Ink Prices on the Rise

Today the Flint Group North America announced an increase in Ink prices. Flint cited the continuing and unprecedented rise in raw materials, transportation and energy costs as the reason for the increase.
The following inks are affected:
Publication Gravure - 10%
Publication Heatset - 8%
News Ink - 6%
Sheetfed - 5% to 7% depending on product technology and color.
Packaging – up to 12% depending on product technology and color.

Sheetfed buyers...expect these costs to be passed on to you. The increases are set to become effective October 1, 2007.

Flint Group is citing that "the increased global consumption of petroleum and petroleum derivatives, along with limited refinery capacity, continue to be the key drivers in the cost of raw materials" according to Bill Miller, President Flint Group North America.

Link to Press release: http://www.flintgrp.com/FlintGroupPressRelease.nsf/PressRelease/C9544A35B6F7ACA3852573440070F815?OpenDocument

Will XPS replace the PDF?

XPS stands for "XML Paper Specification." XPS is available in Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 07 which is available for Windows XP. XPS architecture is built specifically for the Windows Vista environment but there is a free download available from microsoft called: "Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Redistributable Package" If you are running Office 07 on a Windows XP machine you will want this download to use XPS. You can get the XPS viewer here: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/viewxps.mspx

XPS is designed for use three ways;
As a spool file format the format which documents are submitted to the printer drivers for conversion to PDL.

As a printer command language. Newer printer are being released that support XPS just like PCL or PostScript(r) Language

As a document sharing format; allowing a static, electronic representation of the document to be shared for viewing, collaborative development, proofing, or remote printing.

Advantages and Disadvantages
There are not a whole lot of advantages of XPS as yet as it is new. There are not any disadvantages to it over PDF either. I can say that of course PDF has had ten years of maturity over XPS and is a widely accepted format for both printers and the legal profession. However, if adobe attempts to go down another road like the FedEX/Kinko's fiasco...I would say XPS will at least have the advantage. (and don't think this is the last attempt Adobe will make at this kind of venture) I would guess they are plotting right now as to how they can pull this sort of thing off again. I think at this point PDF has a pretty firm hold on the market. But, don't hold your breath! I think there are some pretty cool things in XPS and based on what I read by Global Graphics I think there may be some cool things to come!

For Printing Companies:
I would start asking your IT departments to look at XPS format and what it will take to start accepting XPS files from your customers. It is coming and I think you should get ahead of this one.

Information regarding XPS: http://www.globalgraphics.com/xps/more.html
XPS downloads: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Redistributable Package for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003
XPS Viewer: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/viewxps.mspx



Sources: American Printer July 07
www.globalgraphics.com
www.microsoft.com

Printers Tag-line

“expert solutions to the publishing world”

"To many of our customers we are more than a print vendor, we are an extension of their print purchasing departments because of our consultative approach to selling and customer service. We don’t just take orders, we help our customers by looking for ways to save them time and money, we remind them when they should be ordering so they don’t miss their mail dates and we help educate them on the most efficient ways to print their materials."


This printer is looking for a new tag-line to describe themselves their tag-line is this...“expert solutions to the publishing world”. Now here is my dilemma in all of this. How many of your printers describe themselves as above? Probably ALL of them "we're more that just a print vendor.....Yada, Yada, Yada!! How many print buyers have heard this? Almost every company in the U.S. says something like this "[puking], [puking]. Print Buyers, just once wouldn't it be refreshing to have a sales rep come into your office and say something like this: "We print [insert item here] and [insert other item here] we try to do our best to deliver your products on schedule and on budget. Sometimes we don't! and when we don't we will try to make it up to you the best way we can. We are humans and sometimes humans mess up! We will try to help you with anything we can but we don't do everything!" I am not saying this printer doesn't deliver what they say...I am saying actions speak louder than words! You shouldn't have to advertise your abilities you should be able to show your abilities. If your that good word will spread Print Buyers are a small but close knit community they know which printers are good and which aren't and if your that good print buyers are not afraid to make recommendations for you.

[rant]I had a supplier that I worked with in the medical field and they would come into my office and instead of trying to give me a bunch of fluff they would say "this is what we can offer you it's the best I can do. If you can find it cheaper somewhere else then buy it from them!" Sometimes they would even come in my office and say; "Here's the price of [product] but I know you can get it from [XYZ Vendor] for cheaper here's the sales reps number give him a call and he will help you out" [end rant]

Now guess who got my business 95% of the time? You got it they did! Why? Because there was no bull about how we are going to help you they actually HELPED me!! It wasn't in a tag-line or mission statement. It was what THEY did for the customer they were trained to provide WOW service to their customers. They were also the ONLY vendor that could come to my office without an appointment. They would just show up and most times they would walk out of my office without a sale in their pocket but if I needed something fast or I needed anything they were the one I called first and always. Bottom line: Cut the crap and treat your customers like they are your friend, neighbor, brother, or sister.

