Rethink Print

Transactions vs. Relationships

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:22:19 -0800

The world of online print is dominated by only a handful of large national companies. They target an easy-to-reach, audience with unsophisticated needs. They focus on offering only simple products with limited options that are less error-prone in production. In addition, these products don’t cost a lot to ship, are not time sensitive, and are of “good enough” quality for the long-tail consumer and micro-business audience. Production is homogeneous and as automated as possible to further cut timelines and costs.

These players are much more focused on marketing efforts than they are on the print craft. They are very much in the transaction business driven by order volume; where each order is relatively small. As an example: VistaPrint serviced over 11 million customers last year, each placing an average of two orders of around $36. Obviously this type of business should be focused on up-selling each one of those average orders and not investing heavily into building a relationship with the customer. This is also why the product offered cannot be over-complex, risking a high error and reprint rate.

In contrast, a typical commercial print service provider (retail quick-print inclusive) has much fewer customers – servicing each regularly. The average order, however, is usually in the hundreds or thousands of dollars. These types of customers are won and lost on the customer-perceived quality of the relationship and convenience. Most print service providers will often make illogical promises to keep these customers from walking down the street to a competitor.

“Above and beyond” is the norm for relationship-based print service providers. However, they often miss what’s important to their customers. The perceived quality in the customer’s eyes is a fragile combination of: responsiveness, fair pricing (and not necessarily cheapest), end-product quality, low occurrence of mistakes, how mistakes are handled when they do happen, range of capabilities (everyone likes a one-stop-shop), and above all management of expectations via good communication.

Often, otherwise relationship-focused, print service providers attempt to get into the online transaction-driven business by emulating what they see on the surface of the large national players. The benefits of moving to an online workflow are often misunderstood as a way to simply generate a new channel of long-tail business print service providers cannot reach otherwise. Without the marketing fuel to consistently develop prospects and convert (a single-digit percentage of them) into customers, along with all the production considerations, this can be a very dangerous distraction.

Most print service providers would be better served using online tools and modern tactics to improve communications and the overall experience for their existing customers first and foremost. Fortifying the existing customers base, reducing costly errors and customer service overhead, and creating customer evangelists who will recommend the provider to anyone who would listen, is a company-maker.

When you are developing an online strategy and aligning your resources to support it, ask yourself what business you are in.

Want to learn more? Download our free White Paper: “Five Paths to Success Online for Print Service Providers”

Dog-fooding it - the tools we use to run Keen

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:28:00 -0800

Keen is a solution, in large part, designed to remove the burden of software and IT resource management for our print service provider customers. The fact is that most companies we work with find it prohibitively expensive and difficult to deal with in-house software infrastructure. This is where Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is the ultimate equalizer that can solve complex problems while being accessible to any size customer.

We believe in this model so much, that our entire company runs on a combination of well-known and niche SaaS solutions. This is truly “eating our own dog food” and we wanted to give you a little insight into some of the online services we use to run Keen:

Google Docs (email, calendars, and document sharing) - the now ubiquitous service that allows us (and much larger organizations) to avoid having to deal with buying servers and dreaded Microsoft Exchange just to host email. Instead we happily pay a negligible monthly fee for each of our employees and enjoy a maintenance-free, reliable email experience.

RingCentral (phone system) - this virtual PBX system allows us to have the convenience of an infinitely configurable VoIP phone system without dealing with hardware beyond our desk phones and our normal in-office networking routing. We always enjoy the latest features and can do phone routing only dreamt-of just a few years ago.

Highrise (contact management) - although Salesforce.com pioneered the CRM category, we are big fans of 37signals products and use this system to stay up-to-date with our customers and partners.

Campfire (group messaging) - a simple service that allows our team to have a constantly-open chat room. Discussions can happen asynchronously and various engineering and support notifications post automatically. This is a great way for everyone to stay synced up without spending endless hours in meetings. (Another great 37signals product.)

Zendesk (online help desk) - part of our customer promise is superior customer support. The way we’ve actually made it work is by integrating this great support system right into our application. Our customers can ask questions without ever leaving their account and requests instantly forward to our support and engineering departments. (Of course good support extends beyond the communication tools, but we’ll leave this for another post.)

MailChimp (email marketing) - time-to-time we send email announcements to our customers, prospects, and partners. This system integrates well with our various contact databases and provides us with great analytics on each campaign.

Geckoboard (dashboards) - it goes without saying that a modern software company has to track a number of marketing and performance metrics. This online service allows us to combine a multitude of statistics from different systems into dashboards formatted for a big (hanging) screen.

