Printing industry e-commerce solutions

Since the e-commerce company first appeared on the day of GRAPH EXPO and ConVERTING EXPO 99, e-commerce has attracted increasing attention. People from all walks of life are paying attention to its development and have joined this seductive business. The tide of electronic. This can not help but remind people of the gold rush in the past. On the one hand, there are a large number of companies that are doing e-commerce at concentration. However, most of the companies are not able to obtain the desired benefits. On the other hand, those few who succeed are The amazing benefits have been achieved. Unlike gold rushes, the luck component of gold rushing accounts for a large proportion. The e-commerce carried out through the Internet gives equal opportunities to every business. The key is how the business is. Combining e-commerce, an emerging trading tool, with traditional business actions, in order to increase efficiency and enhance competitiveness, it will rapidly capture business opportunities and continue to move forward.

The printing industry as the leader of information dissemination, due to the characteristics of its own industry, must quickly break the shackles of traditional thinking and actively develop e-commerce. E-commerce not only brings more awareness to print companies, increases the sales of products, but more importantly, it can provide a new way of communication, allowing printers to better secure their links with their customers through two-way, Real-time communication helps to form a company that conducts business operations at the customer's core. It minimizes business costs while satisfying customers' needs to the maximum extent possible.

For some characteristics of e-commerce, printers need to rethink how to manage their operations and how to sell their products and services. In other words, what specific and practical e-commerce solutions are used to reset their business processes to help themselves Earn profits. The following will be some discussion on this aspect.

Website promotion

At the simplest level, printers can set up a website as their own shop window on the Internet, promote corporate conditions, service content, etc., and provide detailed addresses and contact methods. This can be followed by information such as forms or quotation sheets that help customers request print samples.

Because it can be established and managed simply and economically, more and more printers have established or are establishing such websites. Although they may not have attracted many customers in the past, due to the stability, ease of accessibility, and ease of updating of such websites, existing and potential customers can use it as part of their reference during the general transaction process. The role of propaganda on the Internet cannot be underestimated. And since many print and copy companies now offer design services covering a wide range of content from the Internet and print media, setting up a website is also an important way to demonstrate their capabilities.

In practice, there are quite a number of companies, especially some small and medium-sized enterprises, who have established their own websites and think that they are also engaged in e-commerce. After the website is established, the content is rarely updated, and even there is no special person to manage it. However, in reality, a website does not automatically generate profits. It must be combined with the products and services actually provided by the printers to benefit from them.

Online quote and job tracking

It is technically feasible to provide a comprehensive online quotation service. A printing customer can select the desired product or service content through a specific quotation window on the Internet. The setting is completed and the automatic quotation based on the network service script and database is provided. The program will immediately report the price of the product or service required by the customer. If the customer accepts the price, it can use a certain payment method (such as using a credit card for online prepayment or cash on delivery), and the required product or service content will be submitted to the printer. Can arrange personnel to organize production or provide services in a timely manner.

At the same time, customers can track the production process remotely on the Internet through the job tracking system. They can keep track of the production of their jobs in the workshop, and can check the products produced according to the authorization. For jobs with longer production cycles A printer can even develop projects with customers and determine the best production plan through active communication between the printer and the customer. This highly personalized service approach makes it easy for customers to build confidence in printers, making it easier for printers and customers to maintain long-term relationships, and at the same time make this transaction easier, especially in This advantage is even more pronounced when dealing with foreign customers (such as international customers).

There are already many such tracking systems in use on the market. Typical examples are Optimus 2020, Isys Keren, and Sanderson Computing PICS. In practice, however, printers tend to overlook this point, and print customers are much more enthusiastic about the acceptance of such systems.

Electronic collaboration

In the next phase, the printer can create a job template by collaborating with its fixed customers through an electronic collaboration system. This template can be modified and customized on the Internet. In practice, it is usually the printer that first uses this electronic collaboration system to create a series of job templates for the customer in advance, and then store them on the network server, and can also send them to the client computer. The customer can call up these job templates, add variable information such as name, address, and contact phone, proof on the local computer, and send the customized data along with the job order to the printer. The variable information here is usually a text format, so a narrow bandwidth is sufficient. At the same time, this kind of collaboration can help printers save pre-processing costs, sample charges and corrections, and respond quickly to customer service needs. A significant advantage of this system is that it is possible for a regular job to connect the customer with the same printer, because the customer is required to be simple and quick, once they get used to a certain interface and transaction. The method, as long as the system can meet their needs, is not willing to adapt to another system, so that it will maintain a high degree of loyalty to the same printer, making the link between them long-term and stable.

