Take the hassle out of job onboarding with portals

15 Mai 2025 By Tom Peire

Let’s face it, job onboarding in print can be a bit of a nightmare. Files coming in from every direction, orders getting held up, and quality checks adding extra headaches. Sound familiar? The good news is, it doesn’t have to be this chaotic. Enter, portals.

What is a portal? It’s an online platform that gives customers a central spot to order and manage their print jobs meaning no more back and forth email chains or calls chasing quotes. Just log in, pick a template, enter your info, and you’re good to go.

So how does it actually work?

Rather than emailing over artwork or submitting forms through a clunky system, print buyers can simply log into their dedicated portal, browse a library of pre-approved templates, and personalise what they need. Once they’ve updated names, contact details or images, the job is submitted straight to the printer for processing, printing, and shipping, much of which can be automated.

Take an employee who needs to order new business cards, all they need to do is log onto the portal, add their details, and order their print, letting the print service provider take care of the rest. And, because web-to-print portals feature pre-approved templates for business cards, posters, brochures - you name it - users can easily customise their prints without accidentally contravening any brand guidelines. No fuss, no stress.

Why is job onboarding such a pain?

Perhaps the biggest pain point in the production workflow is job onboarding. This is because onboarding print jobs is often manual, slow, and full of little tasks that eat into your time, and your profit margins.

You might spend half your day chasing missing files, checking if artwork meets your print standards and specific order requirements and finding out who needs to take action. In fact, up to 50% of the time it takes to complete a job is spent before it even hits the press. That’s time you can’t charge for, and it can be tedious and repetitive for the print service provider.

Four ways a portal can help

Portals don’t just make life easier for your customers—they’re a massive win for your production team too. Here’s why:

1. Brand consistency
   Because the templates are pre-approved, there’s no risk of any unintentional changes or branding breaches
2. Streamlined job onboarding
   Everything from ordering to approval happens in one place, cutting out manual processes and wasted time.
3. Quality control and reduced errors
   The automated setup means jobs are submitted correctly the first time, reducing costly reprints and mistakes.
4. Order print from anywhere
   Portals can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection, making it easy for customers with remote teams or multiple locations, or franchisees.

Hello streamlined and automated job onboarding

For print service providers that are tired of time-consuming job onboarding and want to keep their jobs moving with less manual input, a web-to-print portal might just be the answer. It’s all about giving print buyers the tools to place their own orders without losing control of quality or consistency, enabling printers to remain competitive and streamlined.

It’s time to wave goodbye to onboarding headaches, and open the portal instead.

Don’t just hear it from us, come and see it work in real life!

Curious to see how the benefits of portals are being realised in real life? On May 27th at 4pm CET, we will be hosting a webinar exploring efficient job onboarding with portals and automation. We will discuss the challenges of job onboarding and why it matters, show how portals can help to streamline the process and improve efficiency, and share real-world examples of successful portal implementations.

You can register to join the webinar here.