Print is definitely not dead, quite the opposite actually. With the rise, or rather the maturing of omni-channel marketing, Print is getting a second life.
Going omni-channel means producing for more, many more medias. The only way to cope with this increasing amount of material is better cost-efficiency through automation at all levels of the production processes. Automating on the Print side opens for producing more, not only catalogues, but a plethora of other print-heavy channels: product sheets, newsletters, sales brochures, more frequent catalogues.
There are different options on the market supporting print automation, a guide was due to sort out the most suited solution for each customer case.
Expectations from the solutions
What we expect from a print automation platform is to cover all the essentials steps of the production process. The guide covers this following process area.
PIM
The core of every print publication is the products being marketed, so getting product data on the page is a requirement when automating. The integration to PIM, the storage of all data, is therefore the primary driver for the choice of the print solution, and not the other way around.
(The same is true for all images and texts needed for production, so we can talk more broadly of an integration to a Content Management platform, if not to PIM.)
Standalone print platforms require a custom integration to the data platform, if no default connector is provided, while platforms with integrated Print have this covered.
Print Platforms
And finally, the guide will cover various print platforms we have experienced, either standalone Print platforms, or Content Management platforms where Print is an integrated component.
To discover when each platform can give you an edge, download our guide and continue reading!
