Less Friction, More Value: Expand Services to Meet Modern Job Demand

In part one of Nikki Hiller’s blog, she talked about how modern workflows, automation, and better data can reduce friction, free up staff capacity, and help in-plants demonstrate their value to leadership. Here, she continues that conversation by showing how in-plants can turn those efficiencies into a stronger strategic role — bringing outsourced work back in-house, expanding services, and continually improving operations to strengthen their business case.

As print leaders, our greatest opportunity is to look beyond the substrate and see the possibilities:

Every hallway can tell a story.
Every campus can build pride.
Every hospital can improve navigation.
Every city can become more inviting.
Every event can become more memorable.

Work that had been outsourced for years — signs, banners, floor graphics, window clings — can return to the in-plant, because internal customers generally prefer not to manage an outside vendor when they don't have to. At that point the in-plant is more than a production center; it becomes a strategic asset that improves experiences, strengthens branding, and creates new revenue opportunities for the organization.

Managers may be unsure how much demand can materialize inside their organization, but the truth is it already exists, and you are becoming the answer. Every time you pull a job back in-house, you're adding to the business case for your shop's existence.

Recurring demand is worth capturing too. Pole banners, wall murals, and window graphics often need to be refreshed annually or aligned with admissions, athletics, seasonal events, or other campaign cycles. The shop can also add adjacent services, such as installation, contour cutting, laminating, and mounting, to capture the full project instead of just the print.

In addition to wide-format printing, some other applications are often overlooked yet can create substantial volume. Kiss-cut decals and stickers, for example, are often among the most frequently requested product categories. Direct-to-canvas, direct-to-awards, and direct-to-package printing can support employee-recognition portraits, internal kitting, and packaging needs. In-plants serving K–12 and higher education can also produce educational products, such as game boards, learning cards, and STEM manipulatives.

Modern Workflow Supports the Strategic Business Case

The strongest case for organizations to invest further in the in-plant begins with identifying business priorities. Know your organization's goals and make sure your shop plays a visible role in achieving them.

That might mean proactively offering to support a new communications initiative with branded templates. It might mean having a conversation with your facilities or communications teams about what they're outsourcing and why. You don't have to rebrand yourself as a marketing department. You just have to make it easy for people to see what you're contributing.

From there, the business case becomes much clearer. Start by quantifying what is currently outsourced and related savings by bringing that work back in-house. Identify the departments (such as marketing, admissions, athletics, HR, facilities, and events) that are already purchasing graphics and related services from outside vendors. That is quantifiable revenue sitting outside the building.

Then, shift the conversation from acquisition cost to ROI. New equipment is not simply an upgrade; it’s a way to eliminate outside costs by capturing work that would otherwise leave the organization entirely. Meanwhile, highlight flexible turnaround, seamless integration with internal systems, and deep understanding of organizational needs as advantages of your in-plant operation. These are service-level improvements that internal customers can feel directly, making the in-plant an even more indispensable partner.

A modern workflow also makes that value easier to document. Managers can pull together a quarterly summary that shows how much work the shop produced, what it would have cost outside, and where turnaround times improved. Over time, those results help demonstrate that the in-plant is actively helping the organization operate more efficiently and get more value from every print dollar.

Modernization is All About One Better Way

After more than 15 years in this industry, I'm convinced that the in-plants in the strongest position are not the ones that have completed a single modernization project. They are the ones that have built the habit of continually examining their workflow and asking whether there is a better way.

That means:

• Reviewing service mix annually. Treat it like a formal audit against organizational need, not a passive check-in; pull actual utilization and outsourcing data.
• Retiring outdated processes. Give explicit permission to kill something that made sense five years ago. Managers often keep a process alive out of habit or because no one owns the decision to stop.
• Treating inefficiency as a question. Ask “why does this exist and what would it take to remove it?” This mental shift is what turns friction into a project.
• Asking internal customers directly. Questions, such as “what would make working with us easier?” can surface bottlenecks that have become normalized.

None of these steps requires a big budget or a major technology investment to start. They just require a different posture toward the operation you're running. After identifying an inefficient process, the next step is to approach the change with some discipline:

• Measure before acting. Track turnaround time, manual touches per job, rework rates, approval wait time, and admin labor hours so the improvement can be proven, not just felt.
• Talk to the people doing the work. Operators, CSRs, designers, and finishing staff usually know exactly where time is lost.
• Pilot the change. Try it in one department or a single workflow before rolling it out shop-wide.
• Make it a continuous cycle. Modernization is not a one-time project with a finish line. If the tweak works, document the new process, train the team, and move to the next bottleneck.

Modern pressures require a modern approach. But a modern approach does not have to feel overwhelming. It can start with one fewer email thread, one job submission that doesn’t require a phone call to clarify, or one data point you can bring into a meeting with your director.

That is enough to start. And it builds from there.

Be sure to read part one of this blog, Less Friction, More Value: A Practical Path to Modernizing Your In-plant.