When passengers want to save time and increase the ease of travel, they book direct flights instead of multiple connections through several airports. Order entry and job onboarding are similar. In a commercial print business, the fewer hops, or additional processes, that bloat and slowdown order intake, job ticketing, and onboarding, the more efficient and cost-effective it can be.
Begin with job order entry, which captures the information needed to execute the job. People capturing job specifications creates risk because it’s easy to develop a personal shorthand for everything from paper sizes to due dates—the more people taking orders, the greater the variability, delays, and potential for errors. Then, to verify or clarify, there is the usual series of email, chat, and phone conversations to ensure that the details are accurate. Those conversations may happen several times during production as each new touchpoint needs assurances about the intent of the job. Nothing in that process is efficient.
