The Communicator

If I had to bet, I’d say that you probably have a few boxes of old brochures and media kits collecting dust in your office right now. Take a look – they usually hide under your desk or on top of your filing cabinets. Some organizations even have closets and rooms dedicated to housing outdated marketing materials.

Thankfully, recent improvements in technology and record-low printing costs offer today’s organizational communicator an innovative solution to reduce cost and waste: Order-to-print materials.

In practice, an ‘order-to-print’ system acts as an online portal, enabling employees to order a variety of collateral material directly from an approved print vendor. An organization can negotiate rather competitive prices with vendors based on expected demand and guaranteed quantities.

There are a number of easy ways to sell this idea up the food chain. Order-to-print systems can:

• Reduce cost: Many communications departments spend a large portion of their annual budgets producing brochures that will eventually be used by other departments. By creating an order-to-print system, production costs for materials are charged directly to the user (say Business Development or HR). This not only shifts expenses off of your departmental budget, it also creates an inherent value to the end-user, which will likely result in more thoughtful use.  
• Reduce waste: Using the traditional method, most communications professionals tend to be optimists and order more brochures than they could ever possibly use. Every year, I’d lament the excess as we recycled boxes and boxes of out-of-date material. Using an order-to-print system, materials are produced on an as-needed basis, thereby reducing waste and budget, while saving trees at the same time.
• Maintain version control: Do you update your brochures annually? Given the pace of change, is that often enough? A big problem with traditional brochure production is that by the time they are printed, they are often out of date. By utilizing an order-to-print system, you can update your content at any time, and be certain that the updates will take effect immediately.  
• Reclaim time: It may not seem like much, but every week my team would spend thirty minutes or more fielding and filling orders for corporate materials. Colleagues could order logoed hats online, but they couldn’t order brochures. An order-to-print system removes the administrative burden on your department, allowing your team to focus on the real goal of achieving their communications objectives.

So take back your office space, and get rid of those boxes once and for all, because this one’s got all the hallmarks of a great win-win: fiscal accountability for the bean-counters, environmental responsibility for the greens and more office space for you.

Need help with your corporate collateral? Contact me at Peter@CommunicationsUnlimited.ca.