How a Multi-Template W2P System Wins National Print Accounts for Canada’s Most Successful Print Franchise

Print Three is a Canadian print franchise network of 46 franchise locations across Canada that provides digital printing and marketing services. Print Three focuses on a single solution that is partially subsidized and is used uniformly across all stores. Print Three realizes that enabling customers to order print online will only increase in importance and positively impact their bottom line.

A subsidized web-to-print infrastructure ensures a uniform system across all stores that can be relied upon by its customers. Customers can engage any store knowing that there is consistency in how files are cataloged, stored, rendered and printed.

Print Three also wished to enter the 1-to-1 market made popular by Xerox’s XMPie technology, but needed a method of simplifying the process in ordering 1-to-1 marketing pieces. The research showed that database-driven templates were a resource drain and performed simple tasks inefficiently. Therefore the system needed to have simple solutions with alternatives.

Racad Tech’s (Booth 2610) W2P Cloud technology is the only solution that can offer its stores enough flexibility for creating, hosting and supporting variable data applications.

Multiple file formats with W2P tech

Using Racad Tech’s Web to Print solutions, Print Three can employ the use of three varying file formats to achieve various objectives across all their stores:

• Racad Tech’s uDRAW for HTML5 for configurable products whereby a design online interface is required
• PDFlib for simple document structures (i.e. form fill)
• XMPie for more complex document/data
  structures

Leveraging multiple technologies,

Three could utilize the strengths of each and offer the customer a unified customization and ordering process through Racad Tech’s web-to-print platform, Web to Print Technology. PDFlib is an inexpensive developer toolbox for creating PDF files where “blocks” can be defined within the PDF file for the variable data elements. Racad Tech has simplified and enhanced the implementation of PDFlib through the use of proprietary commands.

By using PDFlib and block commands, Print Three has cut the time needed to create simple, form field driven, variable data products by 50 percent compared to other methods.

But not all variable data needs can be met by using PDFlib. In cases where the customer requires:

• Sophisticated variable data documents
• Multiple or more complicated data sources
• Multi-channel campaign features

How the variable data field is presented to the user within W2P Cloud, powered by Racad Tech’s ePOWER engine, for PDFlib or XMPie products, can be fully controlled using simple HTML/CSS within the Bootstrap framework that’s embedded in W2P Cloud. The Bootstrap framework is an effective way to control the styling of the entire site and inexpensive templates are readily available for purchase online.

The result: supporting national brands

Thanks to Racad Tech, Print Three became, and still is, the only franchise network in Canada that can accommodate national accounts for national brands because of their subsidized web-to-print program, which is uniform across all stores within Canada. Because Web to Print Cloud removes the worry of managing the web-to-print system and creating templates, Print Three could advance the needs of its franchise and those of its customers, wholly focusing on sales and production.

• Print Three network tripled its online ordering traffic in a few short months, postlaunch.
• Individual stores experienced increase in loyal customer acquisition and online orders.