With the tremendous emphasis being placed on digital color, many printers are looking for the right market opportunity that yields profitability. Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Chris Wells, president and chief executive officer of LaVigne Inc., of Worcester, Mass., to understand how that business has evolved with digital color technology and the pathway taken to market success.

LaVigne’s Business Model
LaVigne Inc. is one of the largest independent commercial offset-printing firms in the Northeast and one of the 50 largest digital-printing facilities in the United States. In business for more than 100 years, LaVigne serves clients in all 50 states and 20-plus countries around the world. LaVigne was an early adopter of digital color technology and one of the initial Indigo installations in the 1990s. When asked about the evolution of digital color, Wells said that the market has changed significantly since LaVigne purchased its first digital color press. In the 1997-98 time-frame, LaVigne’s business model was based on the delivery of short-run, on-demand color jobs with run lengths of 500.

"During this period, digital color was the only option for short-run color," Wells says. "(Computer-to-plate) hadn’t developed and the ability to do quick-turnaround, quality color work helped us protect our customer base. Today, the market has changed. With advances in digital workflow, CtP and direct imaging, short-run color has become a commodity."

Wells had a good perspective on where the market was going and realized that he needed to adjust his business model to maintain his current customer base and attract new business. "We decided we needed to focus on what I categorize as customer integration. For us that meant identification of applications that gave us the ability to provide ongoing program management."

LaVigne identified customers with agents, franchisees, dealers, branches and remote sales personnel. The company developed advanced, accurate, without-a-hitch mailing programs that are dealerized, personalized and localized – for any number of users, wherever they may be. LaVigne has blended these customized print applications with complete Internet integration, developing easy-to-use templates for uploading data and information over the Internet so that users are in control of the message and timing of the delivery to their customers.

The client uses an interface to select from a series of templates and upload images, marketing copy or personalized data to drive the final print applications. LaVigne manages a mix of digital assets and data for the corporate location. The company has completed the value chain by adding back-end services such as mailing, fulfillment and distribution operations for customized materials to augment its e-business infrastructure.

"Program management is what I categorize as sticky business," Wells said. "When every salesperson for a client is ordering support materials through your site, you know that you have a very tight relationship with the client." The success of a programmatic approach is clear at LaVigne. Currently, the company serves 43 major corporate accounts and has 43,000 end users for its Web-to-print application.

The Applications
LaVigne does not focus on specific industry vertical markets, but instead identifies firms that have distribution channels that require support literature where customization would add value.

For example, LaVigne worked with Progress Software, a software consortium that sells products around the world, to create a solution for its partners.

Partner companies can log onto a secure Web site; choose a postcard template or a four-color marketing piece; customize the copy; and add images, contact information and logos. Once the template is complete, the partner uploads mailing information and submits the job. LaVigne’s systems take care of the rest, making sure that the custom piece gets in the mail within a day of the order being placed.

Another longtime LaVigne customer, Allmerica Financial, sells financial products and services through VeraVest Investments, a dedicated broker-dealer network. The broker-dealers range from branch offices of VeraVest to independent financial advisers to corporations and limited liability companies that offer many services. VeraVest wanted to implement an adviser-marketing program that gave its broker-dealers access to high quality, timely, informative sales and marketing literature. VeraVest had three critical requirements:

• VeraVest’s corporate branding standards must be followed and quality must be consistent;

• The broker-dealers needed an easy way to customize this collateral to their individual business-marketplace-customer needs, order the material through a simple Web-based application, and have delivery conformity and quality handled through a single, non-Allmerica outside source;

Literature pieces produced on this system required pre-approved legal disclosures that were customized for each broker-dealer and maintained in their profiles so that any piece they ordered contained the disclosure.

LaVigne designed an integrated business communications solution – powered by Printable – that met VeraVest’s requirements. LaVigne worked with VeraVest’s marketing department to lock in pre-approved brand standards, and developed an intuitive Web-based shopping site that allows the broker-dealers to launch highly targeted marketing campaigns. A logic-driven registration process that captures key information regarding each broker was created. This generates a pre-approved legal disclaimer that is printed automatically on every piece that specific broker creates.

Another component is an easy-to-follow setup process for broker-dealers to submit information to personalize their pieces, including such things as a personal biography, photograph and logo. The system provides VeraVest with detailed, accurate reporting to track literature use and costs against regional sales. And finally, LaVigne provided a secure credit-card payment system, taking VeraVest out of the invoice-collect model of reimbursement for printing. This is a seamless system that allows broker-dealers to pay for their print while submitting the order via credit card payment.

A third customer – Simplex Time Recorder – started in 1894 as a clock company. Over the past 100 years, its business evolved into providing time-logging systems, fire and security protection systems, detection systems and a host of other security applications. Simplex merged with Grinnell, and Tyco acquired the company in 2001.

The organization has more than 100 district offices in the United States alone, each one specializing in a particular type of fire, security or communication system. In the past, each office created and printed its own version of literature specific to that office. This resulted in high design and print costs, brand shift and a lack of cross-selling opportunities for business expansion. Obsolescence was also a factor because the company continually had to update its materials to match the additional business services it could offer through the Tyco organization.

LaVigne saw this as an opportunity and approached SimplexGrinnell headquarters with an e-catalog, print-on-demand solution to allow district offices to create their own capability data sheets online, using pre-existing digital assets such as templates, photographs and product descriptions. With the new system, the end user can customize the piece to a particular region, view an online proof and order any desired quantity.

This program cut the print costs for SimplexGrinnell by more than 85 percent. The design costs were centralized and eliminated from each region. The biggest benefit, according to Tyco, is that the offices now can customize each piece to their specific region, product offering, or even to the individual customers and prospects they will meet with during the course of a week.

The Challenges
The transition to Web-to-print program sales and customer integration is not simple. Wells identified three major challenges:

• Workflow Infrastructure – Wells says the biggest workflow challenge is the integration into the customer’s environment. "Historically, applications have been designed to work with a specific manufacturer’s equipment rather than with standardized data structures. As digital service providers, we need to speak to the corporate audience – the people that manage marketing, data and design. We need to integrate with their CRM systems so that they can see the ROI they are hoping for. That means participation in the alphabet soup of PPML, JDF, PDF, ERP, etc." LaVigne has an infrastructure set up so that its processes link with the customer from the shopping cart to the press and all the way to FedEx.

• Sales – LaVigne’s sales force has been intact for several years and has worked through the digital transition. While 75 percent of revenue still comes from offset, there is tremendous synergy between offset and digital revenues. "It took time to see the synergy," Wells said. "In our weekly sales meetings, we devote half of the time to discussions about traditional printing and the other half focuses on leadership selling skills required to reach the marketing executive contacts in corporate clients."

• Walking the Line – The final challenge is what Wells termed as "walking the line" with existing traditional customers. "If you have a long-term relationship with the print buyer in an existing account, some don’t like the sales rep going to the marketing department. It can alienate the print buyer. Alternatively, marketing departments are looking for Web-to-print programs and you may be losing out to someone else because the traditional print buyer may not have any knowledge about these initiatives. Figuring out how to walk the line has been tough in existing accounts. Sometimes starting a new business relationship is actually easier."

Internet-Driven Marketing
While the challenges are significant, there is also a significant opportunity for financial gain with digital color. LaVigne’s business increased by 14 percent in its fiscal year ending in September. Wells offers advice for other printers that haven’t taken the digital path: "Try to buy a company with a good digital infrastructure. There are too many good players out there today and printers won’t catch up if they try to build the business organically."