Pivotal Tracker (software development project management) - we are a true Agile software development organization (the Scrum flavor to be exact). This means, among other things, that we plan and publish updates and enhancements to Keen on a daily basis. To manage this process, we use what has quickly become the industry standard tool.

Additionally, our engineering team uses a number of other tools to track everything from server performance and uptime to hosted code repositories. We won’t bore you with the geeky stuff here.

So as you see, if a modern software operation can run entirely in the cloud without spending a dime on servers and maintenance, odds are, so can you.

Does your company use online services it cannot live without? Share them in the comments!

Since 2004: Email marketing response rates have fallen...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:04:06 -0800

Since 2004:

Email marketing response rates have fallen 57%
Direct mail response rate have risen 14%

Source: International Paper

ASP ≠ SaaS and why you should care

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:44:47 -0800

Cloud computing has only begun to show its profound effect on the way software and services will be consumed from this point forward. Already many business productivity software categories such as CRM (Salesforce), Project Management (Basecamp), and even Word Processing (Google Docs, Microsoft Office 365) are either completely or well on their way into the cloud. Acceptance of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has risen due in part to the marketing dollars invested by leading cloud companies such as Salesforce and Google. Their efforts have popularized the benefits of and reduced the fear of relying on hosted services. Sentiment towards hosted services has turned remarkably quick from fear to mass adoption. As a result, many legacy companies have decided to put the shinny veneer of new and trendy on their old and tired products, in the process frequently misleading customers.

Salesforce is largely credited with coining the term Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). SaaS is an architecture that goes back to the era of time-sharing main frame computers in the 60s, subsequently with its modern iteration growing out of the Application Service Provider (ASP) model of the 90s. ASP’s popped-up with the proliferation of broadband Internet connections. Distributed software then began moving from the in-house corporate data centers to colocation facilities of the software vendors. This allowed companies to offload the work of maintaining servers. However, someone still had to do it and one layer below the surface it didn’t vary by much. Although there were now many clients in the same data center (and in certain cases on the same servers via virtualization), each instance had to have the appropriate technical headroom (storage space, bandwidth, etc) and be maintained individually per client. This is the single tenant model and has inherent limitations.

Enter SaaS. A new breed of companies began treating their software as one large network. One set of hardware resources, one code base, one database, and many customer accounts. In other words: multi tenant. All of a sudden getting a client up and running required very little incremental effort, time, or cost. The resources are shared and therefore customer accounts no longer required 95% headroom. When the software is updated, it is done once for all customers at the same time. As a result, the maintenance costs for SaaS providers and the ownership costs for their client’s are far lower than an ASP’s. Coincidentally, without the SaaS model entire categories such as social networks would not be possible, as they rely on the network effect of multiple users interacting with each other.

The fact that print service providers have to transition online is no longer controversial. Choosing the right solution and understanding the disparity in return on investment between the different software delivery models is crucial. While the old Client-Server model is obviously the wrong solution today, the difference between ASP(single-tenancy) and SaaS (multi-tenancy) is equally as distinct. Paying an ASP for individual maintenance on 20 times more infrastructure than you actually need is just as outdated as paying for software license fees. Not to mention you’ll be missing out on the network effects (for example the Keen plugins which you’ll be hearing more about soon) and rapid deployment only possible with SaaS.

Based on the typical upfront cost, upkeep, and ramp-up time, we’ve done the ROI comparison for you. All the technical details aside, the dollars and sense are undeniable:

Licensed: High upfront cost, high maintenance cost, annual license renewal, long lead to first transaction, and because of the effort involved in each deployment applicable to limited segment of orders.

ASP: Still relatively high upfront cost, high monthly subscription fee regardless of actual order through-put, Still relatively long lead to first transaction, and still applicable to limited segment of orders because of the effort involved.

SaaS: No upfront cost, monthly cost tracks usage, sign-up to transactions in 2 days, designed for entire order flow, and because of virtually no additional effort applicable to most orders.

So the next time someone tries to sell you an outdated ASP in a SaaS costume, be skeptical. You can spot them by: setup fees, a long startup process, high maintenance fees, and the inability to work with other online services and partners.

Vitaly M. Golomb, CEO of Keen to Speak at Venture Summit Silicon Valley (Dec 13-14)

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 06:10:05 -0800

Keen Systems’ CEO, Vitaly M. Golomb, will speak at Venture Summit Silicon Valley in Half Moon Bay, CA (Dec 13-14).