So this company needs a new tag-line how about this; "We will do the best job we can."

This post is dedicated to Zane and Brianna hope things are going well for you!


Excerpt from http://printceoblog.com/2007/08/printing-company-tagline

Print Procurement Questions

I am not going to say that "I am the leading authority on print procurement and print buying." But I will say that If I am asked a question I will find an answer. It may not always be the answer your looking for but I will get an answer. I have had extensive experience in purchasing and as I stated in a previous post the process of purchasing is really not much different between print or an other commodity. Now I said that word, "Commodity". Believe what you will, and I plan to address this further in a later post, print is a commodity. My background in working with both printers and print buyers gives me a unique perspective of hearing both sides objectively as compared to other pundits in the business who have an "either...or" background. I encourage, you to ask me questions. I am not going to give fluffy answers. I will tell you the way I see it or as I have heard it said. If you have a question related to print or print procurement send me an email at: jgangerjt@gmail.com

Buyer VS Print Buyer

When we started designing a web-based print procurement system, I drew from my background as a Purchasing Manager as my knowledge base for design. Now as a good Product Manager I spent time with Print Buyers from all across the country to get an understanding of what print buying was about. Now, after lots of years in purchasing I had a preconceived opinion that print buyers had basically created an aura of mystic around print purchasing, so others in the company would not question what they did and that way their job was secure from other purchasing agents taking it. I must admit today and after countless conversations and interviews with print buyers that theirs is much more specialized than most purchasing agents.
Nevertheless, print buyers can learn a few things from their counterparts in purchasing.

Keep an open mind and look at the purchasing departments process from the 50,000 foot level.
Look at what things look similar to what you are currently doing and then take a hard detailed look at those things they do differently.
Analyze how they would fit into your current process, will they trim time from an already long process?
Experiment, try these things that you think might be of value, and measure the results, (if you need to time the process then do it.)

I had a customer a few years back that the print buyers swore up and down that the way they were buying print WITHOUT a system was faster than with their new system. Management brought in a team of time keepers to sit with the buyers and measure. They would do the project the way they were used to doing it, then they would do the EXACT same job in Cross-Wind. The results even surprised them, they were actually doing the jobs in HALF the time in Cross-Wind versus the OLD way (and it quickly became the OLD way!) The problem was open mindedness, and they readily admitted that they thought it was more complicated doing it through a system rather than filling out the form and faxing or emailing. They also thought it was taking longer to get vendor responses back when really it also was taking less time.
The moral to this little story...Keep an open mind.

If something doesn't work, increases workload or time, then stop doing it! Take the good things from the procurement departments process and toss the rest out with the bath water. In addition, your purchasing manager might find out in the process that print procurement IS different than other types of purchasing and they might even get a deeper respect for your talents! I sure did!

Reverse Auctions the Gold Rush is Over!

Is anybody still using these things? If they are and you are reading this then I guess I am about to stir a hornets nest!

I read probably the best article ever on reverse auctions a couple of months ago By Mohanbir Sawhney at CIO.com called: Reverse Auctions Cutting Costs. In the article he points out the historical facts that the biggest reason these became popular is because GE claimed huge savings by doing them. Mohanbir also points out that Reverse Auctions can be damaging to supplier relationships. I believe most are finding out that this statement is quite true. I have talked with several suppliers who have out and out refused to do reverse auctions and have told even valued, long time customers that they would rather lose the business than participate in a reverse auction. Suppliers are revolting because of the consumption of time involved in responding to a reverse auction. Often times these auctions are open for hours and usually tie up an estimator and a production manager during the entire auction attempting to shave pennies off an already profitless project. Reverse auctions may serve a purpose in industries where there are bloated profit margins. But in the print industry where the profit leaders are netting between 2 and 3 per cent and the rest are lucky to net .5% profits, reverse auctions can be detrimental to a printers business. I know someone will claim they are saving 20% or better on jobs they have quoted using a reverse auction but I would counter that they were probably using the wrong supplier in the first place. The bottom line is you could probably research suppliers, submit and receive well priced quotes in less time than it takes to conduct a reverse auction. I would also venture to guess that you will get comparable pricing with less work on every one's part.

