If you're a printing company, then your business is printing. But more and more, peripheral services are becoming a necessity to attract new customers. Digital Asset Management was a forerunner in this regard. But Web-to-print and CMS/Content Management services are making progress as well.
The logic
With the new technologies and functionalities at your disposal, you're helping a lot of customers with automation projects. Database publishing, web-to-print solutions, automated prepress workflows, and so on. A lot of this information (and workflows) are very similar to the content that is to be used online. Therefore, the leap to complete content management is relatively easy.
Furthermore, as a printing company you are able to invoke economies of scale. Providing as many services as possible means that the customer will keep printing on your presses. Therefore, the content management solution needn't be as profitable as the solutions offered by your more purely online-oriented competitors.
The technology
More and more printing companies are becoming used to the online environments of Digital Asset Management and Web-to-print. Even when you don't use the same software for the content management and the more graphical (database publishing) solutions, there is bound to be a lot of bleed-over. And in this age of web 2.0, almost all applications are able to talk with each other and share functionalities.
And for a large part of the content management workflows, your current personnel has very relevant experience. Content for web is often very similar to content for a printed catalog. Approval workflows can be compared as well. Creation of a site design in Photoshop is something that a lot of your creative people will be very familiar with.
The consequences
But of course there is more to it than just writing some texts. Content Management also requires a lot of new expertises. Search engine optimisation, clean HTML code, optimized web copy, and many more. So be prepared to attract some dedicated people with the right skill sets to handle these new challenges.
The conclusions
While it does come with a lot of challenges and hurdles to overcome, content management services will definitely be able to bring you new business. And if your focus is right, this can absolutely support a lot of the old business as well.