Today, your customers and your customers' customers are demanding more value from the marketplace. They are driven by price, availability and brand considerations resulting in pressure to find new ways to get value from their marketing budgets. Many organizations have had to rely on their closest ally - their printer - to achieve value from their marketing budgets. It is the printer who stands to benefit, or lose, if budgets shift to other media.

Print still remains an integral component for most marketing programs. However, many print users are looking for solutions to optimize their marketing communications activities and create synergies between web and print activities. Content Management and Web-to-Print technologies provide these solutions.

Content Management Systems (CMS) have roots in dynamic publishing that combines reusable templates and media assets with server-based workflow automation. The Web-to-Print solution is a derivative of CMS and uses the Internet to extend the collaborative creation of documents made available by CMS, to deliver print and print fulfillment services.

CMS and Web-to-Print solutions are tools that will provide the value and the synergies that your customers demand, providing them with the ability to:

• Plan, control and observe products throughout the creative and production process.
• Reduce time to market by reducing cycle times of the publishing processes (Web and print).
• Reduce costs - fewer people are required to develop marcom material at both your customer's end and on the print end.
• Provide accurate and relevant information - links to MIS systems can be created allowing access to data for update pricing, inventory control and product descriptions details (descriptions, specs etc) dynamically and/or up to the last minute prior to pre-press.
• Develop a partnership with their 'supplier' - printers that position themselves to offer these services to their customers will be valued, relied on and trusted by their customers.