The challenge...
The start of a new millennium, no less, the year 2000 was an even more momentous year for Italian printer Pixartprinting than for most.
This was the year that company president Matteo Rigamonti decided to radically change his firm’s business model from that of a trade service bureau for traditional printers. Although the company had enjoyed a certain amount of development during the late 1990s, Rigamonti knew the future was online, so he took the bold step of becoming an entirely web-to-print operation.
"The new millennium marked a turning point," says Rigamonti. "A time of economic crisis came and I was tired of having to deal with customers who didn’t pay; one day, I decided to get rid of them all. This meant I had to find new customers who would pay right away, and I did so online, with web-to-print."
Getting a workflow in place to deal with this radically different set-up has been a gradual learning curve. In Rigamonti’s words: "In only a few years we went from a manual workflow to a purely industrial one."
But the company finally got to a place in 2011 where he felt it had arrived at the best, most automated solution for Pixartprinting. This exists in the form of its own bespoke system, Uragano (Italian for ‘hurricane’), built using progressive open-source and multi-platform software to manage job requests, admin, quotes and workflow, while combining orders on the basis of run, paper, type and weight. In Rigamonti’s words it has "harmonised the workflow, guaranteeing speed and efficiency while minimising the margin for error".
A less savvy print boss might, at reaching such an impressive level of automation, have sat back and congratulated himself. Come 2011, Pixartprinting had after all become one of Europe’s largest web-to-print players, serving 80,000 customers with English, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German virtual stores, and turning around an average of 3,800 jobs per hour.
But assuming his company has it made is not Rigamonti’s style. This is a print boss who, after all, recently developed a policy to offer services on systems and equipment that are never more than three years old, with the result that the company’s state-of-the-art production area is nicknamed ‘Little Drupa’ because its Komori Lithrone GL840s and Durst P10 were installed before they were even unveiled at last year’s exhibition.
In keeping with this ethos to constantly strive to be innovators in the field, Rigamonti saw that there was still room for significant improvement, in the form of offering manual proofing of jobs to complement automatic proofing.
"The correctness of a printing file is a key component determining the quality of the final product and, while we serve professionals, it sometimes happens that the original file has not been fine-tuned on the basis of the specified criteria," he explains, saying that he’d be the first to admit that machines aren’t infallible and don’t understand certain customer demands, such as whether part of the graphics consist of text, whether the front and back are correct or whether the fold falls in the right place.
"We perceived demand for such a service," he continues. "Hundreds of people call us every day to ask questions about how to prepare a file correctly. We’re happy to give them the information, but customers often want further confirmation that what they have done is correct."
The method...
The solution to the fact that people were still craving absolute confirmation that their files were print-ready, was introduced in December last year in the form of an operator-based file verification option for just €4 (£3.37) extra, regardless of job size.
Customers simply tick a box when ordering their print online to confirm that they would like extra assurance beyond Pixartprinting’s free file control proofing function, and to be in touch with a member of staff throughout the printing process.
All well and good from the customer’s perspective, but what about Pixartprinting’s? Such manual proofing may strike some as the very kind of headache that going down the web-to-print route was intended to eliminate.
Not so, says Rigamonti. In fact, he reports, the firm hasn’t had to invest in new staff to offer this service because the launch of this manual-proofing function has coincided with a website update that has reduced still further the amount of manual intervention required from Pixartprinting for other, non-manually proofed jobs.
"The new service is performed by our customer service staff. Customers may put questions to our specialised staff at any time while making a purchase online. Recent changes to our website have made the procedure even simpler, reducing the frequency of requests for online assistance and freeing up our customer service staff for this new task," says Rigamonti, reporting that this has freed up a team of 13 dedicated staff.
For those staff responsible for its implementation, the system is simple. A padlock icon is shown on unchecked jobs while a thumbs-up icon appears against manually proofed and customer-approved jobs, ensuring nothing gets left out and completed jobs are processed back into the printing, finishing and shipping workflow appropriately.
The result…
Having only launched the service a matter of months ago, it’s perhaps too soon to say whether it’s a complete success or not. But the verdict is definitely encouraging.