At present, there are two modes of operation of this electronic collaboration system. One is that printers need to purchase servers equipped with such an electronic collaboration system and arrange professional management and maintenance. This method has higher capital and personnel requirements for printers, and the investment cost is also higher. The advantage is that it has great flexibility. The printer can choose the right system according to their actual situation, and can change at any time to meet the market. With the customer's requirements, more suitable for large-scale printers. Another type of server is provided by a professional company that allows printers and customers to log in remotely. The printer and its customers can conduct one-to-one free transactions by running relevant electronic collaboration systems on such remote servers. In this way, printers do not have to purchase and manage hardware and software devices by themselves. They only need to pay a certain transaction fee for the professional company that provides the server. The operation is relatively simple and convenient, but the flexibility is not high, and it is more suitable for small and medium sized printers.

A full range of online print business

Nowadays, more and more websites are offering custom-made printing products similar to quick print shops: business cards, notepads, T-shirts, decorated cups, mouse pads and so on. They provide a variety of personalized templates that can be selected by the customer through the network. Customers can enter information such as their own name and address. Websites with better services can also support company or personal uploads, and can choose fonts, colors, and text.

Perhaps the most complete site at the moment is U.S.-based IPrint, which was founded in 1996. It offers 42 kinds of printing products for business or home use that can be customized by users to a large extent. The fee payment can be paid online with a food card. If an error occurs, a certain fee can be returned. The customer's design can be stored on the Internet for 2 years, making it easy to use it later when printing again.

Print mediation and bidding

This is also one of the future directions for printers to develop e-commerce on the Internet. Of course, they are essentially different from the current methods. Specifically, a virtual bidding site is established on the Internet by an intermediary company as a third party. As a customer member of the ordering party and a printing company member of the printer, it is generally possible to log in for free, but the services it provides are obliged to service and receive successful transactions. There are two kinds of agency fees. The obligation service means that customers and printers can directly obtain the information for the ordering party and make a budget based on their own needs. In principle, the parties directly conduct transactions. The intermediary fee for a successful transaction means that the buyer and the buyer do not trade directly, and they need to go through an intermediary company. After the transaction is successful, a certain intermediary fee is paid to the intermediary.

The following is a brief introduction to the operation process of this mediation method:

1, print customers landing bidding website.

2. Fill out the specifications, quantity, time and other relevant information of the required printed matter in the bidding task list and submit it to the intermediary after completion.

3, enter the tender site.

4, the printer began bidding.

5. The transaction was successful.

6, practical production.

7, payment (can be pre-line online payment can also be cash on delivery).

Online payment and security

There are still some people who have doubts about the security of online payment. However, as related technologies improve and people become more accustomed to buying products such as books and music CDs online, the doubts will be more and more. The less you come. There are three key factors in the actual operation: 1. Transaction participants must be able to reliably identify each other and establish a basic trust relationship. 2, according to the existing technology and the transaction content of the situation using the appropriate funds to pay the way, you can use credit card online payment, you can also use the traditional cash on delivery or other appropriate methods. 3. In order to prevent fraudulent acts and resolve potential disputes in the future, both parties to the transaction must be able to record the entire process of the transaction fully and accurately, sign electronic contracts and make them legally effective.

Through the Internet, it is natural that the exchange between the printer and the customer will have a multiplier effect. However, there are also people who doubt that this kind of semi-automatic or automated communication will form a diaphragm in the interaction with customers, which will alienate the change of relationship between the two parties. In fact, through the aforementioned communication methods, we can see that the more printers go online, the more important and stable the customer relationship between the printer and the customer will be, and the more direct and convenient the customer can be. Brought into the production process. This is very important in the pursuit of an efficient and personalized Internet era.

The Internet has brought important business opportunities for printers. However, most current e-commerce websites tend to focus on technologies such as automated orders, pay-as-you-go and distributed digital printing systems, but in fact they are called e-commerce. It is just a new trading tool and means, it should also be suitable for current sales methods and non-digital production methods. In the future society, a company cannot survive without entering e-commerce. Ultimately, every company and even every individual can make e-commerce. By then, e-commerce will lose its novelty today, just like a telephone. No one has talked about it anymore. People just use it. E-commerce will do the same. Although there will still be many difficulties in the road to this day, this is a social issue.