e-learning
try a course now and see how you get on
why not make e-learning courses part of your staff appraisal and development?
prokom e-learning
Prokom e-learning is designed to help print companies educate and train their staff in a variety of different topics. These range from technical subjects like colour management and workflow to management subjects like hiring digital sales staff and business planning.
Shaping print to business courses are a very useful four step introduction to a subject that includes a white paper, an assessment guide, a case study and an implementation guide to get you started. How to courses provide more in depth learning with six lessons comprising of quizzes, knowledge checks and downloadable tools to make sure you can put the learning into practice.
application courses
These courses range from variable data printing and cross media to wide format and book printing. They allow you to learn and plan for the introduction of new applications into your business.
Want to grow and diversify your business? This is the place to start.
management courses
These courses are all about running a more professional and focused business. The subjects range from, business planning to marketing, sales and social media. All the essential components for achieving success in the future.
Want a vision and a plan to future proof your business? Here’s where to start.
production courses
These courses are all about efficiency, cost reduction and improving productivity. They are designed to educate and train prepress and operational staff. Get everyone involved so your business can be more efficient and competitive.
Want to improve your results and make more money? Here’s where to start.
all our courses
shaping colour control to business
Find out how to improve your colour management to become more efficient, reduce waste and save money.
shaping book printing to business
Over the past fifteen years, publishing markets have been redefined by simultaneous trends related to electronic delivery of content. In the past five years, smartphones, e-book readers, and tablet computers have changed the way that many readers consume content. Traditional “bricks and mortar” bookstores—whether large retail sites or small independents—have encountered fierce competition from Internet retailers like Amazon.com. The landscape has changed, and agile print service providers have an opportunity to benefit from these developments by producing a range of bound documents, including books, calendars, magazines, and photo albums.
shaping cross media to business
Communicating with customers and prospects across media channels is quickly becoming essential for successful marketing. Reaching customers via multiple touch points can have a profound effect on marketing and sales efforts, and businesses are seeking service providers that can deliver their message using multiple channels beyond print. Print is a vital and powerful component of the multi-channel mix. Consumers’ trust of print and its ability to link the physical and digital worlds has positioned it as a key channel in cross-media communication. Many print service providers are discovering that moving into cross-media services is a must for optimising print’s business potential.
shaping inline finishing to business
Over the last five years the printing industry has become increasingly commoditized and struggled to add value. Finishing, traditionally seen as an after thought and production bottleneck, is now being viewed as a critical stage in production and a way to differentiate products and create added value. It is not unusual for finishing to be as much as 40% of the production costs and often where all the value creation can be destroyed through poor quality control. SME printers have woken up to the fact that investing modest sums in finishing equipment can gain significant productivity improvements and reduce cost.
shaping photo products to business
Photo merchandise represents a major market opportunity, and some sectors of this business are experiencing double-digit growth rates. Since a sizeable share of consumers have yet to purchase photo merchandise, this market also remains largely untapped. Service providers of all sizes must build awareness about the photo merchandise opportunity through quality distribution channels, word of mouth, and a strong Web presence. Once you have established a relationship with a consumer, that relationship must be cultivated with a robust focus on purchasing new and different items. The good news is that consumers who have purchased photo merchandise in the past have a very high propensity for purchasing it again in the future. Photo merchandise can be a tremendous source of profit and growth for companies of all sizes.
shaping print to better business
In a world where most printers offer reasonable quality print at a competitive price and with good customer service, the competitive edge can be small and it is often the little things that make the difference and offer sustainable competitive advantage. This subject embraces a range of management practices that successful printers have used to make the difference such as: Good financial management, like managing cashflow Tight purchasing processes to reduce costs Effective use of Management Information Systems
shaping label printing to business
The world of labels is one of the fastest growing and most rapidly changing sectors in the entire printing industry, returning above GDP growth year-on-year for at least the last 30 years. Much of this growth has come from pressure-sensitive labels – perhaps more commonly known as self-adhesive labels – which have undoubtedly transformed the nature, use and applications for labels and been instrumental in the continuing evolution and rapid growth in the labels that we regularly see in everyday life.
shaping transpromo to business
The timing has never been better for entering the transaction document services market and expanding into TransPromo communications. In today’s world, businesses need strategies for cutting costs and generating revenue—which is exactly what TransPromo does. It reduces operational costs and drives new business through cross-selling and up-selling, and transforms operational costs into revenue. While high-volume transaction document services companies have already embraced TransPromo, there remains a significant opportunity for commercial printers and CRDs to go after SMBs and small enterprises. Review your business goals and assess the opportunity to add transactional and TransPromo capabilities to your own services—or those of your clients!
shaping variable printing to business
Both printers and marketers are faced with huge challenges as to how they grow existing business and lock in their customers. Customers’ expectations around performance and return on investment are increasing all the time. Market statistics on variable data printing clearly demonstrate that printers who provide personalised communication products gain increased sales, better returns and higher rates of customer loyalty. The latest digital print technology and software has made entry into personalised communications economical and far easier for printers to adopt. Therefore with 85% of print companies using variable data, it should be a fast-growing and profitable part of the digital printing industry, yet only around 5% use it beyond name and address. The use of variable data and imaging to personalise documents and collaterals can create a high value and profitable sector that most print companies can take advantage of.
