For years there has been the ongoing debate as to what the best, most efficient, or cost-effective ways might be for printing and mailing to be handled in the world of business ownership. Those qualities in a particular method are not always mutually exclusive, so sometimes the cheapest way to do it is not always the best. One might think that the do-it-yourself method must be cheaper and therefore better when it comes to handling the needs of smaller to medium-sized businesses. However, there are more costs involved than one might imagine to being your own print service in-house regardless of the business size.
Try to think of any small to medium-sized business that you know of from retail stores to fast-food chains and what their needs might be during any given year. Everything from sales flyers, statements, and invoices to be sent to clients, bills, and budgets to print out, mail out, and spreadsheets would all need to be prepared in a timely manner, wrapped, spiraled, spindled, stuffed, stamped, and sent. Whew! Who has the time? Who does all of that work?
Now imagine your business right now, be it home-based or in an office with others. In order to handle your print needs in-house, you would have a long list of things to procure just to get you started. From having the right place to house the proper gear and accomplish the process to employing the people to handle the work, to owning and maintaining all the equipment used, in-house print work is more complicated and expensive than it seems at first glance. Before deciding which method is right for you, it’s important to at least do a general cost and benefit analysis.
It’s easy to see the benefits of doing the job in-house. The main thing is having a feeling of control. You think since you own the gear you can change things up last minute, make decisions that you feel are important no matter when, and have the power to create what you want when you want. While that may be true, having that kind of power can cause disruptions in work when you are not dispassionate enough to finish projects. You also think that it’s cheaper to handle it yourself, so you would rather invest in the time and money for the do-it-yourself way. But, the cost of doing it yourself can be greater than you imagine.
Space
First, you would need a safe and reasonable space dedicated to your print processing. Depending on how much you plan to handle will affect how much-dedicated space you will need for the task. Be it a corner near a desk or in its own closet with office shelving for supplies, plan to allot quality area to the process of handling all that print work and subsequent mailing of documents. If the equipment needs to be either in a community area or private depending on the type and amount of printing you will do, you would either need a dedicated office or a place where it could be both accessed and shared.
People / Wages
Depending on the volume of your mail generation, you will need the right amount of dedicated people and space that are conducive to the task. The workers need to be trained on how to use and maintain the equipment at all times. They would have to be able to work with and know when to get support when service is needed on any equipment you purchase or lease. Whether you handle it yourself or need a whole team working on really depends on the scope of your work. The cost to hire, train, and employ people to handle things such as these can be quite costly when you consider insurance, unemployment, and taxes.
Equipment
There will always be a cost to resource initial start-up gear as well as annual maintenance and upkeep for all the gear to handle in-house work like this. Some of it can be quite costly and require upgrading more than you might imagine. The accessories and utilities such as office supplies are costly as well. Printers, sorters, toner, paper, ink, envelopes, folding machines, stamping postage machines, and all kinds of supplies are needed to be on-hand which takes up space. That is a huge cost to start-up and maintain monthly as well. Inventory has to be maintained which takes labor. Each associated cost incurs more costs when it comes to handling your own in-house document preparation and sending.
Printers can be costly to purchase and expensive to repair. They also tend to go out of date or obsolete over a few years being replaced by something faster or better every couple of years. You can look to leasing equipment to save purchase costs if you still prefer to handle your own print work in-house. If you plan to purchase all of your gear, be prepared to spend a lot both upfront and overtime on the equipment repair and replacement.
Why Outsourcing Could Be The Answer
Outsourcing with a 3rd party company is neither expensive nor time and resource-laden so it is arguably one of the best methods for preparing and sending documents. While it is true that the price per page is lower in some cases of self-printing, when all of the costs and benefits are examined, it is apparent how much more costly the DIY printing and mailing method can be for any size of business. Between the space, people, wages, and equipment that would need to be managed, partnering with a company that already has all of that in place could be the answer for you as it is for so many other business owners like you.
A company such as Towne Mailer has over 20 years of experience handling the printing and mailing needs of companies both large and small all over the country. We have dozens of state-of-the-art machines of all kinds running all the time with a team of 20 enthusiastic printing specialists at the helm. We have expert processes and the perfect amount of space with our 7,000 square foot specialty printing and mailing warehouse to accomplish every kind of print job imaginable. Between our highly trained people and the expert skills needed to handle the largest print and mail jobs at competitive prices, Towne Mailer is proudly the leader in our field.
Located in one of the most incredible states in the country, Towne Mailer’s Missoula, MT location is where we call home. Setting the gold standard for family-owned and operated businesses, we can offer you everything that we have at our disposal to make your printing and mailing dreams come true using expert techniques and excellent equipment. Our 5-star equipment and services surpass anything that an at-home printing system can handle.
Offering only the highest quality printing and mailing services at the best, most competitive prices, we at Towne Mailer aim to show you how much less hassle, less costly, and more beneficial it can be to outsource your printing and mailing with a company like us that truly cares about your work. Our mission is to relieve you and your business of the expensive and time-consuming chore of handling your printing and mailing needs so that you can do what it is that you do best and let us contribute to that success for you. We promise that we will not only produce a nicer product than anything in the industry for a competitive price, but we will also get your documents mailed to your clients within 24 hours from proof approval. Now if that isn’t better than anything, we don’t know what is. Towne Mailer is your trusted printing and mailing specialist.
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