In-House Printing Vs Outsource Printing: Your Guide

Employees handling documents and a mail insertion machine on D4 Solutions' printing floor. Serves as an example of an outsource printing provider's production space, and representing how, when comparing in-house printing vs outsource printing, outsource is the best choice for most organizations.

In-House Printing Vs Outsource Printing: Which Is Better?

If you’re making the decision on whether to outsource your print and mail or to stay in-house, you’re likely balancing concerns about cost, quality, security, and control.

This guide can help you make the right choice.

We’ll discuss the advantages of outsourcing to a print and mail provider, go over the benefits in-house printing offers, and deliver our verdict on which is the superior option.

Keep reading to see which of the two solutions is better for you.

Outsource Printing Benefits

There are many upsides to outsourced printing and mailing. Here are some of the most important ones:

Cost Savings

Deciding to outsource document production instead of doing it in-house can save you more than you might expect. If you choose to manage your mailing and printing in-house, you’ll have to pay for overhead costs associated with maintaining print and mailrooms, including:

Printers and other equipment.
Hiring print and mail experts to oversee production and delivery.
Purchasing, developing, operating, and maintaining space to house machinery.
Hiring operators to manage the equipment.
Implementation of quality control processes, such as hiring quality control analysts or using 2D tracking barcodes.
Hiring mailroom staff to sort, store, and deliver inbound mail.
Proper document storage and tracking software for security and accuracy.

Recovery Of Employee Productivity

A hidden cost of in-house printing workflows is the loss in employee productivity that comes with them. Outsourcing removes the need for internal employees to spend their time:

Operating printers.
Learning how to properly and effectively use machinery.
Inserting documents into the right envelopes.
Sorting mail.
Managing quality control.
Learning how to properly organize mail deliveries and obtain postal discounts.

Printing in-house instead of outsourcing is inefficient. It takes away hours that employees would otherwise spend on higher-value tasks.

Internal employees do not always have the in-depth print and mail experience that outsource partners have. Because of this, in-house staff must learn how to conduct print and mail processes with time that could be put to better use.

Increased Printing Efficiency

When looking at the quality and efficiency of in-house printing vs outsource printing, outsourcing is often the better solution.

Outsource providers have a team of print and mail experts that manage your operations from beginning to end. If you’re not familiar with the ways you can get the most value out of your print and mail processes, outsource providers will find discounts and cost savings that you didn’t know about or that you didn’t know how to take advantage of. This can save organizations money in the long run.

External partners may also be able to find ways to deliver higher-quality results than can be achieved with an in-house team. This is important for any consumer-facing organization, since receiving a poorly-formatted document can severely shift the impressions your customers and clients have of you.

Security

The security of your printing and mailing operations is a key part of your brand image. This is especially true if you’re in a highly-regulated industry, such as finance, healthcare, or government, and your customers, clients, and residents trust you to handle their sensitive data properly. Any mistakes, such as inserting documents into incorrect envelopes or shipping to the wrong client’s address, can lead to a compliance violation and potentially to a public scandal.

The right print and mail providers ensure you don’t have to worry about that. These facilities have been HIPAA and SOC 2 Type II audited, indicating that their processes protect sensitive information over extended periods of time.

If a vendor has been HIPAA audited, then they have demonstrated their ability to safeguard patient data throughout printing and mailing workflows.

SOC 2 Type II audits measure a provider’s commitment to strict data security protocols over 3-12 months, proving that a vendor can safeguard your customers’ and clients’ PII for the duration of your relationship.

If you’re not as versed in print and mail operations, you may not be as familiar with the proper data protection protocols to take during document production and delivery. And if you are, you and your team members likely have additional responsibilities to attend to, other than ensuring regulatory compliance for all mailings. Qualified print and mail partners get data security right for you, every time.

Benefits Of In-House Printing

In many circumstances, outsource printing stands out as the right choice for organizations. However, in certain situations, in-house printing has some benefits:

Cost (For Low-Volume Printing)

Most organizations can save both money and employee productivity by outsourcing printing instead of handling it in-house. However, if your organization sends extremely low volumes of mail, such that you can use your existing printers and that your employees’ loss of productivity is minimal, in-house printing may make sense from a cost perspective.

Control

It can feel nerve-wracking to outsource at times. Having complete control of your documents makes you feel like you can guarantee security and quality, which can push organizations to remain in-house. Additionally, it is easier and less time-consuming to make changes to print runs when those jobs are taking place just around the corner, and you may be able to get started on print jobs quicker when handling them in-house.

Misconceptions About Outsource Printing

The idea that outsource printing providers are less able to ensure security and quality than in-house team members is a misconception.

The right print and mail providers can prove the security of their processes by demonstrating that they’ve been HIPAA and SOC 2 Type II audited.

They can also show you the ways that they’re keeping their print and mail processes secure. Here’s a simple checklist of the data security measures you should look for.

Outsource vendors, if they’re the best fit for you, can prove the quality of their operations. For example, at D4 Solutions, we have a 99.99% operational accuracy rate in terms of document quality and on-time delivery.

It’s also a misconception that working with an outsource provider instead of staying in-house means giving up control.

D4 Solutions is an example of how external vendors maintain client agency in practice. At D4 Solutions, each client is assigned a dedicated project manager who meets with your team as often as you need to ensure all of your questions are addressed. We complete thorough test runs before each project, and we don’t move forward without your direct approval.

If you want to make changes, you can do so, at any point. Filing a change order is as simple as submitting a change order request, which is handled efficiently.

In-House Printing Vs Outsource Printing: The Verdict

When you weigh the benefits of in-house printing against those of outsource printing, we think there’s a clear winner.

By outsourcing, you eliminate the overhead costs of operating print and mailrooms, return productivity to internal employees, and work with print and mail experts who know how to save you money and how to keep your projects secure.

To us, for most organizations, outsourcing is the clear choice.

And if you’re looking for an outsource printing and mailing partner, D4 Solutions is well-equipped to handle your needs. Over our 45 years of experience, we’ve gained expertise in finding savings for our clients and getting documents where they need to be, securely, accurately, and on-time.

Reach out now to see how we can optimize your printed and mailed communications.