Business Management - Productivity/Process Improvement

Without sufficient sales at the top of the funnel, you’ll never cover your fixed costs to see black at the bottom. Most people in the industry would say their tightest bottlenecks are their sales organizations, except this time of year when the source shifts to production.

In honor of Oct. 23, which was originally scheduled to be National No-Print Day but turned into Yes Print Day!, Dead Tree Edition offers this update on printing-related technology and what it means for print buyers.—Recent developments in postpress technology underscore the importance of looking beyond price when choosing a printer.

How many times have you walked out of a seminar or workshop all fired up about the presentation the keynote speaker had just shared? As soon as you arrived back in the office, you called a meeting to share all the new ideas with everyone.

Which would you rather be? Which would make your family better off, at least financially better off? With all of the focus on health insurance, it’s easy to forget about disability insurance. Consider these statistics: someone 35 years old has a

I have found, over the past 15 years of helping businesses bring order from chaos, that real solutions are SIMPLE, but, for the first year, it’s not always EASY. However, the effort ultimately is rewarding and sustainable, and much easier than dealing with the frustrating and time-consuming complications of chaos.

Recognizing that digital printing has become a mainstream technology, offset printers are increasingly adding digital capabilities to their repertoire of offerings. In some shops, short-run jobs are run entirely on digital presses. Some do short-runs on a digital device and a longer runs of the same job on a offset machine. Others combine variable content digital pages with those from an offset press in the same job.

In each case, colors have to match and the overall look and feel of the document must meet customers' requirements with minimal differences. This webinar will discuss how printers are successfully using the best features of both technologies AND managing color across offset and digital presses.
 
Our expert panelists will share their experiences on such key issues as:

• Ensuring jobs run on different devices look the same
• Managing paper selections
• Setting customer expectations
• Color management tools and profiles used for success
• Managing color for logos and other branding requirements

I have heard many times from business owners that they would have a great operation if they could just solve their “cash flow problems.” Then, when you take a closer look, the problem is really a lack of profitability.

A frequent objection I hear is: “It takes too long to do a checklist, so I would expect a diminishing return on the time I’ve invested!”  Over the years, our reports have PROVEN that using quality-control systems is NOT a diminishing return on investment; rather, the time and money saved is astounding, and some other benefits have been priceless!

Many small-business owners, including owners of graphic firms, think they want to retire early. I find that many, if not most, of these people have not really thought it through. There are two very important questions that must answered:

I was surprised when the systems manager of this company told me it had incurred several million-dollar errors and fines due to simple mistakes. It’s inconceivable that a company of that size would lack substantial quality controls over some of the very processes that caused the errors.