How Much Is Your Time Worth?
We gain a lot of insight from our customers to see why they come to us. Usually, this comes down to one of three reasons: time, workflow, and money. In this blog, we explore the time savings you can experience using our site.
The “old” way of ordering plans was to get a CD or email the set of plans to the local reprographer or copy shop. This involves first gathering the plans together, whether they are in DropBox, Google Drive, or on a physical CD. An email is then sent to the local shop. If there is already agree upon pricing, a response saying the plans had been received would probably be emailed back. Someone has to then pick up the completed plans. If the plans are not done by the scheduled pickup time, then it may take two trips. Let’s look at the time this takes.
- 1. Gathering plans together – depending on the number of plans and whether they are collated, the amount of time it takes to get plans to the local copy shop can be short (minutes) to an hour or more to collate the plans.
- 2. Waiting on a response – if the job is critical, there is usually some back checking to ensure that the plans have arrived, the plans are all together and all the information is there, and a wait time back and forth for response (minutes to an hour or more)
- 3. Picking up the plans – whether the plans are delivered by the reprographer or someone is sent out to pick up the plans, this is usually a 25-minute to 2-hour process, depending on how big the city or town is. If the plans are not done, the process is repeated. If the plans are delivered, a delivery fee is usually charged ($15 to $25).
One of the major reasons our customers switch is simple time savings. Let’s look at where the time savings come in:
- 1. Gather plans together – this is very much the same as gathering together the plans for the reprographer. We have tools on our web site to arrange the PDF as you need it. These tools are available during upload and in your account in the Media Manager. We have dedicated customer service people willing to answer any questions during this phase of the process.
- 2. There is no waiting on a response with Blueprintsprinting.com. Your job is immediately sent to the print floor closest to your delivery address, and you receive a receipt that your job is in the queue.
- 3. You don’t have to pick up plans. The plans are shipped. Many areas of the country will get their prints the next business day! Our typical turnaround time from job receipt to ready-to-ship is 2 hours!
- 4. Job receipt, job completion, shipment tracking, and delivery tracking are all emailed to you directly. You are always aware of where your job is at any time!
When we compare these two scenarios, you could save 2 to 3 hours in your day. Let’s look at this from a yearly standpoint. If you need documents 1-2 times per week, that is 4 to 6 hours of unproductive time spent just simply trying to get the plans you need. Over the course of a year, that is 80 to 120 hours, considering the normal construction schedule. That’s two weeks a year that could be spent developing new business, getting other things done, or just having fun.
Here is Twitter comment from Brett:
“Recently placed 2 orders… not only were the prints of great quality, but they were completed and shipped much faster than I expected. They will definitely be getting more of my business!!!”
Even printing the plans in-house can cause workflow delays. From a recent Twitter comment from Luke:
“I don’t share a lot of business shoutouts, but these guys deserve it. Affordable, fast, convenient, professional quality & best of all great customer service. Take back your time if you’re printing large format construction docs and go to @blueprintsprint [https://blueprintsprinting.com] ASAP.”
If you are packing and shipping jobs to your customers, consider that we can have multiple addressed documents going out to your customers within hours of job submittal. How much time does it take to print and ship documents to your customers?
Take your time back! Go to https://blueprintsprinting.com/account and upload your plans today.
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