Why More Businesses Are Connecting Print Directly Into Their Operations

You don’t have to sell print for it to be an important part of how your business operates.

A car park needs signage. A restaurant needs menus and promotional materials. A retailer might need posters and point of sale print across dozens of stores. A property business could need the same branded materials available to branches around the country. Individually, these are print orders. At scale, they become an operational process.

When the same types of print are being ordered repeatedly by different sites, teams or departments, the challenge isn’t necessarily finding somewhere to print them. It’s creating a simple, consistent way for people across the organisation to get what they need.

For some businesses, that’s where connecting print directly into their existing systems can make sense.

When ordering print becomes an operational process

Placing an individual print order is relatively straightforward. But the picture changes when the requirement is repeated across an organisation.

A central team might receive requests from individual locations, check what’s required, find the right product, place the order and arrange delivery. Multiply that across different sites, products and users and a simple purchasing task can start taking up a surprising amount of time.

There’s also consistency to think about. If every branch, venue or location sources its own print independently, there’s less control over the products being ordered, where they’re coming from and whether they match what the organisation has approved.

Centralising everything can solve some of those issues, but it can create another problem. One person or team becomes responsible for processing every request. As an organisation grows, neither approach is particularly scalable. That’s why the question can start to shift from where should we order our print? to how should print ordering work within our organisation?

The challenge grows when more people need access

This is particularly relevant for businesses where print is needed across multiple locations, but the principle can apply to any organisation with distributed or repetitive ordering requirements.

Take a car park operator. Different sites might regularly need replacement signage, notices or other printed materials. Those locations need an easy way to access the correct products, while the wider business needs to make sure the right materials are being ordered.

A restaurant group might have similar requirements around menus, promotional posters or other location specific print. Retailers may need stores to access campaign materials or point of sale print. A franchise might want individual operators to order approved branded materials without giving each location the freedom to source those products independently. The products are different, but the underlying problem is similar.

People throughout the organisation need access to print, while the business still needs consistency, control and an efficient way to manage the process.

What if print ordering sat inside the systems you already use?

One way to approach that challenge is to stop treating print as a completely separate purchasing process. Many businesses already have internal platforms, portals or digital systems that their teams use to complete everyday tasks. Print ordering can potentially become part of that environment too.

Instead of directing users to a separate print website, asking them to email a central team or requiring somebody to recreate every request manually, an organisation can build its own ordering experience around the products its users actually need.

That experience might be simple. A location could select an approved sign, enter the information required and request the quantity it needs. Another organisation might build a much broader catalogue of products available through an internal portal. What the customer facing part looks like is up to the business.

The important part is what happens behind it. With the right connection in place, those orders can move from the organisation’s own system directly into a print production workflow. That’s where a WTTB Print API comes in.

Where a Print API fits in

An API allows different systems to communicate with each other and exchange information automatically. In this case, it can create the connection between the system your organisation already uses and the system responsible for print production.

The WTTB Print API provides that connection to our UK production network. Once the integration has been developed, your own platform can pass the relevant order and artwork information through to WTTB, allowing jobs to move into production and fulfilment without somebody having to recreate each order manually.

The technical work sits in building that connection around the way your own platform operates.

Your developers will need to use the WTTB API documentation to connect the two systems, map the relevant products and order information, build the process for submitting artwork and make sure the data being passed to WTTB is handled correctly within your own workflow.

That integration also needs to work with whatever experience you choose to build at your end. One business might create a simple internal portal containing a small selection of approved products. Another might connect print ordering into a much wider ecommerce platform or bespoke business system.

But it’s important to understand what the WTTB Print API doesn’t provide. It isn’t a ready made ordering portal, a white label version of the WTTB website or something you can simply switch on. Your organisation needs its own digital platform or system, along with developers or a technical team who can build and maintain the connection.

WTTB provides the technology that connects your system to print production, along with the production and fulfilment capability behind it. Your organisation remains in control of the platform people use, the products you make available and the wider experience built around that connection.

Central control without centralising every order

This is where the approach becomes particularly useful for organisations with distributed print requirements. Central control doesn’t necessarily mean a central person has to place every order. An organisation can decide which products are made available through its platform and how those products fit into its own processes. Individual users, sites or branches can then access the print they need through that controlled environment.

That could help reduce the number of requests being passed between locations and central teams, while keeping the available print range aligned with what the organisation actually wants people to order. It can also make the process easier to scale.

Adding another location doesn’t necessarily have to mean adding another layer of manual print administration. If the ordering process is already built into the organisation’s system, new users can access the same established route to production.

The aim isn’t simply to automate for the sake of automation. It’s to remove unnecessary steps from a process that happens often enough to justify it.

From signage to everyday business print

There isn’t one type of business that fits this model. The requirement could be highly specific.

• A parking operator might build a selection of approved signs into a system used by its individual sites.
• A hospitality group might make frequently used menus, posters and promotional materials available to its locations.
• A retailer could create a controlled range of print for stores to order when they need it.
• A property business might give branches access to approved marketing materials.
• Another organisation might have departments within the same site ordering different types of business print.

The common factor isn’t the industry or the product. It’s that print is ordered often enough, by enough people, for the ordering process itself to matter.

When does connecting print make sense?

Not every business needs a Print API. If you only place occasional print orders, ordering directly through the WTTB website is likely to be the simpler and more practical route.

The opportunity for an API becomes more relevant when the same print products are being ordered repeatedly, multiple locations or teams need access, manual administration is increasing, or print needs to form part of a wider digital process.

There also needs to be a technical reason for connecting systems. An API requires development work, so the value comes from what that connection allows your organisation to simplify, automate or build around its own requirements.

For some businesses, that could mean creating a customer facing print offering. For others, it could simply mean making an everyday operational process work better.

Print as part of the operation, not a separate task

Print will always be a physical product, but the process around ordering it doesn’t have to remain separate from the rest of your organisation.

If signs, menus, posters, promotional materials or other print products are already a regular part of how your business operates, there may be value in looking at the process behind them as closely as the products themselves.

Connecting print production to the systems your organisation already uses can create a more direct route between the person who needs the product and the production network making it.

It won’t be necessary for every organisation, and it does require the right digital platform and development resources. But where print is repetitive, distributed or closely tied to another business process, connecting the two can turn a series of individual print orders into something much easier to manage.

If print is already a regular part of your operation, the WTTB Print API could help make the way you manage it more connected and efficient.