Digital-First: A Transformational Opportunity for Print Service Providers

This will require implementing a comprehensive customer communications strategy, one that takes advantage of existing best practices in what is generically referred to as the transaction print industry. Transaction print is commonly comprised of bills, statements, invoices, related direct mail offers, customer correspondence (letters) and short-form financial print. Historically, transaction print has been managed by a Print First business model. Over the past 10+ years, digital document management and electronic document delivery have become adjacent capabilities, primarily to help facilitate bill and invoice payment processing.

The current Print First business model, in many instances, is not well integrated but rather tightly coupled through technology and a disparate set of processes, procedures and regulations. While this technology-enabled business model has been successful in extracting more value from its core activities and capabilities, it has fallen short in addressing the fundamental shift in the marketplace that has taken place. The pivot to a Digital First approach to customer communications has created white spaces in the existing value chain, leading to new opportunities that allow print service providers to move beyond their core and adjacent operating spaces. This has resulted in a new business model that can extract the most value (revenue and margin) from its products and services platform.

Therefore, the role of the transaction print organization has changed. Where once it was perceived as fulfilling a regulatory requirement and delivering a summarization of transactional activity, it now must support a critical communication strategy.