Web-to-Print installation produces revenue growth of 30%
A/S Varbas is a company in Oslo, Norway, offering a wide variety of facility services, including warehousing, packaging and fulfilment services, as well as a mechanical shop.
One of the firm’s business units is dedicated to offering digital print services to businesses in the vicinity. The unit has grown from a single-person print shop five years ago to a successful digital print service provider employing 6 staff and print volume of over 3 million prints per year.
The challenge
In the year 2000, Varbas was looking for new revenue opportunities. As Roger Kristiansen, General Manager of the Varbas print centre, says: “Growth in volume had levelled off, and we wanted to use the print production capacity we had in our print shop more effectively. We had a number of small clients, but were looking for bigger customers who would give us a substantial increase in our print volumes.”
The solution
During a series of conversations with Konica Minolta, Kristiansen learned about the possibilities of setting up a web portal, providing customers with a new, simpler way of submitting print jobs. This would also reduce the time spent internally on job submission processes. Mr. Kristiansen realised this would enable him to spend less time on the acceptance process and more time acquiring new customers.
While Varbas was considering this, Konica Minolta became aware that one of their other customers, a consultancy firm in Oslo, had decided to outsource all its internal CRD activities, and was looking for a print service provider to take care of its printing needs. This included reports and training manuals, which were too big to print on the local MFPs. The key need was that the print ordering process had to be standardised using a web portal, and that delivery was prompt. Konica Minolta introduced Varbas to the consultancy firm, and the two Norwegian firms came to an agreement about providing the print services.
The result
With this major customer on-board, Varbas implemented the AccurioPro Flux Ultimate, setting up a special web portal for this consultancy firm. Office managers from the consultancy firm were authorised to access the portal when ordering print jobs.
In the first full month of operation alone, Varbas’ web portal generated some € 10,000 in extra revenue; since implementation, print volume has grown to an average of € 12,000 per month. This represents approximately 30% growth in revenue Varbas did not have before.
Today, some 20% of total print volume produced by Varbas is generated through the portal. Even jobs submitted by e-mail or other channels are entered through the web portal internally, because it automatically generates price quotations, and links the administration to each print job. Within a few years, therefore, the firm’s Web2Print solution has become the backbone of its ordering process.
Future outlook
Thanks to the huge growth in print volume generated by the web portal, Varbas is now offering web submission portals to other customers as well. “One of Varbas’ other divisions has a large warehousing customer, a public service company,” says Kristiansen. “We’re now talking to them about reducing their pre-printed stock, and ordering those prints on-demand through a web portal, where all the templates are already loaded.”