Reverse auctions are a fad in the print industry and fads usually last about 18 months. Is anyone even doing reverse auctions anymore? If you are maybe you should seriously take a look at the time involved in conducting a reverse auction and what suppliers you are quoting with. As a wise man said at Print Oasis in 2005 "Reverse Auctions, I wouldn't do'em"

Selecting Printers - Distance is not Dead

I read an article today by Jim Van Natter saying that "You can find exactly the right printer with the right combination of equipment and services at the right price anywhere in the world. And because the Internet allows instant communication, you can transfer files, view and approve PDF proofs, and place orders without having to actually go to “your printer’s shop.”"*

Now no doubt, the age of the Internet and portable document files and vendor management tools has made it easier to quote and purchase from a wider variety of print suppliers, and making it faster and easier to quote and purchase. However, the cost of freight and the cost of moving that product is still a great concern. If nothing else it makes it easier to have your print buyers located in one office or part of the country and allow them to make print purchasing decisions for another office halfway around the world. So making the statement "Distance is Dead" is not true. With the price of fuel and shipping on the rise print buyers should be focusing on the freight charges from the print supplier to their destinations. Instead of splitting shipping as buyers have done in the past consider splitting production. Can you get smaller amounts of print done by two suppliers for the same amount you could get the whole job done at one supplier. This is where digital print can play a key role. I suggest making freight a primary consideration when looking at how you can cut costs. Do you ask your printer for freight costs? and do you ask them to break out based on split shipments? If you do wonderful! If not start! Looking for an area to cut costs? This is it!

One of my customers came to me several years ago asking that they be able to move the freight charge to the top of their comparison sheet. I was a little confused until they explained that the first thing they consider in purchasing print is the freight charge. Often times they would go with a higher production cost, as long as their freight charges were cheaper. They would then compare that with a contract rate and go with the cheaper shipper. They could then specify to their supplier whether the supplier would pay for shipping or, they would issue a shipping number to them and pay for the shipping themselves. Putting extra attention on the shipping charges actually saved them money in the long run. Much more than it cost to do the extra work. So I conclude that Distance is NOT dead it has shifted from one end of the process to the other.

*Excerpt from Graphic Arts Monthly Blogs - How do prospects choose printers (part-2) By Jim Van Natter

Print Procurement Outsourcing is it all it is cracked up to be?

There are companies that will tell you that print is not your core competency so why are you spending money to procure print when you will save money outsourcing that function. Well with that mentality why just stop at print why not outsource ALL of your procurement? What these companies are telling you is that they know how to spend your money better than you do so let them spend it for you. I want you to know that these companies are feeding you a great line. Never the less, a line. You may even hear that outsourcing is the trend. But for every company that you can name that is moving to outsourcing I can name a company that is pulling sourcing back in house. I talked to another company today in the wireless industry that has just terminated an outsource contract and is pulling print procurement back in-house. Why? because the promises of saving big dollars are unfulfilled promises. The key to sourcing either out or in, is about process, efficiencies, and compliance. The reason these companies think they can do better is because they have focused on the process to improve the efficiencies. It is about working smarter not harder! In some cases it is about paying substandard wages to inexperienced buyers and giving them a tool to do the job of two experienced buyers. Their training consists of take the request, enter the data, and the machine will spit out three prices, give the customer the lowest price, don't worry about who is printing the job or the quality just send the job to them when you get the approval. Heck if all your looking for is bottom line price on every job Hire Me! I will even give you a guarantee that I WILL save you money don't ask about the quality and don't ask about delivery. Let's talk about a Pyramid commonly used in business and let's put a twist to it.
Let's call it the outsource triangle:

Now the game is you pick one and I get to pick two...Oh you want to pick two OK pick two...I pick one! Either way this is a losing proposition, You pick Price and Delivery, that means I get to choose Quality. Oh you want Quality and Delivery, That's fine...I get Price and you will pay for it. You want ALL THREE? Sorry it doesn't work that way in outsourcing! It doesn't work that way with in-sourcing either the difference is YOU KNOW what you are getting, how much it will cost to get, when you want it, and the way you want it. The difference is in-sourcing YOU make the decision, and it has to be a conscious one. Business owners and CEO's are entrepreneur's, they are constantly thinking about and making decisions that will impact their bottom line. And, if they make poor decisions their business will fail. I challenge you as a print buyer or print director to think like an entrepreneur, think about that buy decision as if YOU owned the company. Is the decision I am making the best decision I can make for my company? Will I get a paycheck at the end of the week if I go with company A over company B because I like the sales rep? Yeah, his price is higher but at lunch yesterday he told me how his kid needs braces and poor Junior may not be popular without straight teeth. Stop worrying about their business, worry about yours! They won't care when your CEO comes in and tells all of you that they are moving to an outsource company and that you will have to apply for a job with them or go do a job in the mail room that you left 15 years ago when you were an intern and oh yeah that comes with a pay cut! Is that Sales Rep going to be knocking on your door offering to share his commission check with you? You'll be lucky if you can get him to answer your voice mails. If you treat your job like your an owner of the company and make decisions like a responsible owner would I think you would find that your job will be just fine and your boss will even be able to give you a raise because they will see the value you can bring to the company.

