The more noise social media creates the more clarity print provides.

Received a “Thank You” card in the mail last week that excited me. Please check out the brief video I made in regards to it.

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO

My excitement spilled over into adding it as a discussion point I had with varies print industry people. Many of them also agreed it had some potential. As Social Media (SM) grows it becomes harder and harder to keep up with and filter out the noise that it generates. In fact at this point the noise of SM is at a roar level. That simple Thank You card coupled with SM had a very profound impact and most importantly, it made me LOOK at the website and possibly become a buyer on that site.

Sitting in Dallas last week with Joe Polanco from PIA-MidAmerica helped further expand on this SM noise. By the time we finished 2 beers and a nice conversation the tag line “The more noise social media creates the more clarity print provides” had been formed.

Dont get me wrong I am a huge fan of SM and think it is an extremely valuable tool in many ways. It is the combining of the two that I find interesting. It is similar to how I look at things like Google AdWords. The first few results in a search doesnt mean legitimacy in my mind, it can also mean someone that is good at getting top rankings for key words, but otherwise not having much value. Thus as many people do, I look at the paid for advertising as a solid option.

The coupling of the two mediums is a strong fit. What better way to filter out the noise than to receive a card in response to something connected with on SM. In fact it is a barrier of entry as the printed piece costs a small amount of money to send and thus acts a good filter from spammers and others that just use free communication tools aggressively, but have a product that has no value or limited value.

Better filters will certainly come soon for SM and like all things the adaptation of the new tools will need to be assessed and relooking at the value proposition of print will need to happen.

Brian

Thoughts on in-plants gaining more business

This was just posted on the What They Think Printing Office blog. Seems like adding new functions and offerings are a way to increase your value. In my opinion it seems like gaining a larger % of the parent companies business is where additional opportunities lay. How much business is going to Kinko’s and other like companies when it could be coming to the in-plant? What % of the parent companies print/mailing/print buying goes through the in-plant?

How do people in the parent company buy print services? Is there an internal intranet that routes all needs to the in-plant? If not, can an ordering option be added that directs all orderings to the in-plant?

Please feel free to share your thoughts.

The case for “Why using flexible staffing makes sense”.

Read an interesting article on one of What They Think’s blog sites about a new NAPL report. In the report, NAPL states that the decline of the print industry productivity in the first quarter of 2009 is 14.2%. What is strange to me is that payroll hours are only down 4%. I think this illustrates how important Flexible Staffing, like that which Semper offers, is a critical component to any printer’s strategy. With productive declining more rapidly than payroll, printers have still not right sized their head count the appropriate levels. Having a solid relationship with a staffing firm that can provide highly skilled printing personnel to your organization can offer areas of cost saving most companies need today. Firms like Semper not only provide highly skill people that can be relied upon, but offer key things like benefits to its flexible workers.

I recently spoke with management of a large global print focused firm and confirmed that they are still operating under a 70% internal staff, 30% flexible staff model. That this ratio has had a very significant role in helping them stay profitable during this unexpectedly long recession. Mind you, this type of strategy is not just used by large organizations, many sized firms use Semper for very similar reasons.

Please find a link to the What They Think posting I have referred to in this email message: http://blogs.whattheythink.com/printing-office

Flexible Staffing explained

These days we’ve been hearing a lot of:

 

“I’m not hiring.  I definitely don’t need temps.” 

“I’m trying to keep my payroll costs down!”

“We just laid off a bunch of staff.  We don’t need your services now.”

“We ran an ad for that position and got over 500 resumes”

 

In all of the above scenarios, a quality flexible staffing firm could not only simplify the life of the contact, but also increase the productivity and efficiency of the organization, and help keep costs low during an economic period where the bottom line is everything!

 

How?

 

Here is how flexible staffing works:

 

We offer 4 services to meet your staffing needs.

 

Flex: 

(Temp) We charge an hourly bill rate.  You bring our employee in for as many or as few hours as your production dictates.  Good for production overflow, employee leave coverage, production coverage during employee search, etc.  This service is particularly useful during economic downturns or for organizations with lean payroll models.  Keep your core staff, those few people that are a must, that you invested time and money in training and developing. Run on a lean payroll of just your core.  During times of low production, your payroll cost is also low.  During times of high production, bring in our flex team to cover the overage.  You have successfully changed a traditionally fixed business cost into a variable cost, allowing you more control over what you spend during different business cycles.

 

Flex can always and at any time become a Flex-to-hire.  So if you fall in love with the person…

 

Flex-to-Hire:  

1. Once, and if, you decide to hire, there is a conversion fee based on employee’s base annual salary and time spent as a temp.  Also useful when you would like to hire a full-time candidate but aren’t 100% sure production will continue at its current level.  Keep the candidate flex until your doubts are dispelled, providing more security for you, the employee, and the organization!