Venture Summit Silicon Valley (registration link) is a two-day gathering where 500 cutting-edge Internet CEOs in Digital Media and OnDemand computing meet top venture investors, corporate strategic partners, government and university officials, and members of the press and blogging communities. Internet entrepreneurs and their innovations are transforming and decentralizing large industries, including entertainment, commerce, finance, advertising, and media. At the Venture Summit, AlwaysOn introduces the next generation of “breakout” company CEOs and Founders driving the next wave of innovation in a series of industry trend debates, and in CEO Showcase presentations. A hand chosen set of other powerful investors and corporate insiders will be also on hand to present and debate the top technology and business trends and the strategies are driving success in today’s competitive innovation-driven markets.

Vitaly will present how Keen is helping print service providers leverage ecommerce to drive efficiency and expand their footprint.

Little Printer, a little bit of print awesome

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:43:00 -0800

Print personal mini-newspapers from your smartphone. What a great idea and execution!

Hello Little Printer, available 2012 from BERG on Vimeo.

Vitaly M. Golomb, CEO of Keen to Speak at CPrint International Production Conference (Nov 9-12)

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:05:24 -0700

Keen Systems’ CEO, Vitaly M Golomb, will speak at CPrint International Production Conference in Chicago (Nov 9-12). CPrint is a professional alliance (and unique franchise) of printers certified to higher standards located throughout the United States and Canada. CPrint is a recognized resource in helping print companies defy gravity and achieve profitability far beyond the industry average.

Vitaly will present practical ecommerce business models for print service providers and demo Keen’s innovative platform recently launched at Graph Expo 2011.

Vitaly M. Golomb, CEO of Keen to Speak at Integrated Print Forum (Oct 24-25)

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:20:20 -0700

Keen Systems’ CEO, Vitaly M Golomb, will speak at Print Industries of America’s first annual Integrated Print Forum in Pittsburgh, PA (Oct 24-25).

The information-filled session is called “Demystifying eCommerce for Print Service Providers – Selling Online is Not Just for the Big Boys”. Vitaly will walk the audience of print company and equipment company executives through insights into how the national powerhouses drive their online businesses, as well as, highly-effective online business models accessible to print service providers of any size. Specifically: Using Private Online Stores to Empower Sales Teams, Commanding Premium Prices by Developing a Vertical/Industry Focus, The Value of “Just In Time” and the Local Market, Creating Affiliates Sales Relationships with Your Referral Base, and Marketing Niche Print Products.

For full conference details and registration, visit: www.integratedprintforum.org

Time to Evolve

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:12:00 -0700

Rampant innovation and demanding customers are rapidly changing commerce norms, Printers take heed. This week’s pervasive news vividly illustrates one company’s ballsy approach to remain relevant in these rough waters.

Do you recall the innovative company who’s disruptive approach to the movie rental business once dethroned the biggest players in the space? Yes, Netflix’s seemingly misguided business pivot contains a valuable lesson for print providers.

Realizing the impending obsolescence of their DVD by mail business, Netflix has effectively amputated and rebranded their flagship DVD service and former competitive advantage. This audacious strategy has both pros and cons, and this brief post cannot possibly attempt to fairly evaluate their approach. Right or wrong, CEO Hastings and Netflix have made a commitment to ensure the future of Netflix as a streaming company, and they have appropriately organized the business in such a way. So what’s the lesson for printers here?

The reality is that internet technologies have changed the way people consume things. 24/7 access from anywhere in the world is now demanded and expected by customers. They want to stream media from the cloud, they want to manage bills, place orders, run software, and even find dates from the cloud. There is no question that this disruptive model will become the norm. Netflix is preparing, are you?

The majority of print providers have reacted by expanding into a variety of marketing capabilities to complement their products, effectively positioning themselves as more than just printers. For some this is a viable strategy that may increase revenues, but it doesn’t address the actual disruptions taking place. People want things available online for convenience, self service, and affordability.

Keen is the first cloud based SaaS product to effectively transition print businesses online with a unique platform that engages customers in a personal way. All the efficiencies and automation of a first class cloud based ecommerce software, and all the tools to manage your customer relationships with the personal touch they love. Keen is preparing your print business for the future.

Bring your print business online and thrive. Activate your 30 day free trial today!

Recap of Keen launch at Graph Expo

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 08:01:00 -0700

The Keen team is back from an incredible launch at Graph Expo in Chicago

Some members of Keen’s Engineering and Marketing Teams at the last supper before pushing the go-live version of our application

From Left Andrew Kaleshka, Yuri Tolstik, Andrea Roesch, Vitaly M. Golomb, Nima Adelkhani, Tim Weber, Eric LeDuc

Our demonstrations drew in crowds

We held a press conference, and won a Must See ‘Em - Worth a Look award.