OK, now some outsourcing company is going to tell you; YOU CAN HAVE ALL THREE! Well what they are doing is not rocket science and they are thinking like a business owner that needs to make good business decisions. They will balance the triangle on one of it's points and they will make trade offs where they can. Some jobs will come in with poor quality, but not enough that will make you complain. Some jobs will come in higher priced than you expected but not enough to make you complain. Other jobs will come in late delivery, but not enough that you complain. Seeing the pattern? Most outsourcing companies can be successful because they have put process efficiencies in place such as sourcing and vendor management systems that reduce the time to production, they also have vendor agreements that they fall back on that they guarantee certain volumes of print to certain suppliers in exchange for "Rebates" or some like to call these kickback's (but that's such a dirty word).

The best recommendation I can give any company is take a long hard look at your vendor base.
Who are you doing business with?
Are there companies that can do more of the jobs thereby eliminating a vendor or two?
If I offer them a guarantee of work can I get better pricing?
Can I get "Rebates"?

The right suppliers are willing to give rebates or even price reductions because they now know where their next job is going to come from and they know that you are guaranteeing work to them so that now they are going to be able to make payroll. See, they are in the same boat as you and they know you need to spend money and they need to spend money as well, it's just nicer knowing up front how much you are going to make in the next year before you need to budget.

The biggest thing to remember as a company is that either way you are paying money, so why do you want to pay an outsource provider to do exactly what you can do and probably cheaper than the outsource provider? If the outsource provider wasn't making money do you really think they would offer a service like this? You can do this yourself it is not that hard if you have the print buyers in place now you really need to pay attention to the process and how to make the print buyer more efficient. Give them the tools to do what an outsource provider does and you will make them more efficient.

Offset Printing for the Print Buyer

I found this video on YouTube and thought it worthwhile to share. It is more informative and knowledge based than an advertisement for the company. Never the Less I think they did a pretty good job of explaining the basics from a printer perspective. Good Job!!

The Greening of Print Buying

As with all things print buyers should be conscientious of the environment and the impact print products have on the environment. Here is a resource to help print buyers in making more "Green" decisions. http://www.mn-ei.org/policy/printbuyer.html

The topics in this guide include:
Design for Environment and Pre-press Technologies
Paper Issues
Ink Composition
Overprint Coatings
The Finishing Touches
Choosing a Printer
The Blue Ribbon Task Force on Print Buying

This guide comes from the Minnesota Environmental Initiative.

Marketing Materials Spend Survey

Aberdeen Group is conducting a survey for an upcoming report based on marketing material spends and are asking for corporate respondents. By participating, they are offering a complimentary copy of the report. This is a great opportunity to get an understanding of your spend against other companies. I believe it is worth the extra 15 minutes of your day.

The survey is located here: http://www.aberdeen.com/survey/pm/

According to their site:
This survey covers corporate spend on marketing with a focus on marketing materials and related services. The purpose of this survey is to better understand procurement's involvement in this category of spend.

All survey participants will receive a complimentary copy of the resulting benchmark report on September 4, 2007.

Specification Gathering in Print Procurement

When purchasing print the key to getting what is desired is the specifications that are provided to the supplier. I will try to walk through the specification process. When specifying a print job two key elements can make the Quoting process go smoothly, Good Specifications, and Samples. (we will discuss samples in another post) Specifying the job is usually done through some sort of interview process. This process can be a formal or informal interview.