"The results have been very positive," states Rigamonti. "Take-up has been progressive and gradual but continuous, which suggests to me that the service is truly useful and convenient, especially for customers who feel a little insecure. As a percentage, I would say that about 10% of all jobs include this service. Considering that it is a very recent new service, this result seems very successful to me."
Rigamonti is confident, then, that this service is genuinely very handy for many.
"It’s not a step back at all but represents a step forward in customer service," he states. "It allows customers to delegate to us a step that would be necessary for placing an order online and would represent an additional task for our users to perform. The difference is that customers can be confident of final quality, guaranteed directly by our staff."
"The new operator file control is designed so that even less experienced customers can use the service with the certainty that the results will meet high quality standards; it will definitely allow non-specialists to make use of web-to-print services," he continues.
He adds that this puts Pixartprinting squarely apace with the current debate on democratisation through digital technology.
"This is part of the digital democratisation process, as explained by Chris Anderson in The Long Tail, which will allow practically everyone to gain access to innovative, rapid services with a price-to-quality ratio that can now be found only online," he says.
As well as giving Pixartprinting a reputation for excellent customer service, this new system has, then, given the firm the potential to seriously expand its reach, targeting a much wider client base than before. Though by how much has yet to be seen, Pixartprinting has seems to have achieved the holy grail of bringing in more work and offering an enhanced service to existing clients, at no extra cost to itself. The new millennium is proving to be a very good omen, then, for Rigamonti and Pixartprinting.
Pixartprinting: vital statistics
Location Quarto D’Altino, north-east Italy
Inspection host Matteo Rigamonti, company president
Size 260 members of staff (90 hired in the past year)
Established 1994, originally as a service bureau for traditional printers
Sectors Web-to-print largely servicing the professional graphic arts sector
Products A wide range, from fabric flags to magazines, via maxi-banners, business cards and, most recently, labels
Kit Four HP Indigo 7600s, four HP Indigo 7500s, two eight-colour Komori Lithrone GL840 Ps, two Epson SurePress L-4033A digital label presses and three Durst P10 roll to roll systems and four Durst P10 flatbed systems in a CAP configuration
Key dates 2000: Pixartprinting became a purely e-commerce company. 2011: deciding Pixartprinting had become a big, complex company needing the support of more than one person to maintain growth, Rigamonti sold 75% of its shares to Italian investment capital fund Alcedo
Inspection focus
Manual proofing service On top of its free, automatic-control proofing function, Pixartprint offers its customers a manual proofing service so that, for just €4, they can have absolute peace of mind that their products are printed and finished correctly
DO IT YOURSELF
Following suit
There are some instances where in fact manual proofing won’t be needed, admits company president Matteo Rigamonti: "If you are accepting files with super-strict tolerances, manual proofing has no reason to exist. Software can check the files, not you."
But a printer might still learn more broadly from the Pixartprinting’s example, he says, by realising just how important human interaction still is to many customers.
"Pretty much all companies offer good products so what does really set you apart? The service you offer and thus the people you have," he says. "You can try to make your clients’ lives easier by simply allowing them to get in touch with you easily. Good, human and passionate service is the key in making people closer to you."
Potential pitfalls
Rigamonti is careful to reiterate that implementing a manual proofing system may prove costly, and in fact be outside some printers’ budgets, if they’re not freeing staff up elsewhere.
"We implemented new technology and this freed up staff who could be employed for more productive tasks, but this might not be viable if you have to hire people," he says.
Top tips for success
Keep things simple from the customer’s end. Pixartprinting’s tick-box system is ideal for offering an extra level of assurance without forcing the customer to spend more time interacting with the company unless they want to
Ensure those working on manual proofing are very highly skilled in this. Just one experience of paying for manual proofing and things still not being right will spell disaster for your relationship with that customer
Ensure technology is still being used to keep track of what has and hasn’t been proofed. Follow Pixartprinting’s example of having something similar to a padlock and thumbs-up icon system that shows others whether a job has been proofed or not
Remember that technology can only do so much
Rigamonti’s top tip
"Take advantage of technology as much as you can and, where technology can’t be used, use the smarts of your people. Technology does not exist without people directing it where it needs to be directed."