shaping web to print to crd
The Internet has become an essential part of how customers operate and therefore has become the way many small and medium enterprises communicate and sell their products and services. Customers are already familiar with web-based systems and are buying products like books, office supplies, stationery, and greetings cards, as well as services like travel, data storage and cloud computing online. As more customers go online they will expect their suppliers to offer web-based services as standard. This is a new and exciting business opportunity that allows print firms to lock in existing clients, while at the same time attracting new customers in a straightforward way. It also protects profit margins, as companies do not have to bid on every job and can reduce costs by automating sales and marketing functions. Web-to-print is fast becoming an essential component of a digital printer’s sales and marketing strategy, because it overcomes the burden of ever increasing back office administration, generated by higher volumes of low-run, low-cost jobs.
shaping wide format to business
While other more traditional segments of the printing market are seeing annual declines, the wide format digital print market continues to grow based on greater demand for the applications from the buyer side and improved economics from the technology or supplier side. People buy wide format printing, both graphics and technical documents because it works; it works as advertising medium, it works as an information transfer tool, and it is highly cost-effective.
shaping workflow to business
There is absolutely no doubt that the print industry is being radically transformed by the growth of digital print and competition from other communication channels like email, SMS and the Internet. In this increasingly complex environment automated workflow is now becoming critical to simplify processes, reduce cost and speed up delivery times. Workflow is critical to success because it can unify the different print technologies like offset, digital cut sheet, reelfed and wide format devices that all require unique workflow processes, for file preparation, print production and finishing. An integrated workflow can avoid bottlenecks and utilize production capacity much more efficiently.
shaping web to print to business
The Internet has become an essential part of how customers operate and therefore has become the way many small and medium enterprises communicate and sell their products and services. Customers are already familiar with web-based systems and are buying products like books, office supplies, stationery, and greetings cards, as well as services like travel, data storage and cloud computing online. As more customers go online they will expect their suppliers to offer web-based services as standard. This is a new and exciting business opportunity that allows print firms to lock in existing clients, while at the same time attracting new customers in a straightforward way. It also protects profit margins, as companies do not have to bid on every job and can reduce costs by automating sales and marketing functions. Web-to-print is fast becoming an essential component of a digital printer’s sales and marketing strategy, because it overcomes the burden of ever increasing back office administration, generated by higher volumes of low-run, low-cost jobs.
how to achieve consistent results and reduce cost with colour control
Colour is now the life-blood of every print business and critical to its continued growth and success. The world of print is moving to full colour; we have seen a dramatic transition from mono print to full colour in office documents and commercial print applications. In the current operating climate there is no place for poor colour control or inconsistent print results either in offset or digital. Controlling colour is now a basic requirement for all printers yet less than 15% have a fully automated colour managed workflow. A colour management process can take enormous cost out of the production environment through accurate proofing, reducing machine set up times and improving running speeds, not to mention being able to guarantee consistent colour and quality on both offset and digital jobs.
how to attract digital sales stars
The transition from traditional print to value added digital print requires a focus on managing digital content and becoming a communication specialist. This provides new opportunities for growth and success, however there is one major problem. In all of this disruptive change and repositioning of the industry the sales process has remained virtually unchanged and the vast majority of printers are still marketing their products and services in exactly the same way. Sales, has become the number one constraint for the vast majority of SME printing companies. They are struggling to find answers to questions like “how do I increase sales without dropping prices?” and “How do I sell the value of digital print and get away from print as a commodity?”
how to find, win and keep new customers
It is very difficult to sell a product or service to somebody when you have no deep understanding of the world in which they operate. That's why you need to talk to your customers regularly and keep your finger on the pulse, it’s incredibly important. You must know their business challenges and what is going on in their minds to best serve them. You need to talk to them about their business, their issues and challenge, what they aspire to and what their goals are. Most importantly you need to understand what’s stopping them achieving their goals.
how to improve efficiency with workflow & it
There is absolutely no doubt that the print industry is being radically transformed by the growth of digital print and competition from other communication channels like email, SMS and the Internet. In this increasingly complex environment automated workflow is now becoming critical to simplify processes, reduce cost and speed up delivery times. Workflow is critical to success because it can unify the different print technologies like offset, digital cut sheet, reel-fed and wide format devices that all require unique workflow processes, for file preparation, print production and finishing. An integrated workflow can avoid bottlenecks and utilize production capacity much more efficiently.
how to manage your business more effectively
In a world where most printers offer reasonable quality print at a competitive price and with good customer service, the competitive edge can be small and it is often the little things that make the difference and offer sustainable competitive advantage. This subject embraces a range of management practices that successful printers have used to make the difference such as: Good financial management, like managing cashflow Tight purchasing processes to reduce costs Effective use of Management Information Systems As the print industry transforms itself from manufacturing to services led businesses, components like, IT, data and marketing become increasingly important. This requires new people and new skills, so recruiting, managing and motivating the right staff becomes critical. Professional management of people is a blind spot for the majority of print companies.
how to plan for success
There are a lot of ways to add value in our industry and they all require careful planning, whether it’s becoming the most efficient, lowest cost provider in a commodity market to creating marketing programmes that integrate print and variable-digital content. Without a clear well implemented plan companies continually react to circumstances and trends beyond their control. We must all change the culture in our business so we proactively make things happen, creating positive change, because in the future good planning will be the defining factor between success and failure.
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