ARC Document : Redefining Office Printing with ARC Digital Storefronts

In every organization, some documents get printed multiple times in a given time period. Depending on events, marketing schedules, store openings, or customer signings, it can happen frequently, and sometimes on a regular schedule. Documents can range from contracts, promotional graphics, decals, posters, merchandising displays, and even more complicated projects requiring multiple and various documents and parts, and in some cases, (gasp!) some assembly is required.

What if your documents or graphics were online in your very own store, and you could order one (or five, or ten) for delivery in a day or two? What if you could order every single piece necessary for a store opening, seasonal sale, monthly promotion, or customer contract with just one click?

It turns out you can.

Introducing ARC's Digital Storefront, otherwise known as 'DSF.'

Just like an e-commerce site, these cloud-based, print-on-demand ordering platforms are custom-designed to offering you 'off-the-shelf' choices of your own material.

Documents, tradeshow displays, sandwich boards, customized wallpaper, vinyl wraps for vehicles - everything you need in a few clicks for consistently repeatable, consistently high-quality, consistently easy-to-order graphic assets of your own design. Even pricing is consistent and easily integrated into your purchasing systems.

Why an ARC DSF?

If you have your own specialized printing equipment that meets your needs, you might be in good shape. But as operators of more than 150 print service centers all over North America, we can tell you that having your own gear has its own set of challenges. Without the right infrastructure and redundancy, your costs, maintenance headaches, repair issues and labor hassles can tank the most productive private print room.

But what's more likely is you use what you have to make do to produce what you need.

If you have multiple offices or locations that need the same thing, it doesn't always translate into a consistent product. The posters look different from location to location, the graphics cost too much (in labor if nothing else), and assembly and binding of the color and black & white customer proposal with covers and tabs takes far more time and effort to create than it should.

You could outsource it, of course, but to who and how many firms? Then there's the constant explaining of requirements, hassles over what it cost this time vs. last time, variances in equipment, and it's likely that you'll still have to use different vendors for different parts of the project, depending on what you're creating.

ARC DFS Means Print On-Demand

By hosting an internal branded product store online, ARC allows you to only print the documents you need, when you need them. Unlike outsourcing, there are no minimum order requirements and businesses can order as few or as many copies as they want. There's no overprinting, no left-over inventory just waiting for obsolescence and the trash can, and no cost overruns. The savings can be dramatic, but the convenience is incredible.

The benefits of print on-demand with an ARC DFS are real, and they start with savings. Printing equipment costs can be eliminated from budgets, along with their depreciation and liability entries in your books. Likewise, for maintenance costs and supplies like toner and paper. But the greatest savings are in opportunity costs. No more hours standing at a printer, learning a new binding process, filling out shipping labels. Your people can focus on core competencies and attracting new customers.

Five Fundamentals When Considering a Digital Storefront

TIME: How much time can you give back to your staff to build sales and grow the business? If you're tracking labor, you know how high those costs can be. And speaking of time, deadline pressures become a thing of the past, along with overtime, expedited shipping, and constantly explaining what's needed to new vendors.

COSTS: In-office printing means ongoing costs, even when you're not printing. They include equipment and maintenance fees, the cost of paper, toner, and binding supplies, and usually a lot of expensive office space. A Digital Storefront has no balance sheet costs, no equipment lease or depreciation costs, no labor costs, and when no one is visiting it, no idling costs. You're not even paying for electricity much less real estate costs to house it. Instead, you build and place your print order online, any time, 24/7, specify exactly what you need, and re-order as soon as you need more.

BUDGET: Finding out how much you spend on a printer is easy. How much you spend on using the printer is almost always impossible. The so-called 'soft costs' of office printing are notorious for driving a stake through the heart of operating margins. But once your ARC DFS is online and humming, fixed costs like equipment don't need to be tracked and every printing cost becomes variable and often assignable to individual projects. You'll not only have on-demand printing, but on-demand reports to understand utilization, identify price breaks, spot inventory savings, and discontinuing items that aren't 'selling.' Budgets are easy to manage because costs are transparent.

WASTE: ARC works with various charities to replace the trees used in making the paper we use. It's stunning how much a single office worker prints when it's translated into natural resources. To make the statistics even more cringe-worthy, recent research from InfoTrends reported about 10-20% of business documents are thrown away without ever being used. With an ARC DFS, everything printed is used because it's ordered 'just-in-time.' And with digital printing technology, it takes the same amount of effort to print one page as it does 500, so you don't have to order in bulk to capture economies of scale, and there's nothing to store.

LABOR: When people know what to do and how to do it, things go smoothly. But when an engineer has to print safety posters on the ancient color plotter in the back room, or a marketing director has to figure out which substrate to order for an exterior sign and both choices cost more per square-foot than the take-out she just ordered to finish the job, HR might get a call. You'll love the productivity that comes from an ARC DFS, but your people will love you for getting the printing monkey off their back. Sure, you'll find savings in labor, but the savings that come from employees who are happy and focused are some of the most valuable of all.

Digital Storefronts Redefine Office Printing

At ARC, we've seen it happen time and again: Customers launch their first DFS with a few critical projects. They post the 'important' stuff, the critical materials, and go for the low-hanging fruit. But pretty soon, all the fruit on the tree is within reach. Office printing is necessary but sporadic, focused on producing good communication, driven by actual need rather than experiment, and if there's a line at the printer it's because the coffee station is right next to it and somebody brought in some really good Honduran this morning.

In a nutshell, office printing becomes what it should be.

Meanwhile, the merchandising graphics are rocking it. All the trademarks are in the right place, the photos are clean and sharp, and the signature color in the logo is spot-on. The last tradeshow was a breeze and cost a lot less, the downtown store opening was flawless (thank goodness you went with hot dogs rather than the crab!), and the last customer proposal you presented, your contact just kept turning the book over and over in his hands, feeling the cover and loving that dark blue plastic coil binding. It practically sold itself.

And all you had to do was order all of it from your own store.

ARC Digital Storefronts. See what they can do for you.

Call 833-272-8880 or fill out this form to get more information or to request a look at samples, ideas and DSF products already in use.