SGIA Journal Garment Edition Spring 2016 - 14

case study

Re-orders also are quickened as clients
can easily and quickly submit them online.
If a buyer has misplaced a printed receipt,
he can go online and simply reprint it.
Price Quotes

Google and other websites offer calendars that allow you to plan
future opportunities that you want to take advantage of. You can
plan ahead on a quarterly or yearly basis and have the app send
you reminders when you should start marketing activities. Image
courtesy of InkSoft

There are programs to automate the art approval process. Customers
receive an email with either an attached graphic file or a link to view
their artwork. They can then approve it or send back comments for
revisions. Image courtesy of InkSoft

There are many software tools available that allow you to plan social
media posts in advance and dictate the day and the time they are
posted. This allows you to plan once a month and forget about it.
Image courtesy of InkSoft

12 | SGIA Journal ■ Spring 2016

One of the most frustrating tasks every
print shop must endure is preparing
price quotes. Oftentimes, people are
shopping for the lowest deal, and the
time spent collecting the information
and calculating the cost is a mostly a
waste of energy.
With the use of software, the most
common denominators can be identified
and included in the program to allow
visitors to get at least a ballpark idea of how
much a specific job may cost. The potential
client is prompted with a series of questions
to determine specifics of the job. Unlike
humans who can forget to ask certain key
questions, the software ensures that all the
pertinent information is collected.
In some cases, the degree of customization
may be greater than an automated program
can handle, and in this case, the client can
call to discuss the additional parameters and
get an accurate quote.
The 80/20 rule applies here. If you
can automate the bulk of a core process,
it results in significant time savings.
The software cannot automate every
single type of order, but it can assist
with the most common ones. For price
shoppers, it can reduce the number of
people who take up an employee's time
and never order.
Artwork Creation

In the apparel industry, a big bottleneck
is the artwork. The general public rarely
understands the quality and type of art
needed to do specific decorating jobs.
And many times supplied artwork is
not useable.
Uneducated customers also tend to
resist having to pay to have artwork
created. This combined with many
of them not knowing what they want
results in a lot of time and frustration
as the in-house artist or freelancer tries
to create graphics that will please the
customer at an affordable price.
It is this exact situation where using
software to automate the process can
result in dramatic time and cost savings.
There are online designers available
for the apparel market that allow anyone
to create an account, sign in and choose
from a vast library of stock art and
templates. These programs are easy to use
and prompt the user through each step
until a final draft is created and approved.
Visit SGIA at SGIA.org/Garment
SGIA Journal Garment Edition Spring 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of SGIA Journal Garment Edition Spring 2016
