Print-On-Demand

What is Print-On-Demand and how is it relevant to your business?

Print-On-Demand is a process which uses the latest digital printing technology to deliver printed materials faster, less expensively and with greater marketing impact on your customers. For specific examples of how on-demand printing can be applied within your industry, review the pages in the Print-On-Demand Industry-Specific Applications section, listed to the right.

The table below illustrates how print-on-demand differs from the conventional print process in each of these areas. It demonstrates how print-on-demand can reduce your print and distribution costs, while saving you time and helping you communicate more effectively and more profitably with your customers.

Time to Print & Distribute
Print-On-Demand	Conventional Print Process
Days	Weeks
Cost to Print & Distribute
Print-On-Demand	Conventional Printing
No film, no plates, no make-readies. Print-On-Demand is 100% digital and designed to print small quantities cost effectively. Small print runs result in zero or near-zero inventory. Printing expenses are spread out over time since you only print what you need, when you need it. This leads to a tremendous cash flow and cost-of-capital benefit. Since inventory is eliminated, there are no inventory storage costs. Because you only print what you need, when you need it, there is no waste. Your printing won't need to be discarded due to obsolescence.	Film, plates, and press make-readies result in high setup costs for each order. This makes it impractical to print small quantities. Large print runs tie up cash flow in print inventory. Even when cash flow is not an issue, you bear increased capital costs since you're pre-paying for inventory that won't be used for a long time. Large print runs result in high inventory storage costs. Large print runs lead to obsolescence. On average, 15% of all printed materials are discarded because they become obsolete prior to they're being used.
Marketing Effectiveness
Print-On-Demand	Conventional Print Process
Ideal for one-to-one marketing, a state-of-the-art marketing technology in which each piece is uniquely customized to the intended recipient. One-to-One marketing has been proven to dramatically boost response rates and greatly enhance long-term customer retention.	Suitable for old fashioned mass marketing where customization was not required.

More About On-Demand Printing

On-Demand printing has become a very hot topic lately.

Essentially what it means is being able to print very small quantities, quickly and cost-effectively. Traditionally, offset printing involved an enormous amount of setup time, which resulted in it only being used for large print runs, particularly for color work. Today, the technology has advanced to the point where true on-demand printing is a reality.

The main advantage of on-demand printing is being able to print what you need when you need it. This eliminates the costs associated with large amounts of printed material in inventory. It also ensures that your printed materials are always current - the idea of sending out obsolete materials becomes...well, obsolete!

Finally, you should consider the cash-flow benefit of only printing the amount that you actually need. This spreads your printing costs out over time, rather than paying for large prints runs all at once.

fastcolor.com offers on-demand print technology for both full-color and B&W printed materials. We produce our full-color printing on either offset presses, or on our Xerox DocuColor.

The choice of equipment depends primarily upon the run length and your budget. The DocuTech is ideal for personalized printing! While the offset press will always yield the finest print quality, we think you'll also be quite impressed by the quality produced by our DocuColor.

We produce our B&W printing on our Xerox DocuTech 6135. By combining our color and B&W printing capabilities, we can deliver totally professional-looking bound books with color covers, in quantities as low as one!

Consider these other benefits:

• Think about how much space you'll save by not having to inventory your printed materials. How much is this space costing you? Your cash flow will also improve since you'll be able to print just the quantity that you actually need.
  
  
• Since you only print on-demand, your materials will always be completely up-to-date. No more crossing out old prices and hand-writing the current figures. No more throwing out obsolete materials. All your printed materials will be hot-off-the-press!
  
  
• If you need to make changes, you can send us your revisions via the Internet or on disk---whichever is easiest for you. There's no film involved, no plates, none of the headaches of conventional printing.
  
  
• Since your document is stored digitally, our DocuTech can personalize each copy, with the name, address, and other information specific to the person or company that it's being sent to. And, since each address can be printed directly on the document, this eliminates the cost and time or printing separate mailing labels. If you like, we can even handle the entire mailing for you.
  
  
• Our standard turnaround time is 72-hours for DocuTech and DocuColor printing. If you need faster service, we also offer next-day and same-day turnaround options.
  
  
• We can store all your materials digitally at our facility. When you need more printed, or if you need to make a change, we simply plug in your latest revisions and begin printing immediately - no wasted time.

» For additional information, read our On-Demand Printing FAQ