ishipdocs Client Seats - Be Sure To Make Use Of Them

For those PEiR members who have taken advantage of the 90 day free trial of ishipdocs, have you implemented the five “Client Seats” that are part of the trial?

The client seats can lock in your customer, as well as save you and your customers time and money.

You just assign a client seat to a customer, then they will be able to send you files faster and more secure than through FTP.

The customer has an order number at their finger tips and can get the status of their order online without making a phone call. How much time do you spend handling phone calls to give the status of an order each day?

If you have any question on the “Client Seats” call The PEiR Group today at 925 658-0200.

Look Around - Did You Just Walk Past A Sale?

Obviously, construction projects are hard to find right now, and you may feel our services are not exactly needed. That said, there may be a few existing sales opportunities out there you’re walking past everyday.

Are you?

When you’re out on a sales call, don’t forget to take a good, hard look at the building registry in the lobby. Think it over: are there any prospects in the building you haven’t called on yet?

And let’s not forget about “Suite 100,” usually the building’s owners, management company, or leasing agents. Poke your head in and ask around, you may find the onsite manager and you may be surprised to find out how many drawings they have in storage.

Anyone seeing an archiving opportunity? Not only could you scan these drawings to CD for your customers but with PlanWell you could offer long-term storage solutions with PlanWell Legacy.

And where are these little gold mines of steady work located? Hospitals, Class A commercial buildings, school districts and assisted living facilities… to name just a few. They’re out there, are you walking past them or giving them the attention they deserve?

You may be happy you did.

The Author: PEiR Group Account Manager Rick Ysunza

Giving Your Customers An e-Commerce Solution: We'll Show You How!

Over the last decade many reprographers have leveraged the capabilities of the Internet to improve their efficiencies and expand their services.

What can we do now that we couldn’t do a decade ago? Well, we can accept files via email or FTP, offer plan rooms for viewing and ordering and distributing documents, conduct long-distance business over Skype and mitigate the need for expensive business travel with Web conferencing. These are just a few examples of what I call e-Business successes. However, only a few reprographers I have talked with have fully adopted a true e-Commerce offering (pricing and charging customers through the Internet) and presented it to their customers.

I am not sure what is holding back the industry from online pricing; maybe it is because many reprographers are afraid to show prices, the pricing is so complex and every customer has a different price, or that the cost of shipping and other extra charges often associated with a job cannot be determined at the time of ordering. Whatever the reason, I believe it is critical that we get our act together and make it easy for customers to request services over the Web and know what they will spend before they place the order.

When you go online to Amazon or iTunes to buy a book or a song don’t you expect to know what you will pay at the time of transaction? Why should your customers be any different?

If our industry is to evolve we must embrace e-Commerce, make it work for us, and at the same time expand our scope of services that we offer over the Web. Sure, steady clients trust that you will bill them accurately but what about new customers who would like to be doing business with you? Are you making it easy or difficult for them?

As you are all aware, our industry is radically changing, customers who used to order most of the printing in the past are doing significantly less printing today. Many are transferring the printing costs to their customers or suppliers and these new customers are the ones that are actually paying your bills. Sure, the print volumes are less but the profit opportunities in many cases can be even greater than before. But there is one thing that we as an industry must understand: if we are to survive we must be able to sell our services over the Internet and that means we must offer online pricing and a pleasant e-commerce experience.

With this goal in mind, I would like to share with those who are interested, how PlanWell is prepared to take the Reprographics Industry a step closer to an e-commerce solution. Please join me Thursday, July 23rd at 10 a.m. (PT) for a webinar and demonstration on how PlanWell allows students, sub-contractors, realtors, insurance agents and a host of other retail customers to easily conduct e-commerce transactions with your company. We'll have another one on July 30 at 9 a.m. (PT) - we hope you can join us.

Sign-up for the July 23 webinar HERE.

Sign up for the July 30 webinar HERE.

As our industry continues to evolve I believe you’ll find many of your future customers coming to you not only with the expectation of ordering your products and services, but also to see your pricing up front, along with the ability to charge their credit cards at the time of ordering. What are you going to do about it?

