Closed shop solution
A closed ordering platform for your company: Employees, branches and franchise partners order printed materials on brand, on budget and without approval chaos - completely automated with PrintDesk.
PrintDesk Closed Shop at a glance
A closed shop is a password-protected, closed online ordering platform for printed matter. Only authorized users have access – employees, branches, franchise partners or sales regions. Products, templates, prices and order limits are predefined centrally by the company. The result: every user can order independently without quality, corporate identity or budget getting out of hand.
Closed shop
Open shop
Brand portal
You can read more about differentiation and strategic positioning in our article Brand portal vs. closed shop – which suits your printing strategy?
Closed shops make sense wherever many decentralized units regularly require printed matter and at the same time central quality control is desired. Classic areas of application include retail chain stores with nationwide locations, franchise systems in the catering or service sectors, corporations with internal marketing needs and agencies that want to offer customers their own ordering channel for printed matter.
The printing company, for its part, benefits: orders arrive in the system fully specified, ready to print and automated - without manual queries, without incorrect data, and without coordination effort. Our blog article shows what this looks like in practice Closed shop for companies: print orders automated & brand-compliant.
Purchasing and marketing often have opposing interests in printed matter management: Marketing wants creative control, purchasing wants cost transparency. A PrintDesk Closed Shop meets both requirements at the same time.
Because all templates are centrally approved and locked by marketing, no location can order outdated logos, incorrect colors or different layout variants. CI conformity is ensured systemically - not through time-consuming manual approval emails.
Template maintenance and product range updates run centrally: A change in the backend is immediately active for all locations. This significantly reduces the coordination effort between the marketing department and the printing company.
A monthly or annual printing budget can be assigned to each user, branch or cost center. Orders above a defined value are automatically forwarded for approval. Budget overruns are systemically prevented even before an order is triggered.
Evaluations and order overviews for each location, department or time period are available to purchasing at any time at the touch of a button - for precise reporting and realistic annual planning.
Instead of emails, telephone inquiries and Excel lists, the closed shop coordinates all orders centrally and digitally. Each location orders independently within a defined framework, and the print shop receives all orders structured and ready to print - completely automated.
Together with the integrated Printing software PrintDesk creates a seamless process chain: from the user's click to the finished printed and delivered product.
In a personal demo, we will show you how a PrintDesk Closed Shop works for your company structure - including roles, budgets and corporate design.
Arrange a demo nowPrintDesk combines an intuitive user interface for purchasers with a powerful management level for print shops and company administrators. Here is an overview of the central functional areas.
The PrintDesk Closed Shop differentiates between several user roles: the higher-level administrator (print shop or company holding company), location or department administrators and simple orderers. Each role has precisely defined rights: Who can see which products? Who is allowed to manage budgets? Who has to release orders?
Users are onboarded via email invitation or, if the IT infrastructure is in place, automatically synchronized via SSO (Single Sign-On) from the company directory (Active Directory, Azure AD). This eliminates manual user maintenance and ensures that employees who have left the company automatically no longer have access.
The heart of the closed shop are the print templates. All approved printed materials – business cards, flyers, stationery, roll-ups, posters, stickers – are stored as preconfigured templates. The customer selects the desired template, fills in the permitted free text fields (name, telephone number, branch address) and places the order in the shopping cart.
The layout, color scheme, fonts and proportions are fixed and cannot be changed by the customer. Optional online editors make it possible to easily adapt customizable elements without causing design errors. This protects the brand and saves time-consuming rounds of corrections. You can find out more about the logic behind web-to-print templates on our page Web-to-print software.
As soon as an order is triggered in the closed shop, it flows fully automatically into the print shop's PrintDesk system - including all product specifications, print data, delivery addresses and cost center information. No manual typing, no email delivery, no queries.
The printing company plans the order directly into its production, automatically generates the delivery note and invoice and informs the customer about the shipping status. All order tracking is visible to authorized users in the closed shop. Print shops that use PrintDesk as a complete Printing software benefit from a seamless, natively integrated solution without interface maintenance.
A closed shop is not a standard, off-the-shelf product – it must be tailored to the specific structures, products and IT requirements of your company. PrintDesk combines maximum configurability with short project durations.
A PrintDesk Closed Shop project is divided into a few clearly structured phases: requirements recording and conception, configuration of user roles and print templates, integration of the corporate design, optional integration (SSO, ERP), test phase with selected users and go-live.
In uncomplicated scenarios without a complex IT connection, a go-live can be achieved after just a few days. For companies with multiple locations, approval workflows and SSO requirements, a duration of 2-4 weeks is realistically planned.
PrintDesk can be integrated into the company's existing IT landscape. Supported scenarios include single sign-on via SAML 2.0 or OpenID Connect (Azure AD, Okta, Google Workspace), cost center transfer to ERP systems such as SAP or Microsoft Dynamics as well as automated order data exports for financial accounting and controlling.
Upon request, we can also implement individual API integrations to seamlessly integrate the closed shop into procurement systems (e.g. Coupa, Ariba). Talk to us about your specific requirements – the easiest way is via this Contact form.
A closed shop is always worthwhile when several people or units order printed matter independently - but quality, brand and budget should not be left to chance.
For a company with around 50 employees, decentralized printing requirements typically arise: sales, HR, event teams, regional branches – everyone needs printed materials on a regular basis. A closed shop eliminates the coordination effort of the marketing department and ensures that every order is brand-compliant and cost-controlled.
Franchise systems face a special challenge: Franchisees are legally independent, but are supposed to represent the brand image of the headquarters. A closed shop gives the headquarters control over templates and product ranges without taking away operational flexibility from the franchisees. Each location orders independently - but always within a defined framework.
For marketing agencies, a closed shop is an attractive additional customer service offer: you set up a branded ordering platform for your customers, which their employees can use to order CI-compliant printed matter at any time. The agency retains design control, the customer gains ordering autonomy, and the printing company is commissioned automatically.
A closed shop is a closed print ordering platform that is only accessible to authorized users - typically employees, branches or franchise partners of a company. In contrast to the Open Shop, there is no public access, no open product selection and no free pricing. Instead, products, templates, budgets and order limits are centrally predefined to ensure CI compliance and cost control.
The typical project duration for a PrintDesk Closed Shop is 2 to 4 weeks - from request recording to go-live. During this time, product templates are created, user roles are configured, the corporate design is integrated and, if necessary, SSO or ERP interfaces are set up. Smaller deployments without complex IT integration can also be implemented in just a few days. Request a project discussion now.
Yes. PrintDesk's role concept allows granular configuration per location, branch or user group. Each location only sees the products and templates approved for it, works with its own budget and is subject to defined order limits. Higher-level administrators maintain a complete overview of all orders and expenses at all times.
PrintDesk supports various billing models for closed shops: central collective invoice to the company holding company, department- or location-related cost center booking, internal budget allocations and individual release workflows for orders above defined order values. External payment methods such as credit card or PayPal can also be activated upon request.
No credit card required. Can be canceled at any time.
Web-to-print automation for modern print shops. A product from Druckhaus interactive GmbH.