Formal Interview

The formal interview is conducted by asking a series of questions designed to get the job specs. This is usually performed as a meeting or phone interview in which the print buyer gleans the specification for the job from the requester (customer). A series of questions is usually on some sort of formal document or an experienced buyer may know the questions that need to be asked. I caution even the most veteran of buyers that "off the top of the head" is not the wisest way to gather specifications from a customer. Most of the time this can make a customer quite nervous about the overall outcome of the job being produced. If this is an external customer they may lose confidence and will walk away unsure if all of the information was gathered no matter how confident you may appear. I recommend using or at least have a form in front of you during the interview process. Whether you actually use it or not, having it out on the table will give the customer more confidence in your ability. It often times can be used as a prompt for your questions or to at least ensure that you have gathered all of the pertinent information. The drawback to a formal interview is that they can be time consuming and if you are like most buyers your days are pretty full already and it may be a couple of days to schedule and complete the interview. Often times the customer either perceives they do not have time or they REALLY don't have time before they need the job completed. A personal side note; I found blocking an hour per day off on my calendar will allow me time to do those urgent interviews and still get my work done for the day. The formal interview can also be conducted as a survey form that is submitted to the customer. I highly recommend this form either as a complete or as a preliminary to a meeting. This will give the customer an opportunity to answer at least the questions that they know and will expedite your meeting. In the formal meeting you simply need to review the answered questions and help the requester understand the unanswered ones.

Informal Interview

The informal interview is usually conducted by way of email, phone, fax, or sending a sample with chicken scratch all over it and your expected to interpret (my favorite). Any way you get these requests they can be time consuming and often key items can be missed. The buyer and customer usually go back and forth either by email or phone calls over and over. Usually, additional questions are prompted by suppliers after the buyer has submitted the RFQ and then you're putting undue delay on the project because you either have to guess at what the answers are or go back to the customer again and ask. This also does not give your customer a warm fuzzy feeling that they are going to get what they want.

I am a firm believer in the formal interview process and have found that it can be used in almost any industry. When I worked in the medical field I would use this strategy when working with a team of medical specialists wanting the latest and greatest medical device. Whether I knew how the piece of equipment worked or not was beside the point I could usually go to a potential suppliers web site and at least get the pertinent questions from the listed product specification information or from their marketing information. An hour of reading often times saved me three or four hours of back and forth questioning.

Building the interview form

When building an interview form I suggest creating one for each of the specific types of items you may purchase and to use them as templates. The reason for separate templates is because the questions you ask for an envelope job are going to be different than questions for a continuous form. No reason to know number of pages on an envelope! I challenge those buyers not using a template when interviewing to try it and see if the reaction you get from your customer changes. I think you will be pleasantly surprised at the reaction of your customers.

Was this helpful? I am always open for recommendations as to how to make this better and I invite those of you using a formal interview process to post your thoughts.

Daily Data Back-ups?

Reading a press release this morning regarding a companies "net" version application, the highlight of their release was "Data backed-up daily." Which quite frankly concerned me. When working with any software application most users are accustomed to an auto save feature which in essence is just like a back-up for an unsaved document. If I am working on a document and something happens like a power failure I usually get a recovered document, which picked up everything from the last auto save. Data servers can be configured similarly providing a back up to the last auto save. For instance, our data servers are configured to auto save to the last 9 minutes 59 seconds which means any data published 10 minutes ago will be backed-up. Now some would argue that even a ten minute back-up is too long so you have to consider what is best for your data. When making that consideration while all of us think that our data is extremely vital you need to consider what would happen to your business if you lost the last ten minutes worth of data or the last days worth of data. Data recovery is huge as well so off site storage is always a factor to consider...after the data is backed up where are the back-ups being stored? Believe me this as well can be an entire volume of questions and processes to consider as well however, a good rule of thumb, (I believe) is to make sure the data is being stored off site in a secure environment. Usually a specialized data vault of some sort built in a hardened environment to withstand severe weather is adequate. The biggest consideration should be; off-site, secured, hardened, and proper storage conditions. Any reputable hosting facility should have these kinds of storage available and be sure to ask.
Data recovery is also an issue so be sure to ask how long after a catastrophe will the application and the data be back in operation?
In my humble opinion, a daily back-up in today's environment is frankly not a strong selling point to me. I think most company's are looking for their data to be backed up more regularly than daily and they are looking for quick recovery times.

My First Blog

Hello,

This is my first blog so forgive me if my first posts are not quite up to par. I am a Product Manager at James Tower. We are a web development and hosting company located in North Mankato, Minnesota. I am not a marketing manager or sales person so I will in no way try in this blog to give you anything more than what I believe in. Hopefully I can provide some insight into print procurement for print buyers. A little of my background...I was a purchasing manager at a large clinic facility and a materials management specialist for a large emergency services company. Both companies had operations throughout the United States. Prior to that I was a Fire Captain and Paramedic in a large metropolitan area in Arizona (Past Life). As I go along with this blog I will try to provide some insight into print buying and procurement as well as information that may help Cross-Wind users. If you have questions I encourage you to contact me either via email or post a comment.

John