Our last day of the show!
From Left: Ed Dignam (from our launch partners ASAP Printing Corp.), Eric LeDuc (Customer Team), Vitaly M. Golomb (Founder & CEO), Mark Mavroudis (Customer Team), Nima Adelkhani (VP of Business Development)

We came, we launched, we conquered. Keen is now LIVE!

You can sign up for a risk-free trial account right now - access is being prioritized so get in touch with our rockstar support team to skip the line.

Rolling off the 3D printing press... the world's first 'printed' car - and it actually works

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 19:59:54 -0700

Rolling off the 3D printing press... the world's first 'printed' car - and it actually works

The History of Print

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 20:32:05 -0700

28,000 BC – Earliest known symbols found written by humans.

3000 BC - First image duplication through the impression of round cylinders.

220 AD – First operation of woodblock printing.

1440 AD – Creation of the first known Printing Press.

1837 AD – Production of the first color printer.

1983 AD – Invention of the Internet.

2011 AD – On September 10th, Keen launches the first-ever multi-tenant SaaS solution for the print industry.

Sorry, but you're not Vistaprint.

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 20:30:00 -0700

Many print companies are under the assumption that by merely putting their print shop online they can become an online printing powerhouse. They won’t. In reality, it takes a considerable amount of time and money to drive web traffic. The average print shop does not have the knowledge or budget to successfully drive traffic to their online print store, because a typical print shop has fewer than 15 employees and annual revenues under $2 million.[1]

In contrast, Vistaprint had a net income of $817 million in 2011, but it came after $177 million in advertising costs and over 2,600 employees worldwide.[2] Vistaprint uses their funds to place advertisements on all the foremost websites; Google, Bing, Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon, and Pandora. They use product placement, direct marketing techniques, and strategic partnerships to drive traffic to their site. They’re everywhere. I can’t watch an entire episode of Hell’s Kitchen on Hulu without seeing commercials for Vistaprint in-between Gordon Ramsay degrading chefs and throwing raw chicken.

For Vistaprint this constant publicity and marketing is essential. Various shops employ direct mail campaigns or search engine optimization, but evolving into a bustling ecommerce printer requires more than a web-to-print “solution” and an e-mail blast.

However, a print shop can expand their business with a couple vital tools. First they need an efficient way to communicate with consumers. Most print shop workers have to deal with constant phone calls and e-mails from pestering customers concerned about their orders. These nuisances turn the print personnel into gofers, fetching quotes and updates on orders rather than exploring new consumer bases and generating fresh business. Rich customer communication portals with self service options allow both printers and customers to easily access, manage, and track the order from purchase to fulfillment. With these time and cost savings, the printer’s focus can shift from coddling customers to executing sales strategy.

Another fundamental tactic is utilizing a streamlined management solution. Streamlining the ordering process creates additional workflow benefits because print shops are often hectic environments; where an overdue order is lost revenue, and a misplaced order can be a lost customer. A management solution that separates the duties of employees within the company (ordering, back-end, delivery) can eradicate most of the errors that print shops have, such as missing collection on rush fees or misplacing orders. With orders and jobs funneling into one unified management program, workflow can be effectively managed to decrease lost revenues.

Utilizing both of these tools won’t catapult your company into an $800 million revenue year like Vistaprint, but they are just a couple important aspects to increasing profits and escalating a print shop. While few companies have the working capital to execute advertising like Vistaprint, all print companies have opportunities more efficiently manage their business.

Keen encompasses these strategies in our complete ecommerce solution in ways no other company has done before in the print industry. Keen has combined all facets of print into one modern easy-to-use product; customer communication tools, strategic partnerships with trade printers, integrated shipping and tax information, a streamlined front-end and back-end management solution, a transaction gateway, and more than I could name in a single blog post. In just 24 short hours the first multi-tenant SaaS for the print industry developed by Keen Systems will launch at Graph Expo. Join us as the print industry changes forever.

Booth #1071

[1] http://www.inplantgraphics.com/blog/economics-101-the-law-supply-demand-in-plant-print-shops-ray-chambers#

[2] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1262976/000095012311078262/b85327e10vk.htm

Take the Blue Pill, Avoid the Matrix

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 14:04:00 -0700

We despise feature matrices. They are a gaudy and biased technique that publishers employ to inflate their product above the competition. Often there is a laundry list of features that the publisher’s product contains, without explanation of the actual use of the product itself. For example, the majority of matrices look something like this:

See how the rock obliterates the iPad and Kindle on these simple features. The problem is that the matrix is missing the most essential dimension of quality which is so often absent in the majority of feature matrices. Design.

