Ordering business cards online is easy. They’re a web to print dream, easily passing from the customer to the print queue with minimal touchpoints along the way. This easy transition benefits everyone involved. But did you know that web to print can go beyond the simple business card?
Advanced web to print software will streamline your custom design process, making things easier for your customers, your designers, and your bottom line.
Why Custom Design is Different
When a customer needs something specific to their brand, they’ll request a custom design. Thousands of in-house print shops are tasked with the challenge of managing custom design processes every day. Some have hundreds of projects in their queue at any given time.
Unlike a business card, custom design requires small print shops to coordinate design approval, manage communications between clients and designers, and keep track of a designer’s hours. Leaving all this work to your team to handle manually can lead to human error and lost time. PageDNA’s web to print solution handles your custom design process for you.
A Case Study: Heidelberg Distributing
Heidelberg Distributing is a large beverage distributor based in Cincinnati, Ohio. They work with suppliers and sales reps who consistently need custom-designed promotional materials for events and other marketing opportunities. Here’s how we helped them save money and streamline their custom design process.
The Problem
Heidelberg was missing out on revenue. Why? One of their main suppliers refused to reimburse their design costs unless they provided detailed reports on what people were ordering, how the orders were managed, and the specifics of the design process.
Heidelberg needed an efficient way to manage and track their custom design jobs and produce detailed reports. Here’s how we helped.
The PageDNA Solution
1. Improved Ordering Experience
We first worked with Heidelberg’s internal print shop to design a user-friendly catalog that sales reps could browse to select the materials they needed. Everything from cooler stickers and posters to celebration kits and fliers was available for ordering.
The catalog also allowed customers to upload a creative brief that designers used for their first draft of the product. Requestors could also charge their project to separate suppliers if repping more than one. Once the customer made their request, it got sent to the approval queue.
2. The PageDNA Approval Queue
The PageDNA Approval Queue allows print shops to see all the jobs that have been submitted. For Heidelberg, they had anywhere from 300 to 400 custom design jobs at one time. The Approval Queue allowed them to quickly manage how they processed each order.
Using the Approval Queue, Designers filter through orders by order date, need-by date, and designer. They can also grab jobs from the queue, ensuring no other designer takes them. The Approval Queue also provides a place for designers to track their time and communicate with customers.
3. Client-Designer Communication
As the designer works on the product for the sales rep, PageDNA manages back-and-forth between customers and designers. It can also send reminders if someone forgets to respond.
The best part is that everything is automated, so there’s no need to keep track of all your emails and phone calls with different customers.
The Approval feature is a hallmark feature that Heidelberg found helpful. It forwards orders to other individuals for review, if necessary. Reps could even deny designs outright. Furthermore, PageDNA can notify the requestor as reviews take place. It also has a robust “reminder” system that ensures orders aren’t in limbo for too long.
Once a design is approved, it flows into an automated workflow, joining the other jobs on their way to being printed.
4. Automated Reporting
Perhaps the most helpful piece of all this for Heidelberg was PageDNA’s automatic Reporting feature. They were able to provide their suppliers with a better marketing report that measured:
- Who made orders
- Cost
- Designers
- Billing codes
- Total item price
Heidelberg set these reports to automatically release on a schedule. Doing this ensured the reports were pushed to a specific folder or email by a certain time and date. This meant that suppliers got better marketing reports that became the tool Heidelberg used to get paid by their suppliers.
Improve Revenue
PageDNA helped Heidelberg’s internal print shop by streamlining their ordering process, managing custom design, and automating detailed reports they could use to recuperate revenue. In the end, this led to:
- Happier customers
- Satisfied suppliers
- Improved revenue
Today, Heidelberg’s custom design process is more efficient than ever—all thanks to advanced web to print solutions from PageDNA.
We’re here to ensure you and your business succeed online. Complete our information form today to schedule a consultation with our sales team!