 

 

Pay rolling:  

Similar to Flex-to-Hire except this time YOU found the candidate.  Say you meet 

1. Nice huh? Additionally, payrolling could be used to manage your own freelance or contract staff.  No more headaches of adding people temporarily to your payroll or worrying about 1099 employees.  Drop them on our payroll, we’ll handle everything! Payrolling is generally done at a 40% mark up.

 

 

Direct Hire:  

1. Our fee is generally a percentage of the employee’s base annual salary.

 

Ok, that being said…There’s more!  

 

Bill rates include:  

Unemployment costs, workman’s compensation, payroll, recruitment, screening, taxes, and our EXTENSIVE LIABILITY INSURANCE!  I know you don’t want to let any schmoe near your equipment.  We’ve got the insurance to cover any mishaps to your press or work in case a schmoe gets by, however unlikely!!

 

Trial Guarantee:  

I frown upon client interviews.  We’ve interviewed them.  Why do you have to do it again?  That’s why you pay us!  So, bring the guy in for his first day of work.  While under our liability insurance umbrella, see what he can do.  If within the first two hours you realize this guy doesn’t know a press from a broom handle, send him home…NO CHARGE.  However, if you discover he is the dynamo we say he is, you got yourself a guy without having to wait through an interview process.  Production continues…life is grand.

 

Semper offers these services to our clients, but if you have an existing relationship with an agency be sure you are taken full advantage of all the benefits they can offer you.

 

PIA member? Ask about our member discount programs!

 

By working together to find a solution to best fit the need of your organization, Semper can prove to be a valuable partner during these times. In difficult times, it is essential we all work together for the good of the industry, its companies, and its workers.

 

If you would like to see who is available, please visit www.semperllc.com or call 877-377-4687 and speak to a local placement coordinator.  Whether you have a need today or want to plan for the future, we look forward to serving you!

Semper Survey Q2 Results

Semper Survey Q2 Results:

I believe those that have survived thus far have sighed in relief, but it is clear we have some tough times ahead- so much for an Obama Bounce! It would seem contrary to the March statements from the politicos about things getting better, most of us have not seen anything of the sort. In fact, we would estimate 15% or more of establishments in existence January 08 are no longer around. Even the very solid, well-run companies are experiencing severe financial issues. The longer this “contraction” lasts the more harm it is causing. The plus side is those that survive will enjoy a much less competitive market. The first draft of the GDP numbers came out indicating the contraction was 6.2 in the first quarter. The second and third drafts will likely show that is a conservative number; even with the two week busy period many indicate happened in January. An area I would like to look at in this summary is the question that looks at your concerns. The answers to this area have changed so significantly over the last two years and even in the last few quarters. The largest area of concern is now the OTHER area. Upon investigation, OTHER is not several types of concerns but rather the need for a new category to be added – The economy. Ninety percent of the respondents who chose OTHER to question 8 indicate the current economic contraction is their primary concern. Looking back over the last four surveys this constituency has been i ncreasing to the point we will now add a new category “Economy” to this area. As you can imagine the shift from profitable to unprofitable was rather striking and the most severe since we started the survey. 52% say they were profitable this past quarter and 47 % indicate they lost monies- a huge shift. The question regarding business the last two weeks seems to indicate some improvement with 38% indicating some improvement and 42% staying the same. We noticed a 2 and a half week increase starting early April but a fall off as the month ended (hopefully short term). The full-time hiring situation still seems tough with the vast majority staying the same or laying off. We have been privy to many different and creative types of hiring arrangements being used: furloughs, reduced work weeks, reduced pay rates, using the unemployment office’s Work Share program and utilizing Flex staffers after heavy lay offs. We have enclosed the entire Survey results below; if you have questions or would like to see additional areas explored please let me know.

View Survey Results: CLICK HERE

Dave Regan CEO daver@semperllc.com

Thank You

Staffing is a leading indicator

Saving monies and being lean are on everyones radar of late. With labor being such a large component of costs what is your competition doing
to keep costs low? How do the industry leaders gain competitive advantage in this area?

Did you know flex staffing s a “leading indicator? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leading_Indicators#Types_of_Indicators)

Have you ever noticed how orders tend to come in clumped together? Like cars at a toll booth or a pocket of traffic on a highway?

How can you use these observations and tips to your companies advantage???

Email me your questions and I would be  more then happy to respond  Always@semperllc.com

Dave Regan 

CEO

Semper

Semper’s quarterly printing industry survey results.

