It’s no understatement to say that the rules of business and commerce have been completely re-written in recent months.

As the global economy tentatively moves out of lockdown, your printing business needs to adapt to the “new normal” – where social distancing (for both staff and customers) means that businesses are more reliant on digital platforms and automated processes than ever before.

While lockdown is now easing, we have seen a significant shift in the way people communicate and shop over the last few months.

• Use of video conferencing platform Zoom for example, saw meeting participants increase from 10 million monthly participants in December 2019 to more than 300 million in April.
• Amazon saw global sales increase by 26% in Q1 2020, reaching $75.5bn compared to sales of $59.7bn in Q1 2019, data from its Q1 2020 results shows.

In short, as a society, those that had not yet embraced digital and cloud-based platforms have been forced to, as we have all tried to adapt to this seismic event.

A permanent change in shopping behaviour

This is a trend your business can’t ignore for any longer. According to data from GlobalWebIndex, nearly half of global consumers do not expect to resume shopping in brick-and-mortar shops for ‘some time’ or ‘a long time’ once lockdowns ease.

The research reveals that just 9% of shoppers, on average, expect to return to stores ‘immediately’ once they are allowed to. However, those in the UK, Ireland and Germany are more likely to do so (14%) than those in Japan (5%) or China (6%).

While there isn’t yet much data on the impact Covid-19 will have on B2B ecommerce, forecasts made before the global pandemic suggested extremely strong growth in the sector.

A study conducted in 2019 shows that B2B ecommerce sales were projected to be more than two times higher than global online retail sales, according to a forecast cited in the report.

A more recent study suggested that more than two thirds of B2B buyers were already choosing to purchase digitally.

Web-To-Print software puts the printing industry at an advantage

Fortunately, the printing industry is well placed to adapt to this significant shift in buying behaviour.

The use of Web-To-Print and integrated cloud-based software has been gathering momentum for several years – for a number of reasons.

The most sophisticated Web-To-Print storefronts enable customers to specify and preview their own jobs, in 3D if required, and get automated quotations.

This means your print shop can accept orders, pre-flight job files and place them in a job queue for automated pre-press or digital printing without any human interaction.

Storefronts can also be personalised, whether that’s a branded website for specific products or services or a specific portal for a corporate client. This means your corporate clients can order any marketing or branding material, whenever they need it, from their own portal.

Cloud-based systems collect shop floor data to monitor and record actual production for costing. This information can be fed back to the scheduling module, to allow live status monitoring.

Jobs can then be rerouted if production machinery unexpectedly becomes unavailable or in the event of lockdown disruption.

This data is also sent to other systems, such as the CRM module or Web-To-Print storefront, so both the client and other members of staff know what the status of the job is in real time.

Future proof against further lockdowns

The prospect of businesses shutting down for extended periods would have seemed inconceivable a few months ago. But with no guarantees on how Covid-19 or similar emergencies will impact us in the future, we all need to be prepared.

By implementing a cloud-based digital infrastructure (which is a lot less disruptive and can be installed a lot quicker than you might think) your business will be protected against lockdown or other emergencies.

To find out how Web-To-print software, and other integrated cloud-based software can help your business to remain profitable in an uncertain future, download our latest free White Paper. The critical role Web-To-Print software and cloud-based systems will play in the post-Covid printing world.