In-Plants’ Challenges: Organizational Visibility
Print and mail service providers may think that in-plants have it easy. In-plants have built in customers, standard print applications, and they don’t have to compete on price. The reality for many in-plants is far from the accepted beliefs.
In-plant managers are challenged every day to meet the complex and evolving needs of their organizations. I recently spoke with print mail managers from three different in-plants. My intent was to get their perspective on the challenges in providing relevance to their organizations.
The managers of the organizations I met with had different perspectives and specialties:
A membership-based organization focused on acquisition and retention;
A mail and distribution operation for a non-profit with both a member organization and a large publications division;
Print and mail operations for a health insurance provider.
While all three organizations have a business model that revolves around members, a member means different things to each organization and their business model for serving members varies dramatically. The internal customers for these in-plants are the lines of business or departments that develop and create print communications and materials. The departments with the largest demand for print and mail services are product, marketing, communications, and member services areas.
Product and marketing teams are driven to improve retention, new customer acquisition and customer experience. They often create ideas for print communications without the knowledge of what the in-plant equipment is capable of providing. Many times, they don’t have the detailed knowledge of print, finishing and postal requirements to get a piece into the mail stream. The operations managers and their teams have a vast amount of experience in print and postal operations.
Often, the in-plant managers are brought into projects that are far down the path of design and requirements. This results in a disconnect between the knowledge of how best to accomplish a goal, and how the team intends to complete it. Often the in-plant manager must deliver the news to an internal customer that they can’t produce something without changing the design, size or paper stock to meet equipment capabilities or postal regulations. A common challenge is the ongoing need for the in-plant operation to educate their various internal customers about their capabilities and requirements for producing documents and mailings.