Challenges Viewed as External, Surveys Say

The TrendWatch special report entitled "The Seven Year Itch: Mining the Dramatic Trends From Seven Years of the TWGA Printing Historical Database" compares the top 10 business challenges in spring 1999, before the economic downturn, to current business challenges.

In spring 1999, the number-one business challenge, cited by 43% of print and prepress businesses, was "finding qualified employees." Today, that challenge barely makes the top 10 at 16%. In the past, the adoption of new digital prepress and printing equipment made finding employees who could run the new equipment a problematic pursuit. Consequently, "employee training" also made the top 10, at just over one-fifth of all print and prepress businesses.

"Increasing plant productivity" was in second place in 1999, and is one of the survey's perennial challenges. It stood at 40% in 1999, and is still at 30% today. "Capabilities of sales personnel" has changed very little in the past decade, and is another perennial challenge for printers. "Local competition" ranked at number four at 25% of all surveyed firms in 1999, while "competition" in general now is viewed as the number-two challenge at 36%. Rounding out the top five in 1999 was "where business should go in the future," a challenge for 27% of all surveyed companies. This still sits at number six, and is at 26% of all survey respondents.

In the past, the top business challenges cited by TrendWatch Graphic Arts survey participants focused in large part on internal forces that helped printers maintain their sales volume and boost productivity. Today, the focus is on outside forces, such as the state of the economy and increasing competition. However, TrendWatch believes that the problems the graphic arts industry is experiencing are not entirely economy-related, and that printing firms must be proactive in their stance if they ever expect to come out of the economic slump unscathed.