Day 2 On-Demand Exihibtion

Show floor is picking up right away this morning. Yesterday I met with a purchasing manager of a cooperative buying group that has just recently been organized. So do you think cooperative purchasing is a viable option in the print industry? Co-ops, have waxed and waned over the years but overall cooperative purchasing is a powerful tool to help organizations see real value for their purchasing dollar. Systems like Cross-Wind/NowSource are a means by which product specifications and management of the producers can be controlled by the co-op and still provide easy access for the customer to submit their orders. So again, do you think a co-op environment would work for purchasing print?

Day 1 Wrap-up from On-Demand

Day 1 was a pretty busy day! I did not get a chance to peruse the other exhibitors because we were steady all day in our booth. Show officials stated that the registrations and attendance was on par with last year so it is good to see that attendees and exhibitors were out in full force on day one! If your at the show stop by booth 2411 and say hi! Check back tomorrow as I will have more news regarding Cross-Wind.
John

On-Demand Day #1

Well I survived show set-up...(I actually did not do a whole lot to help) Having my first morning coffee and getting ready to head over to the show floor. Before I do I thought I would share the latest company news.

UPS Stores/MailBoxes Etc. Will utilize the NowPrint Platform for Online Digital Print stores.
Read more here: http://www.graphicartsonline.com/article/CA6646833.html?rssid=258

Going Green in Procurement

I read an interesting article by Tom Jowitt at TechWorld titled Companies fail to go green on procurement. The sad part is that according to his article only 3 percent of companies in the UK are using a non-paper based procurement system. Which leads me to wonder what the statistics might look like in the U.S.? Unfortunately I did not find a lot of data in this area which leads me to believe that if only 3% in the UK that the numbers in the U.S. are probably not much higher. What interested me even more was the statistics related to Printers, Faxes, and other equipment required to produce a paper copy that ultimately produces Carbon Output. not to mention the money saved in electricty alone.

Manufacturing Survival

Again these are random thoughts on the current economic situation. I, by no means, have any answers or magic pill to help anyone overcome the current situations. I am just offering up babble at this point and hoping something sticks to the wall!!

Suppliers are taking a hard look at production costs and looking to trim cost to widen margins and more importantly win new business. It is a hard time and the survivors will be those that can find cost trimming solutions in their manufacturing. So what is the answer? How do we cut costs? I have cut as deep as I can go! Sound familiar? This is what I am hearing, and the survivors are those that can compare their costs against competitors pricing and find that one last spot to trim. Based on current projections it is likely that suppliers will be in the 1% or less profit range for the next couple of years. Seems reasonable at this point that if you can live within that range and be competitive with the competition, then you can point out the differentiator's that make you stand out. You know...the "I produce a quality product", and the "we provide good customer service" kind of things.

Supplier Performance Scores

Your buyers may be having issues with your suppliers and you may not even know it.  How do you know that you are getting what is expected from your suppliers?  How do your suppliers know they are doing what is expected?  I know, there is that annual survey that my suppliers send out asking how they are doing...but I didn't have time to fill that out for the last 3 years in a row.  So I or they don't really know when things are going wrong or right.  One of the easiest things to do is to survey your buyers on each purchase order that they cut to the suppliers and then share that informaiton across the organization.  It can be quick and easy or complex however, the important piece is to get informaiton to both your suppliers and your buyers on how they are doing.  A simple approach is based on Quality, Service, and Price (QSP) or Quality, Service, and Delivery (QSD).  Each of these can be very straightforward and can be scored in a percentage environment.  The example I like to use is the QSD, Mine looks something like this;

Quality = 30% Overall

- Paper Damage (0 - 10) 33% of the category

- Ink Smear (0 - 10) 33% of the category

- Packaging (0 - 10) 33% of the category

Delivery = 50% Overall (Select One)

- Early 80%

- On-Time 100%

- Late 1 Day 80%

- Late 2 Days 60%

- Late 3 Days or More 30%

Service = 20% Overall

- Customer Service (0 - 10) 30% of the category

- Quote on Time (0 - 10) 50% of the category

- Sales Support (0 - 10) 20% of the category

Based on this type of scoring I can provide at least some basic feedback to my suppliers on a per purchase order basis and make the score cumulative so I can see overall how my suppliers are performing.  In addition, setting a base criteria fro performance with your suppliers can help them understand if they are meeting your buyers expectations.  Rating them based on current score (30 or 60 days) and also overall will help both you and them in making decisions about whether the supplier is the right choice to produce a job that is critical to your organization.  

