From The Editor Strength In Numbers
For a week in mid-June, Salt Lake City was the in-plant capital of the country. You could hardly walk down South Main Street without bumping into another in-plant manager.
Utah's capital played host to the 44th annual International Publishing Management Association conference, a much-anticipated event among in-plants. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend. Amazingly (to me) this was my ninth IPMA conference, so by now nearly everyone in the organization seems like an old friend.
Salt Lake City was an appropriate location for the gathering because it's a great city for in-plants. Anchored by two of the country's largest—the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Brigham Young University—it boasts a thriving in-plant community. That was apparent, as representatives from local in-plants filled the conference sessions and vendor floor.
In addition to attending as many sessions as I could with IPG Publisher Gary Rubin (and winning the 3K Fun Run), I moderated a panel on the hot topic of insourcing—taking in jobs from outside the parent organization to bring in additional revenue.
I was joined by BYU's West Barton, Tom Neckvatal of Minnesota Mutual Life Insurance, and Kim Knox of Regence Blue Shield. Each detailed his or her in-plant's successes with insourcing and noted how insourcing has helped them cut costs, acquire new technology and improve service.
According to IPG research, 54 percent of the Top 50 in-plants do some insourcing. Among college/university in-plants that jumps to 58 percent, dropping to 50 percent for wholesale/retail in-plants and 48 percent for those in the government and manufacturing sectors.
Among audience members at the session those percentages were even higher; most people in the room were handling outside work. The topic consequently elicited lots of audience interaction, with most managers looking for ways to expand and improve their insourcing efforts.
Panel members not only talked about how they market their services to outside entities, they offered ideas for new insourcing services, such as handling mail, fulfillment and CD burning. They stressed that, despite initial concerns, their parent organizations are very pleased with the additional revenue insourcing is generating.
There are hurdles, of course—convincing your upper management, avoiding upsetting outside printers, working with new types of files (find solutions to these problems by looking up insourcing on the archives section of this Web site)—but the overall point made by speakers in this session was that insourcing can make your in-plant stronger.
In these difficult times, a little strength is something we can all use.
- People:
- Gary Rubin
- Tom Neckvatal