Reducing Print Costs

The Keys to cost effective Print buying
Much more than just the buy price…
At a recent CIPS Australia conference on Buying Office Supplies and Print a number of keys emerged relating to reducing the costs of print procurement.

The main areas of influence to the cost of managing print were identified by David Page of Page Consulting Pty Ltd and included:
Demand Management – manage centrally, consolidate orders.
Unit rationalisation – Reduce complexity, rationalise specifications and ensure items are fit–for-purpose across the organization.
Supply Chain efficiency – streamline the process from order to fulfilment
Supplier rationalisation – use as few suppliers as possible to cover all your print needs.

What to lookout for!
David Page also identified what to look for in order to start to reduce costs.
. Lack of print register
. Job-by-job quoting
. Many fragmented informal printer relationships
. No specification management and coordination
. No centralised buying coordination

..and went on to say
The buy price is the last thing to address……
. If it’s all you can effect, be realistic about savings
. Remember Page’s 3rd law ‐ never go after margin, they’ll get you in the end

Other important elements to reducing print procurement cost included:
Partnership. Establish a partnership with your supplier
Specification rationalisation. Create an Electronic Print Register – this was recognised as a big opportunity for saving. “Getting across the specs and controlling them will likely provide a far better return than just negotiating price”
Formal contracts – Enter into mutually beneficial contract to provide certainly and accountability
Continuous Improvement. Print vendors need to commit to and deliver continuous improvement
Printer rationalisation. Match printers capabilities to actual requirements
Print less to avoid obsolescence.

Dynamite Printing ticks print procurement boxes.
We’ve got the critical elements covered
With online print management and a wide and rational range of standard specification print products Dynamite Printing coupled with sister company Dynamite Online are already across many of the critical elements of cost effective print procurement that were detailed at a recent CIPS Procurement Conference in Melbourne – here’s how:-

Standard Specifications
Tick – Supplier rationalisation.
Tick – Specification rationalisation.
Our range of standard products – This product assortment is intended to answer a large percentage of print requirements for most businesses and covers from business cards to multi-page booklets and magazines and includes, brochures, leaflets, folders, letterheads, invoice books etc.
All the products in the range have standard specifications and cover a wide range of paper and card types, sizes and finishes and are printed on a regular basis.

Rationalised Manufacturing Costs with consolidated print runs
Tick – Supply Chain efficiency
Tick – Specification rationalisation
Tick – Print less
At Dynamite Printing, working with standard specifications enables us to print multiple clients work at the same time on any one print run thus consolidating the print runs and sharing the cost of the set up and print across multiple jobs. (Gang printing)
This reduces the retail print cost to our clients, allows quick turnaround and provide consistency from job to job.
This approach enables us to provide cost effective unit costs even at smaller run lengths which takes the pressure off needing to order in bulk with the resultant storage and distribution costs and the risks of obsolescence.

Web Base Print Management
Tick – Demand Management
Tick – Specification rationalisation
Tick – Supply Chain efficiency
Dynamite Online is our web based print management system that enables clients to manage and order their printing via the internet. This system provides for centralised control of printed collateral, pricing, specifications and user access.
Popular with multi-site and complex organisations this system provides a simple and streamlined approach to managing the entire print supply chain.

Ongoing Consultation
Tick – Partnership
Tick – Formal contracts
Tick – Continuous Improvement
We spend time with our clients to establish their key objectives around managing and buying print and will develop an approach that will best answer those. We recognise that the best outcome for all is to develop a frank and open partnership and will foster that approach to the relationship at every opportunity. Additionally we realise the importance of ongoing development and the need to constantly be looking at ways to improve our product and service delivery.
We are also confortable developing and working to supplier contracts and SLA’s and indeed welcome the level of certainty for all parties that these arrangements provide.

Dynamite Printing provides the print procurement solution that ticks the critical boxes!