Hi, Thanks to all of you who participated. Please find the results of the survey.

Q1 Survey Analysis – January 2009

Thank You again for your responses – this was the first time we posted on twitter and other Social Networks and the response was trebled.

Let us get right to it- WOW. Glad the fourth quarter is over, but the first could be just as interesting.

The highlights: 

Profitability seems to have increased again- clearly this indicates the cost cutting measures and the reduced costs of raw materials and fuel are helping.

The question regarding how you find employees was interesting. Notice that many more of you are using online resources like printworkers.com or Gain’s job bank than help wanted ads in newspapers. I wonder about the reasoning behind that fact, considering the parallel decision our clients must face between print and new media expenditures.

The hiring section – the Staying the same percentage is continually dropping, with laying off increasing but hiring actually started to show an increase. This would indicate that companies top lines are still being squeezed; they lay off but then find they are unable to meet demand when it comes in. So they have to rehire- A shameless plug but this is a classic temp staffing utilization situation.

Again, we suspect the GDP numbers to be released on Jan 30th 09 will have to be revised even in six weeks lower than even the shocking contraction they first indicated. We are glad to see many of you understood the severity of the situation and took the steps needed to reduce costs last quarter.  All the doom and gloom from Davos aside, we feel that the upturn will start sooner than later. The speed of its improvement is the question. It seems that most responded that business was stable  the last two weeks and expected things to stay the same for the quarter. Lets hope we start to see improvement top line wise shortly there after.

The number one concern of respondents was the economy and it’s impact on clients budgets followed by predatory competition for those budgets. The Fed calls that deflation. Let us all hope that trend and fear is fleeting.

We have enclosed the entire Survey results below, if you have questions or would like to see additional areas explored please let me know.

daver@semperllc.com

Survey Charts: CLICK HERE

Twitter Backgrounds

There are many Twitter clients out there that help you stream line your Twitter experiences. Yet at the expense of seeing the many wonderfully designed backgrounds people do. Here are a few cool ones that help give Twitter a better visual feel.

http://twitter.com/PrintWorkers

http://twitter.com/Semperllc

http://twitter.com/aGEEKspot

http://twitter.com/CustomTwit

http://twitter.com/eddiebreen

 

The richness the backgrounds add is well worth viewing Twitter using the actual Twitter site.

 

The two things I would like to see added in the near future.

 

1) Ability to add links within your background

2) The various Twitter apps allowing full view of backgrounds.

 

My $.02 Twitter view point

Personalized print content/news/editorials

Things that seem relevant and important to keep an eye out for or create.

 

First is the ability to print content that is relevant to you and unique to you. Personalized news and information delivered daily.  The ability to pick and choose interesting topics as well as selecting editors/content providers I am interested in hearing view points from.

 

The important question would be:

a)     Would I pay for this service?

b)    Why not just read it from a website?

 

I believe the answer to the both questions is YES. There are many points in a day where I just don’t want to or can’t whip out a laptop to read content. The ability to have paper in my laptop bag to read is very appealing and even more so when it is personalized content. Paying for this personalized information is worthwhile as it condenses my habitual reading into a single source.

 

Just my $.02

 

Brian

Who is John Galt?

The question “Who is John Galt?” — John Galt is a man disgusted that non-productive members of society use laws and guilt to leech from the value created by productive members of society, and furthermore even exalt the qualities of the leeches over the workers and inventors. He made a pledge that he would never live his life for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for him, and founded an enclave, separate from the rest of the country, where he and other productive members of society have fled.

The Key here is the prospective of what is NON productive – It is very important that you fairly way and view a given issue- There is a reason our Founding Fathers wanted each voter to be a person of means or with a stake in society (yes they messed up by on the race and gender issues I gather from my readings they felt the battle they faced was big enough). The point is that it is assumed if you have something at risk you will strive to make a wise choice.  Is Darwin’s view correct, Those that can change and be flexible will most likely survive? 

In a company it would seem since the roles are so specialized and each person becomes an expert on their own area that management with buy in from the whole team should make the calls about who is productive- BUT with the help of the team means that if a team mate is proven to not be contributing the group has a right to act in self defense depending on the severity of the situation.

Rand argues that independence and individual achievement enable society to survive and thrive, and should be embraced. But this requires a “rational“ moral code. She argues that, over time, coerced self-sacrifice causes any society to self-destruct.

The Rational MORAL code is a critical component in the entire argument- So given the facts, people can decide for themselves to sacrifice or not to the survival of the group and it’s goals – critical to this is accurate facts,  a just endeavor and belief in a fair response to situations.

Who is John Galt.