Justifying Your Existence: Part One- Measure Performance
By Howie Fenton – In the recent PRIMIR study entitled “Digital Printing Technology’s Influence on the U.S. In-Plant Printing Market” that IMG worked on with IDC, we identified that the top in-plant challenges focused on justifying:
- Investments in new print technology
- The value of the in-plant, and
- Investing in non-print technology or services.
I will discuss steps in my next three blogs that you can take that will form a strategy to help overcome justification issues. There are three steps in all– measure performance, benchmark performance and build a “Battle Book” of justifications. This post will focus on measuring performance.
Good and Bad Measurements
Performance data and benchmarking are the best tools to address justification, especially when your in-plant comes under attack by outsourcers or facilities management firms that claim they can do the work more productively and at a lower cost. Solid, quantifiable performance— and the measurement of that performance— helps you counter those attacks.