We believe that a design is successful when it is both intuitive and simple for customers to use. I can study a competitive matrix on two cars and see one has more features, but how do they drive. They both might boast GPS systems, but which is easier to use? Which car better fits me and which car is a smoother, more enjoyable vehicle? The answer isn’t in a feature matrix. The only way to discover which car is the best is to take them for a test drive.

Keen, coming to a web browser near you.

The Print Industry's Internet Problem

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:00:00 -0700

My name is Tim; I’m currently a junior at UC Davis studying economics and political science. During my time as a community management intern here at Keen, I realized just how far behind the printing industry is in terms of internet technology – specifically ecommerce. My generation grew up with internet as a given and it is remarkable how difficult it is to interact with the print industry in that context.

The printing industry is 8X the size of video games, yet only ~3% of all transactions are made over the internet today. It’s a baffling statistic. Especially when you consider that 37% of Americans are online daily and over 70% of the whole country have a Facebook account. Why is this? How can the print industry, as a whole, have failed to exploit the untapped potential of the internet and, more importantly, today’s internet-savvy culture? How is it that millions of people can tell the world what they eat for breakfast on Twitter, but less than 100 (of ~34,000) print businesses nationwide are relying on ecommerce as an important part of their business? I think it is because no one has been able to create the “Apple” effect. An elegant rethink of a complex set of user behavior disconnects.

If it were not for Apple, my mother would not know how to text, e-mail, or upload pictures to her computer. Without Apple, my grandmother would not have a Facebook account or constantly be pestering me to get an iPhone. Apple is everywhere. We see children with iPhones, parents with iPads, and grandparents with MacBooks. The reason Apple products are so popular is because every product they make is so simple and natural to use. My grandmother who didn’t know how to use a cell phone two years ago can now easily FaceTime with my mother, while texting her, and looking up recipes on her iPad. This trademark ease and accessibility of Apple technology is what’s missing from the print industry.

The overwhelming majority of the industry does not have an available option for effective ecommerce or teams of programmers to create one. A solution would be an innovative web service, equally accessible and affordable to both large print manufacturers and corner shops. There is no “Apple” in the print industry today, no ecommerce solution that is attainable and practical for any sized businesses.

One thing is for certain; an easy-to-use service that brings the long tail of print service providers online is the future of the industry. In all likelihood it will not be a creation by Apple, but maybe the future of print is closer than we know.

British Scientists Make Chocolate Goodies With 3D Printer

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 13:57:41 -0700

British Scientists Make Chocolate Goodies With 3D Printer

Lessons from Pepsi's Social Media Campaign Failure for "Traditional Media"

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:36:00 -0700

Last month The Wall Street Journal highlighted Pepsi’s 5% marketshare loss in a number of articles. For the first time Pepsi went down to number three after Coca-Cola and Diet Coke. What Pepsi called the “Pepsi Refresh Project” is getting most of the blame. Despite the social media experiment’s empirical success of generating 3.5M Facebook “likes”, 60,000 Twitter followers and other impressive metrics, it apparently failed to do the most important thing: sell Pepsi.

This is an important battle in the old vs. new media war. It certainly demonstrates on a large consumer scale that diverting entire TV and print budgets towards social media is a mistake. It proves that “traditional” media still has a very important stake in consumer purchasing influence.

So what is the allure of social media marketing? 1) It is easy to buy ad space, 2) artwork cost/entry point is lower, 3) cost per eyeball is lower by an order of magnitude (deceivingly so), and 4) it is infinitely trackable and real-time. Social media and online marketing in general does well when users are in a purchasing cycle, but traditional media still has a stronger impact in building brand awareness.

The lesson for printers and other stake holders in traditional media, is to address 1-4 above and to generally remove the customer facing speed-bumps from their workflow. What’s one sure way to do that? Ecommerce.

Shutterfly Acquires Tiny Prints

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 17:23:52 -0700

The consolidation of ecommerce-driven direct-to-consumer printing companies continues with Shutterfly’s acquisition of Tiny Prints. A $333M outcome for a printing company less than 7 years old is a result most 30 year old printing companies can envy. Scale to be found only online. Print company owners take note.

Printing A Kidney: A Glimpse At The Future http://t.co/skqurnC

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Printing A Kidney: A Glimpse At The Future http://t.co/skqurnC

A geeky milestone

Sat, 05 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Keen is a bit over 1/4MLOC (aka 250,000 lines of code) now and should grow quite a few KLOCs more before official release, soon.