 

Marketings need to track print procurement costs

I was reading a recent article on whattheythink.com by Brian Wolfenden titled: The Future of Print in Marketing Communications. Brian raises a great point in the article; "Today's marketing professionals...They have to make sure that the campaign delivers tangible and quantifiable results quickly. And these results must show a return on investment for the budget they spend on the campaign." Brian goes on in the next paragraph; "As service providers, this offers an opportunity to partner with the marketer to help them produce effective marketing campaigns that have a fresh approach that stresses targeted, customer-centric communications, measurable results and concrete return on investment." These are both excellent points that point back to "Return on Investment."

The key to all of this is knowing what your spend is in the first place and knowing whether or not your getting the best return on that investment. Most companies are still "shooting from the hip" when it comes to tracking spend or evaluating supplier effectiveness. They audit their purchase orders for cost or survey their buyers or buyers of others companies to determine quality delivery from suppliers. All valid tools but time consuming. Tools like Cross-Wind are designed specifically to provide the information to help marketing departments in determining Return on Investment by tracking costs from purchase orders and invoices, and evaluating supplier quality, turnaround, and responsiveness. Getting the best value starts in the estimating phase not in the purchasing phase of a project. In addition, all of these numbers need to come together fast and effectively with your other media spend numbers. Measureable Results...not just in campaign effectiveness but in spend. Am I getting the best quality, delivery, service, and price. You need to have a set of tools in your arsenal that help you to make the best decision regarding return on investment and to do it effectively. It is not a single tool but a set of tools that help you to track the information specific to their areas and then output the data in an effective manner to provide you with a picture of the whole not just a segment. Are you tracking your spend?

The Importance of Supplier Equipment Lists

Patrick Henry blogged a great article recently on Print CEO about the importance of equipment lists to print buyers. I want to expound on this a bit in that not only is it important but as much information as you can provide about your services and capabilities the better. Our customers find that one of the most important pieces in our system is the ability for the supplier to add their equipment to a master list and the ability for the buyer to sort and look for suppliers with certain capabilities. We give the buyers and suppliers a set of profile tools that give them the flexibility to look for or provide information about Equipment, Products, Users, Quality Managers or Key contacts, and any additional profile information the supplier would like to provide to arm the buyer with as much information about their company as possible. Cross-Wind also allows the buying organization to categorize suppliers based on Minority or Women owned businesses and add regions to their supplier base to allow buyers to look for suppliers in certain regions of the country. Those regions can also be defined by the buying organization to tailor to their specific needs. We are also working with our customers to make the supplier profiles even more interactive to give the most information possible to the buyers including current supplier scoring as determined by the buying organization. Equipment lists are extremely important but so is as much information as a supplier can provide to the buyer to help them make a more informed buying decision. Specialized Procurement Platforms (SSP's) should not be about quoting and buying but about informing the buyer.

Cross-Wind® uses Flex to manage the project list

Good Morning,
Often times users are not really concerned with what technology or programming language is being used on their system as long as it works. Well sometimes your computer is not "up" on the latest technology and so sometimes your system is working but your computer isn't working with the system. We have had a few calls in recent days saying that when a user logs into Cross-Wind they can see the header of the page and then a blank page below. The reason for this is that Cross-Wind uses a technology called "Flex" and in order to use this you need to do a minor download that you have probably down a few times before but never realized it. Flex requires that your computer has flash player 9 installed in order to view the project list page. So if your a user and login to see a "Blank" page, go to: http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash
And download the latest version of flash player 9.

Fuel prices impacting print spend?

Appended:
I apparently wrote this before the DOE announced the National average of $3.39 per gallon yesterday afternoon so the news gets better and better! The message is still the same just even more urgent than last week.

