In a market that’s both evolving and contracting, one priority remains constant for commercial print businesses: profitability.
No matter what the other variables look like, profitability must be maintained. Without it, no print business will last long.
So, what do print MIS systems have to do with profitability? Quite a bit—perhaps more than you might expect.
Avanti Slingshot™, the modern print MIS from Avanti Systems, delivers powerful ROI that drives profitability. And maximizing that profitability requires automation.
Slingshot does far more than just automation, but if the goal is maximizing profitability, you can’t afford not to implement automation.
It’s like buying a new car but refusing to fill up the tank (or charge the battery): all those cool things the car could do for you, none of them work until you fuel up. Automation is the fuel that drives profitability in print shop management. Your MIS is the vehicle doing the driving.
The Impact of Print MIS on Profitability
The right print MIS system can make all the difference in your print shop’s profitability because an MIS system touches every aspect of your print workflow.
Consider a few of the ways a print MIS could generate ROI across these areas of print shop management:
- Order intake: when paired with a quality Web-toPrint (W2P) interface, your print MIS eliminates manual entry errors and back-and-forth with customers sorting out order details. Order intake and setup goes from hours to minutes.
- Estimating: better order estimates = higher margin, and a print MIS can help you improve your estimates. The right print MIS can store and surface current pricing information and give you insights into actual costs, improving the results of your estimating processes.
- Job costing: know where every job is and exactly what it’s costing you.
- Inventory management: knowing exactly when and how much to reorder puts you in a position to serve customers confidently and promptly.
- Workflow automation: Every keystroke costs money and creates the possibility of introducing errors. Therefore, every keystroke and process step you eliminate through workflow automation is instant ROI.
The Benefits of Avanti Slingshot for Profitability
So how does Avanti Slingshot stack up across these potential ROI impacts?
See for yourself:
- Order intake: Our print MIS far outpaces email order intake, eliminating manual entry errors and back-and-forth with customers sorting out order details. Order intake and setup goes from hours to minutes. We estimate that the typical print shop spends up to $75,000 annually correcting manual input errors. That’s money from resources you could be using elsewhere—or reclaim as profit!
- Estimating: Slingshot enables you to build accurate estimates based on up-to-date pricing information, actual costs, and thorough, accurate customer data (e.g., collected via Web to Print). Remember: better order estimates = higher margin.
- Job costing: with better pricing data and deeper insight into every single job at every single stage, the Slingshot Job Costing & Tracking module improves your job costing. No more guesswork or working from incorrect data. Now you can cut through the crush of hundreds of jobs to identify which ones are the most profitable.
- Inventory management: Slingshot shows you exactly when and how much to reorder. Now you can serve customers confidently and promptly with no more missed or delayed orders (and payments) due to inaccurate inventory information.
- Workflow automation: Slingshot provides powerful automation capabilities that reimagine and redefine your print workflows. Eliminate numerous keystrokes, rekeying, and process steps, reducing errors and resource load at the same time.
This last strategic area, workflow automation, is the most important of all. Remember: every keystroke and process step you eliminate through workflow automation is instant ROI.
Case Studies: Real-Life Examples of Avanti Slingshot
Businesses throughout the print industry are using Avanti Slingshot™ to generate real ROI results. Take Square One Inc., a national marketing logistics company based in New Jersey that offers a diverse set of marketing communication services ranging from automated programs to complex direct mail packages.
Square One was facing profitability challenges. Though revenue was growing, profit was shrinking. As their client base became more diverse and the needs grew more technical, profits shrunk.
The company needed a better way to:
- Understand which jobs were profitable
- Estimate projects quickly and accurately
- Improve manufacturing efficiency
A basic MIS and some truly impressive Excel spreadsheets were enough to grow the company upwards of $5 million in sales. But as that growth hit $8 million on up to $12.5 million, profitability began to decline, and Square One’s existing tools and systems couldn’t tell them why.
Avanti Slingshot delivered crucial capabilities their previous system couldn’t provide, including the ability to:
- Identify cost factors at the individual job level
- Differentiate between profitable and unprofitable projects
- Automate workflows to reduce human errors and inaccuracies
Further, Slingshot provided closed-loop accountability and streamlined redundant management tasks.
Now, Square One enjoys complete captured data that’s detailed and accurate. Errors are down and profitability—based on informed decision-making—is up. Sales are up 10%, and profitability is up as well.
There’s much more to the Square One success story. You can read the entire case study here.
Enhance Your ROI with Avanti Slingshot
Avanti Slingshot is a modern print MIS system that’s proven to generate ROI you can’t afford to miss. Through next-generation workflow automations and more, Slingshot users save time, reduce errors, lower resource requirements, and gain better data for building more accurate estimates.
The combined result? Increased profitability and productivity.
See what’s possible when you switch to Avanti Slingshot: Request your free customized demo today!
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