to office documents and business communications.140 This chapter examines the corporate in-plant printing function and the new opportunities it offers for growth by combining transactional documents with promotional messages. in-plant printers A 2007 InfoTrends study estimated that 70% of companies with more than 1,000 employees have in-plant print shops.141 Moreover, over 60% of those surveyed expected that the volume of printed material produced by their inplants would increase in the near future.142 The largest in-plant print shops are located in government facilities, universities, insurance and financial firms, retailers, and health care companies.143 The U.S. Government Printing Office is the nation’s largest in-plant, serving as publisher for the federal gov- 120 ernment. Its mandate is to distribute information products and services for all three branches of the federal government, and in this capacity it produces the Congressional Record and all other legislative information supporting the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. In-plants in corporate settings such as utility companies, insurance and investment firms, and telecommunications firms print the transaction records and bills that are the heart of their customer interaction. In addition to these transaction documents, in-plants also print marketing brochures, newsletters, signs, manuals, reports, and catalogs. In-plants also provide a range of document services, including mailing, copier management (for printers distributed across multiple departments), and scanning for archival purposes. In-plant printers can become the internal resource for a company’s personalized direct mail, aimed at acquiring or keeping customers, by applying principles from the first five chapters of this book. The primary challenge for the in-plant to become the “vendor of choice” for a company’s marketing communications tactics is to provide service that exceeds that of the commercial printers, mailers, or service bureaus that marketing decision makers currently use. This internal marketing challenge is similar to that of the commercial printer: to get a seat at the table with the marketing managers as they plan their communications strategies. The case study presented below describes how the RIT in-plant printing services center evolved to become a marketing partner to the university’s admissions process. To transition from being “just a printer” to becoming a major division’s marketing partner, this in-plant followed five discrete steps: • Get to know the marketing decision makers of the firm and understand their customer engagement strategy. • Start small with one program and measure the results. • Get it right. • Build additional programs with that internal customer. • Sell to other internal customers. Corporate Communications 121 EvolUTion of An in-PlAnT: A CAsE sTUdy of PRinTinG sERviCEs AT RiT fRom 2005 To 2008 In 2005, the Printing Industry Center at RIT conducted three case studies to describe current in-plant printing challenges and opportunities.144 We asked where printing was done within each enterprise and where the organization sourced its other printing work. The cases included one university (RIT), one large retailer, and a food packager. This current study returns to RIT to determine how things have changed in the intervening three years. corporate printing at rit in 2005 In the spring of 2005, the Rochester Institute of Technology, an upstate New York private comprehensive university, had approximately 15,000 students, 700 faculty and 2000 staff members. Printing capabilities were spread throughout the organization: on the desktops of faculty and staff members, via networked printers in teaching labs, and through a centralized in-plant print shop that had been in existence since 1972. RIT’s printing needs can be classified into two...