Regards,

Shaun Meany

Let's Talk Turkey: Pick The Real One!

One of our members had a little idle time on his hands recently and he decided to see if he could come up with a decoy to beguile a nosy flock of turkeys hanging around his shop.

He snapped a picture, ran it out on gatorboard and staked it out to see if it drew any interest from the feathered set.

It did. In about ten minutes, apparently.

You tell us which one is the real thing...

Chalk Up Another Win For ishipdocs - Are You Using It?

Need an example of how ishipdocs can pull off a minor miracle for you and your team? Well, there's a reprographer in Houston who found the power in the offering recently - and is glad he did.

“A very good client of ours was in a rush to get a Duratrans printed and shipped to San Francisco overnight," says our hero. "At first, I thought about the traditional methods, but then I thought about using ishipdocs."

The reprographer went to the ishipdocs site, typed in the address and found the closest location of a partnering shop which, as it happens, was less than a mile from where his client was staying. That's when the light bulb went off in his head.

“I called and asked if they could print Duratrans and when they said they could, I sent them the file and they had it done and delivered within two hours,” he says. “I cannot see how anyone else could have done this and it was an added surprise to my client when it was delivered that soon.”

Steady revenue, higher customer satisfaction... miracle wins for your firm. If you're using ishipdocs, you're one of the smart ones. If you're not, why not?

How To Show Your Customer What You're Going To Do For Them BEFORE You Do It

It was a big request for a big job - a 5'x40' site banner to be precise. The client was worried about its positioning, and whether it would be exposed to vandals.

That's when a production technician took the bull by the horns and worked a little magic with Photoshop, showing them in "virtual" terms how it would look in place. The upshot? Done deal...

Once the client saw them, “they couldn’t place the order fast enough,” the shop reported. “It couldn’t have worked out better."

Next time you're wondering how to make technology work for you, remember this little application. The ability to demonstrate your shop's capability before you do it is a powerful benefit.

Reprographers Turn To ishipdocs To "Ship Digitally," Business Remains Brisk

Point of View has talked about ishipdocs and what it can mean to firms who need to ship their documents digitally to far off locales. Those who use it call the application a "win win," with the client saving money and the reprographer capturing revenue from the job - as well as repeat business once clients realize how effective a service ishipdocs really is.

Rationale for using the model ranges from its speed to a desire to get around long customs lines, airports and the shipping chokepoints most commonly associated with traditional shipping methods.

In several cases, reprographers who signed up for the application have had jobs waiting for them upon their return to the office - and a whole new revenue stream open to their shops.

Who's using it? Check the list below, you may recognize some of the names:

Company,Country and No. of Jobs to Date
Air Graphics 1
Demaille France 3
FIS Japan Japan 1
Group Momentum Australia 1
Les Poly Quebec 5
Maxicopias Mexico 2
MS Dallas 3
Perkinson 1
Precision Blue 2
Profiman Dubai 3
Reprographic Technologies 1
Rotolite Elliot 1

Bertl's Names the Best of 2009: Canon's imagePROGRAF Shines

Bertl's has chosen Canon's imagePROGRAF iPF820 as the "Best Value for 44" Technical Document Printer for the 14th annual selection of top imaging equipment.

Bertl's called the imagePROGRAF iPF820 as "best value" overall and cited the rationale for its decision:
• Price point for a 5 color ink-jet two roll printer
• Two roll system with semi automated load of a roll
• DoD 52220.22M security compliant
• Top speed of 688 sq ft/hr
• Economy printing mode that reduces ink consumption
by almost half (40%)
• CAD/STATION PS+ color RIP for added color
matching and postscript support with the iPF820 Pro

Something to consider...

Attention All BidCaster Users...

The PEiR Group is hosting an educational webinar on how end users can put the power of BidCaster to best use.

Please feel free to invite all your customers to sign-up, they'll be grateful to you.

The Webinar will be held on September 30th, 2009 10am pacific time.

Please click here to sign-up.

If you have any questions, please contact the PEiR Group at 925-658-0215