Web to Print empowers B&B Press customers to Be Brilliant
B&B Press’ is on a mission. Its goal is very simple. The organisation wants to enable each and every one of its customers to ‘Be Brilliant’. It is not just a company motto –– it is the very real passion of every team member. And it is pursuing this mission supported by Coreprint Web to Print software from Vpress.
“We are very passionate about print, we love it, and we are even more passionate about solving peoples challenges in achieving their own business growth ambitions through automation using Web to Print technology,” explains Dave, who is the Sales and Marketing Director at B&B Press.
Having spent his entire career around the smell of ink, the crackle of paper and the thunder of the printing press, at 42 Dave feels he has truly found his calling.
Dave continues: “We have a proud and long history, which began in 1958 as a stationer, before moving into printing tickets for social clubs around the North,
“We don’t look backwards though. Every year we invest heavily in leading-edge technology and we develop our people, this has enabled us to evolve into more than just a printer and become a full solutions provider. Key to that ability to engage with our customers, and deliver value for them, has been our relationship with Vpress and the use of its Coreprint platform.
“Whether it’s for print, packaging, preparation or even something that doesn’t begin with ‘p’, we make sure we’ve got the most modern and capable tools available. It’s the only way to consistently provide our customers with the best quality in the shortest time without cutting corners. In fact, we joke, one thing we’re never going to invest in is a corner cutter. It would only gather dust.”
Web to Print, an engine for growth
A key ethos of B&B Press since its earliest days has been a commitment to leveraging the capabilities of print hardware, and now software, to provide its customers with tools with which they can market their businesses in an effective way.
It was the first company in the UK to invest in LED UV litho, a Sakurai Oliver 480SD LED UV four-colour and 580SD LED UV five-colour, and Dave explains that a fundamental part of the company’s journey to sustained growth was both a full reorientation of its brand and understanding its ideal customer demographic –– that and reigniting a relationship with the Sales Director of Vpress Kelvin Bell.
“We started from a blank sheet, we re-evaluated everything from our CRM through to how we defined what our ‘products’ were,” says Dave, who continues: “We realised the only way forward was to be a partner that adds value to our customer’s businesses.
“To do that we knew we had to embrace full-automation using Web to Print ––and having known Kelvin for many years, and how he tells it straight –– I felt very confident that Vpress was the company to help us do that.”
Online and onwards to success
Dave continues: “B & B Press’ experience with Web to Print was very basic when I started five years ago. But having had so much experience in my previous roles of onboarding customers through using the technology, I saw the immense potential for it to be transformative.
“This is because it could take the incredible wealth of creative and technical talent in the business and harness it through creating a fully functional and automated Web to Print ordering platform for our customers.”
The incumbent Web to Print supplier had enjoyed a long relationship with B & B Press, but its system did not have the breadth and depth that was needed to realise the ambition of B&B Press.
Dave continues: “Onboarding Coreprint was simple and easy, with our team having a couple of days training in Cheltenham. We started off slowly, and we leaned on Vpress a lot in the early days. We built a lot of customers sites for free with their support, which is now something we can charge for, and the whole integration process was very straightforward.”
B&B Press has continued to evolve and expand its use of Vpress Coreprint, adding modules such as the World Pay payment gateway and Dynamic Editor.
“Marketing professionals are starting to do their own research about what systems work well, so being a Vpress user gives us the chance to talk to customers we never would have,” says Dave.
He adds: “Our previous manual job ordering systems had a lot of touch points. The Vpress system has allowed us to put our regular customers on to Web to Print, it makes their life easier, it frees our team up, and it gives them the analytics and data they need.
“The biggest advantage for us is the new opportunities it creates. A good example is a customer we have in the animal welfare sector. They are a multi-million Pound company with a franchise model. We deploy Vpress to give all of their franchisees the ability to order the marketing and communications they need across its 500 centres –– while personalising it to their specific regional location and brand identity.”
An ABC of automation
Dave explains, for example, that if ABC Animal Welfare Cheltenham logs on, they just update the master template with their identity and it then populates every single piece of print collateral and personalises it to them. They can then specify and order it, without any of the B&B Press team being involved until it hits the press.
That used to be a manual process, with each one of its 500 centres feeding into a central design studio, with an incredible volume of man hours and expense spent trying to keep up. Now there is minimal lead time, they can order the product they want in minutes on demand and have it rapidly delivered.
Dave concludes: “It’s simple really, Vpress Web to Print systems brings all the benefits of today’s connected world: exceptional value, precise logistics, improved quality, and a high level of automation.
“Customers can edit, approve and order your marketing materials online. They can manage their brand consistency. Its accessible anywhere 24/7 via the cloud. Ironically given our roots, there is a virtual stationery store for all printed stock items and it provides them with full digital print on demand and usage reports at their fingertips.
“Now, that is what I call helping our customers to ‘Be Brilliant’.”
