The past few years have put a strain on the entire American workforce. Finding and retaining good employees has become harder than ever.

Whether you were one of the many who have had to let employees go, requiring departmental reorganizations, or you’ve experienced team members looking for careers elsewhere, we have all been faced with the challenge of finding new employees.

This struggle has affected business operations within every industry and when it comes to essential sales and marketing assets, new processes are required to succeed.

While we don’t have a solution to the labor issues, we do have a solution to many of the challenges your company is facing due to current circumstances.

Web to Print Portals—also known as “Ordering Portals,” “Brand Portals,” and “Marketing Portals”—can prevent changes in staffing from causing a disruption in your brand marketing.

How a Web to Print Portal Eases the Issues Caused by Today’s Labor Challenges

Your marketing and design teams handle essential assets ranging from your digitally rendered logo to complex marketing essentials like catalogs, signage, direct mailers, and art for digital ads.

However, when a team member leaves, what measures do you have in place for locating, updating, and fulfilling the demands for those print and digital assets?

Many businesses don’t have measures in place and must completely retrain current or new employees, resulting in an expensive and time-consuming process.

A Web to Print Portal, a private online storefront that houses your company’s branded assets, will ensure that you have continuous and consistent access to your valuable materials. These are just a few of the challenges they can solve:

Challenge: Inconsistent Branding

When the person in charge of brand guidelines leaves the company, such as a marketing specialist or graphic designer, your brand-compliant designs and rules can be damaged in the transition or lost entirely. This puts a huge strain on your entire brand’s image, not to mention headaches for the employees concerned.

It’s time-consuming for a new employee to locate branded assets or even create new ones due to the inability to correctly ensure that content, messaging, and appearance aligns with your brand’s identity.

Solution: Web to Print Portals Ensure Consistent Branding

Web to Print Portals are custom-built to align exactly with your brand guidelines. Your pre-approved, brand-compliant sales and marketing assets are stored within your online Web to Print Portal so any team member you allow can quickly and easily access and order business cards, signage, direct mailers, logos, and other digital assets.

Materials like business cards and postcards can be customized to include a specific address, employee name, phone number, and email address without ever compromising the overall branding.

If designs need to be updated, or you decide to rebrand, all assets within your Web to Print Portal can be updated at any time. This ensures that no matter what, everyone within your company is using only the approved designs and messaging.

Challenge: Lost Vendors

When a marketer leaves your company, how do you gain access to the vendor or vendors who supply your marketing and sales materials, including annual reports, brochures, branded apparel, etc.?

Does your vendor know who their new point of contact is? Do you have a list of your vendors’ contact information? Is that list located on your terminated employee's computer or lost deep in a universal file only they knew the location of?

This may mean you need to take the time to find a new vendor who may be more expensive and who doesn’t already have your design requirements and files in their database.

Solution: Web to Print Portals Provide You with an All-in-One Partner

When you take advantage of a Web to Print Portal provided by a printer like Kingston Printing, you gain one single partner who specializes in print, direct mail, design assistance, and support. When you provide your new employee with access to your portal, they are connected with just a click of a button to your vendor where they can order, download, or even update the sales and marketing assets they need.

You can count on a good portal provider to act as your outside support staff, assisting your team with all these essentials.

Challenge: Lost Designs

If your content marketer or graphic designer leaves your company, how do your new employees who took their role, or you able to easily locate those designs?

Solution: Web to Print Portals Store All Designs Within One Easy to Use Interface

From within your Web to Print Portal, all designs including logos, digital ads, business card designs, catalog designs, custom signage, and more are stored in one place and can be accessed within seconds.

With a Web to Print Portal, team members can access these designs anywhere and at any time that is most convenient for them, even if your head of marketing or lead designer leaves the company. Employees that you authorize can also update, remove, and add designs when needed to give all team members access to the materials they need.

Challenge: Overwhelmed Marketing Team

What happens when a marketing team member leaves the company?

Whether your marketing team consists of 1 marketer or 100, when just one team member leaves, marketing operations stagnate. And if you’re lucky and quickly find someone to fill your new open job position, or if it takes you a few months, your new marketer needs to quickly and easily be able to understand your brand guidelines and access the essential sales and marketing assets your entire company needs.

When this is not an easy transition, it results in an overwhelmed marketing team who, rather than focusing on new ways to effectively advertise your brand, are now scrambling around to locate or recreate brand-compliant assets.

Solution: Web to Print Portals Offer Centralized & Streamlined Access to The Assets Your Marketing Team Needs

Access to your Web to Print Portal is completely controlled by you. Whether you’re the Chief Marketing Office or owner, when you have a Web to Print Portal in place, no matter who leaves or joins your team, your team is always set up for success.

With essential marketing materials and assets stored within one online storefront, your marketing team has access to view, download, order, update, remove, or add to your marketing assets wherever there is internet access. Marketing team members that you authorize can view which materials are being used by their sales team and which aren’t, gaining valuable insight into which materials are the most important and effective.

Challenge: Frustrated Sales Team

Every department within your company needs to be in sync and, if your marketing team is overwhelmed, it affects your sales team.

When sales representatives can’t access the sales materials they need, connect with their marketing team to develop new assets surrounding their customers’ needs, or even simply order their business cards, their efforts are compromised.

If your graphic designer leaves the company and your marketing team can’t locate your designs, that trickles down to the sales team being unable to get the materials they need.

Solution: Sales Teams Have 24/7 Access to The Sales Materials They Need

Whether a sales representative needs signage for a trade show they’re attending or a new set of business cards, it’s essential that they are able to get the materials they need even if you’re currently without a marketing lead or designer.

With a Web to Print Portal in place, sales teams and other departments can access the products you allow them to without sending a request to the marketing team. For example, a new team member can log in to your portal and quickly personalize and order business cards. New employees can also be limited to ordering only a certain quantity of business cards while an employee who has been with you for years can have access to ordering brochures, catalogs, and more.

Challenge: Decreased Revenue

When it comes to sales and marketing assets, including direct mail materials, print advertisements, digital assets, mailing lists, etc., the above challenges companies face result in wasted time and money translating to lost revenue.

Solution: Web to Print Portals Save Time & Increase Revenue

Web to Print Portals give each department within your organization more time to focus on positive initiatives rather than struggling to locate art, get approval for orders or even order materials in general.

When a Web to Print Portal is in place for your company, no matter who leaves your team and no matter how long it takes for you to find replacements, sales are not compromised due to the loss of essential sales and marketing materials. Plus, with the ensured consistent branding portals provide, companies can increase their revenue, according to a recent study that proved that presenting a brand consistently across all platforms can increase revenue by up to 23%.

If you’re struggling with finding and retaining new employees, or if you’re simply looking to run more time and money-efficient operations, then head to our Web to Print Portal page to schedule a quick 10-minute demo today.