Cross-Wind® Supplier Training Session

The monthly print supplier training session is scheduled for Thursday September 13, 2007 at 2:30 PM Central Time. This is the regular monthly webinar through LiveMeeting. This session is for Cross-Wind print suppliers to learn new tips and tricks when submitting an RFQ response to your Cross-Wind customers. Qualified suppliers will be receiving their monthly email notification this afternoon containing the link to the LiveMeeting session. If you are a Cross-Wind print supplier and do not receive your email notification check you spam filter or box to make sure the email is there. If it is be sure to white list the sender email address so you will receive these regularly. If you did not receive your email contact me though the email link on this blog and I will be happy to forward the information on to you.

The rest of the years supplier training schedule looks like this:
October - Thursday Oct. 11, 2007 - 2:30 PM Central Time
November - Thursday Nov. 8, 2007 - 2:30 PM Central Time
December - Thursday Dec. 13, 2007 - 2:30 PM Central Time

Editing Supplier Information in Cross-Wind

I got a call tonight from a supplier and I thought this is probably a good time to address this issue. While it is not the most Frequently Asked Question it is up on the list of questions that I get from print suppliers so I will try to explain the edit features for suppliers here.

When a supplier logs into Cross-Wind, they can access their company information by clicking on the "Administration" section in the top navigation bar.

In the Administration section you can edit your company information in the default page. You can edit ALL of the information here and then click the Save button. If you would like to edit the USER information, click on "User Info" in the secondary navigation bar. You can change all of the information in the User Info section and click Save to update the information. This information is used in the RFQ page for contact information for the print buyer and in the supplier address book of the "Resources" section also for the print buyer.

It is a good idea for the print supplier to keep this information up to date for the print buyer so they know who and how to contact your company. This whole process should only take you about 5 minutes. If you have further questions please let me know.

Submitting Print Samples to your Printer

Everybody hates chicken scratch! So why torture your printers with it? Sometimes samples are a necessity when specifying print jobs but take the time to mark up your samples cleanly. The cleaner your samples are the easier it will be for your suppliers to review and provide accurate quotes. I suggest digitizing your samples if at all possible. The price of a cheap scanner is less than the price of a mistake in production because of miscommunication on the sample. If stock or matching ink color is the issue then obviously you need to send a sample but if your concern is the attributes then digitize that sucker and send it out via email, ftp, disk or whatever! Below are examples of a poor sample and a good sample. Put your chicken scratch on a separate sheet of paper and reference the attributes by number or letter. It makes life a lot easier for your printer and for you when referencing. Now obviously there are more sophisticated ways of doing this but if this is all you got then at least make it organized!

Revising Projects in Cross-Wind®

Print Buyers create projects in Cross-Wind. So when a change to a specification is made to a product template AFTER the project has been submitted for RFQ, or another Supplier needs to be added to the quote, the buyer has two options for revision:
1) Revise the RFQ; If the buyer revises the RFQ any responses that have been submitted by suppliers could be lost if those Suppliers are still selected in the list and the "Resend" button is clicked.
2) Revise Project (recommended); If the buyer clicks the "Revise" button on the Project Details page, the entire project is revised allowing the buyer to change specs, add product templates, and add suppliers or resend to suppliers for new pricing. The revise project option allows the buyer to have the original responses and the new responses in separate project to review them separately. This also allows the administrator to have accurate response time tracking for suppliers responses in the Vendor Response Report.