I have 5 simple suggestions that I guarantee will help you to better print procurement.
This is really important because on average print spend accounts for about 3% of all costs to companies and this is before we add in the indirect costs such as management time.
Yes it's true that some businesses such as Doctors, lawyers and companies with few employees can spend less than 1%, there are other companies that can spend much more. Those who depend heavily on direct mail or those in the food processing or packaging businesses, spend 5% to 20% of their operating costs on print.
In these tough economic times you need to be thinking about as many savings as possible and print just can't be ignored or put to one side so my suggestions are:
1. Build a sample library of all your print items and give them unique references, this will help you to track your ordering and usage pattern.
2. Keep to 2 or 3 regular supplier and benchmark them against each other on every job and at least once a year benchmark them against potential new suppliers.
3. Make sure you have full and correct specifications for all your jobs.
4. Always ask for a copy of the artwork to keep for yourself. As a minimum make sure that you have high resolution PDF's with bleeds and crop marks. Do not accept low resolution PDF's or PDF's with security on. If your supplier won't give you these as you place each order then find a different supplier who will.
5 Check every print job yourself, don't assume if its a re-print then it will be OK, if your not happy with anything negotiate a concession.
If you don't have the time, knowledge or experience to pull together the above suggestions then investigate the option of using a Print Management company to do all the above for you.
Mark Scanlon is Managing Director of CDP Print Management and has been actively involved in print at the highest level for 34 years. He is the only Chartered Director managing a Print Company in the UK and he is also a Fellow of the Institute of Directors.
If you have any questions regarding this article or have any interest in taking advantage of CDP's Print Procurement solution or Print Health Check please contact mark@cdp.co.uk or visit http://www.cdp.co.uk
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