 There's more to digital print than personalization. In the 2002 Best Practices in Digital Print, PODi identifies five major application segments and numerous sub-segments. Collateral On Demand is one sub-segment, and the Baan case study is an excellent example.
Usually in business there's a choice between pay more now to 'buy time,' or lessen your demands so you can save money. In an ideal world you shouldn't have to compromise, which is precisely why efficiency pioneer Baan improved turnaround time and lowered their costs by switching to Collateral On Demand. The story is a perfect illustration of how digital print technology can be extremely cost-effective, and is so compelling that it led PODi to develop a new project metric: RCDD, or Realized Cost per Delivered Document. The Business Problem The problem was simple but familiar: in responding to today's fast-paced business climate, Baan introduced new products and updates so fast that literature frequently became obsolete. Sixty percent of all literature printed offset was being discarded due to obsolescence. (You know the problem: in a competitive industry, who wants literature that's missing new features?) The high waste factor was ironic, because offset is perceived as costing less than digital. But what good is a cheap process if 60 percent of what you buy is discarded? It's like buying a dozen eggs, eating five, and throwing the rest away...because they were cheaper by the dozen. The Appropriate Metric: RCDD The figure to watch is not unit cost in bulk - it's the cost for what you use. PODi calls this powerful metric RCDD - the Realized Cost per Delivered Document. In this case, Baan's RCDD was 2.5 times higher than what they thought they were paying. (For every 40 sheets of literature they sent out, they paid for 100 and threw 60 away.) Today, using flexible-page-design software from Pageflex and a digital print system from Xerox and EFI, Baan has achieved lower RCDD than ever before. In addition to lowering costs, the digital system can respond much more quickly to document content changes - hours instead of days. EFI, Xerox and Pageflex are all members of PODi. Results- Major cost savings due to a reduced level of wastage
- Data can be changed on the fly, reducing time-to-market for updated documents
- New documents can be added quickly at low cost
- Increased branding and awareness and easy re-branding with almost no cost
- Localizations and translations can be created fast and at low cost
Henk de Ruiter, Baan's Senior VP of Marketing and Alliances, sums up the results by saying, "With this new publish-on-demand system Baan now has one of the most innovative and impressive brochure fulfillment mechanisms available in the market. Our sales and marketing employees can now configure on-the-fly, in five easy steps, a personalized one-to-one brochure entirely customized to the needs of the customer. "We've noticed a major decrease in costs, as only the documents requested are printed, [and inventory] of pre-printed documents is now a thing of the past." Case Description 
On an annual basis roughly three quarters of a million pages of commercial information are sent out worldwide by Baan. Besides own channels Baan uses its alliances and resellers as a sales channel to supply its enterprise software applications such as ERP, Supply Chain and CRM into vertical markets. To extend the promotional reach into all geographical areas, Baan produced marketing collateral, such as brochures and fact sheets, in a host of different languages. However, product improvements and increasing software requirements were outpacing the rate at which documents could be updated. Documents that were still being printed could contain information that was outdated. Approx. 60% of brochures that were printed ended up being wasted due to obsolete information. Baan wanted to reduce the cost of obsolete collateral, reduce time to market of updated documents, and increase marketing efficiency. Working with Cordeo and EFI’s Publishing On Demand Group a new web-enabled collateral on demand system was created. Cordeo provided in this case a multi-site/worldwide print solution, including a web enabled brochure request form to be used by Baan, VAR’s and Alliances. This automated process allows documents to be personalized with information such as vertical market, geography customer data, and contact person in a user-friendly way. Based on the recipients address the brochure characteristics are sent real-time to the proper print provider using XML documents. In Baan’s case in Europe, Ted Gigaprint automatically imports the XML information into its order system, allowing orders to be processed immediately. With the experience and solutions of Cordeo, Baan is able to quickly update or localize existing brochures, and create new brochures. For this specific case Cordeo used and implemented iBaan E-Procurement, one of Baan’s own software applications, as the ordering mechanism. EFI implemented Pageflex’s Mpower, with additional modules from EFI’s product suite. Documents can be dynamically built with flexible combinations of layout and content. Why it works The Baan On Demand Collateral Fulfillment was classified as a "Best of Class" application in PODi's Best Practices in Digital Print report because it demonstrates the following key principles of our project management framework: - Know your Business Objectives & Metrics. The best uses of any technology, including digital print, start with a business problem. Baan and its providers knew exactly what they were out to solve - and that's why, today, they can identify exactly how much they saved.
- Use Effective Process Engineering. The business processes that drive digital print can be a goldmine of opportunity. Baan revamped the process of providing literature by printing documents only when needed. In addition to providing more current content, they achieve optimal RCDD (realized cost per delivered document). (Note: the savings cited above do not include any improvements in process efficiency - those savings are an extra bonus.)
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