The title of my article may sound a bit confusing to you but I am sure by end of the article, I will be able to convince you. No doubt, packaging is about wrapping, covering, enclosing, covering, and folding of products inside but certain aspects has changed over a period of time.
There was a time; the core purpose of packaging was to protect the product inside but now packaging makes you stand out of the clutter of other brands with similar offerings. Packaging industry has now grown beyond imagination because of enormous benefits it brings to the manufacturers e.g. maintaining purity levels for food, durability of cosmetics and other products of human consumption, improved shelf life, UV protection, easy to transport among many others.
Though all these combined gives us packaging, but it’s still the “Printing” in one or the other form which gives life to Packaging. Packaging involves printing in labels, corrugated boxes, metallic sheets, aluminum foils, paper bags, polymer, plastic or anything.
And where there’s Printing, Web to Print makes the way!! Due to increasing demand of personalized packaging, more variations, use of multi-channel marketing platforms, packaging providers now need to have shorter print runs of low volume orders and fast output. An automated printing workflow and process with Web to Print solution which can be easily adjusted to these requirements can be a turnkey solution for the packaging industry.
Web to Print for better workflow of Packaging Industry
A normal packaging industry workflow will look like getting orders for packaging in defined material of defined sizes, getting artwork and creative, producing sample for proofing, approval and order processing. Employing web to print in production process can simplify the operational workflow of the process which involves –
1. E-procurement of artwork via electronic storefront
2. Electronic file submission
3. File Management
4. Online artwork design with design tool
5. Offering customized quotes to customers
6. Live Price Quotes
7. E-mail/Online Proofing
8. Artwork approval workflow via emails and notifications
9. Online job tracking
10. Managing shipping and payment process
11. Options of customer account
The overall impact of all these features results in better quality of output every time. With features like e-procurement of artwork, artwork approval workflow, online proofing systems, admin and CSR staff are able to find out errors in early pre-press cycles thus avoiding expensive mistakes and reducing costs.
Option of customer account enables easy management of hundreds of customers with smooth communication which is otherwise a hassle. It also becomes easy for customers to login their account check order status, reorder previous orders, cancel orders and mention any other specifications for vendor to consider. This is important aspect of customer retention also.
Web to Print gets easily integrated within the existing system and thus provide easy interface between production staff and admin to reduce manual integration and thus reducing manual errors. In nutshell, web to print can help wrapping and packaging industry in an efficient way.
One such example is ThePaperWorker who recently showed how packaging affects buying decision with a detailed info graphic. Click to see
ThePaperWorker based out of NY is one of our very successful web2print implementation for packaging industry, and is geared up to provide personalized packaging solutions to customers. The augmented benefit they are now able to offer with packaging solutions is customer control over personalized design through their online design tool and 3D proofing functionality available on their storefront.
We loved working with “The Paper Worker” and got appreciation for the work we did for them.
” Design N Buy’s HTML solution enabled us to create, manage, and continue to evolve our site without the constraints of being forced to work with an off-the-shelf solution that might not meet our specific needs. Our partnership with Design N Buy continues to allow us to develop our site in unique ways, serving a niche that larger online print and packaging vendors do not touch due to complexity and smaller overall volumes. Before Design N Buy, we received complaints about the online designer nearly every day, and we lost business as a result. Now we do not get complaints about our online designer any longer. Customers are happy with the solution and what used to be a major headache now just – works! “