According to the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration, Fuel prices are up 32% over this time last year. From an April 2007 average price of $2.36 per gallon to $3.11 per gallon this week. Diesel Prices currently average $3.95 per gallon up 111 cents since this time last year. Cost of shipping is definitely on the rise, paper is heavy and costly to ship, both to the printer and to the consumer. At the same time personal income has only rose 0.9% in the same period. Companies are taking a hard look at how to cut costs and anything involving freight charges will be scrutinized heavily.

Now is the time to be evaluating print production costs and focus heavily on freight charges.
What is freight costing?
Can I get a better freight cost at the expense of production costs?
Am I better served producing a job closer to the delivery destination?

If you don't have strategic suppliers providing you with cost effective print; YOU ARE LOSING MONEY. No question about it at this point. I would also heavily consider which jobs can be split to make production closer to destination so if you are split shipping consider split production. Ask your suppliers where they are producing if they have multiple facilities and challenge them if they are producing in a plant further from the destination than another plant. Now is not the time to let your suppliers dictate. I believe that the breaking point is very close. The word "Recession" is getting used daily on the news. I heard from a colleague today that his company is now on a hiring freeze. Companies are looking for cost effective ways to measure and source print spend consider looking at sourcing solutions that can help you evaluate based on these and other criteria.

Change is a GOOD thing?

Change
The seasons change, styles change, presidents change, companies change, processes change. Everything changes, it is how we handle change that makes or breaks us. If you do not handle change well the the print industry is probably NOT the place for you. Changes have been occurring since the first printing press. Almost immediately people started to recognize the value and how they could improve upon it. Of course print buying is much the same in that things are constantly changing. In a pre-recessionary environment companies are looking hard at being efficient and saving money where they can sometimes spending money will make you more efficient and that is a hard concept to grasp. More and more companies are looking these days at how technology and systems in general can help improve efficiency and what it will save them.

We are making changes as well to make our technology more efficient to help print buyers be even more efficient. We have made changes to our project list page to allow users to drag and drop projects and to view pertinent information without having to open the project, giving the print buyer the ability to quickly scan a project and be more up to date. In the coming months we are adding reminder and messaging capabilities to allow the buyer to communicate more directly and quicker with their suppliers. We have even made changes to our website; www.cross-wind.com and we will continue to make changes because our customer base demands that we improve. If you are not riding the wave of change you will certainly find yourself under it. So let's go Surfin!!

Cross-Wind® Project List New Release

Good Morning,
The latest Cross-Wind enhancement release includes major changes to the Project List page. The Project List page now includes Drag and Drop capabilities within the project list and allows access to project information by highlighting a specific project. Now while you may be thinking whats the big deal? Well this is all being done within a web based application and without going through page refreshes. The is a HUGE deal!. In addition, you can view which vendors have responded to your project without going to the RFQ page. These changes will impact the way you view your projects and will make management easier. Also, included is the ability to view RFQ's that are coming due and to see which projects have supplier responses. All of this functionality will be available on Monday.

Evaluating Supplier Responsiveness

Supplier Responsiveness is one of the key issues that management teams are always concerned with. "How do I know many suppliers are responding in a timely manner to my requests?" Some might ask "Why should I even be concerned with this?" If you are in an outsourcing environment where you have customers relying on you to provide responses to a request in a timely manner then this becomes extremely important. Even if your customer is an internal customer likely their projects are time sensitive and if your suppliers are not submitting responses in a timely fashion then how responsive can you be to your customers? Well I often hear buyers say; "I have a pretty good idea of market price so I will just submit my own estimated cost with fudge factor built in." EEGGAADDSS!!! Your suppliers are the cost experts, they are the ones that should be supplying you with pricing not by educated guess.

The ability to measure supplier responsiveness is crucial in being able to evaluate your suppliers. Tools should be available to tell you how long it takes a supplier, from the time the request is submitted to the time the request is responded too. On a per request basis and overall for a time period. You should be reporting on the following areas:
Supplier, Quote ID, Time Sent, Time Opened, Time Submitted or Time Declined.
Then from a time range you should be able to evaluate;
Number of Quotes Submitted, Number Responded Too, Percentage of Responded, Number Declined, Percentage of Declined, Average Response Time, Average Decline Time.

This will give the buyer the ability to evaluate supplier responsiveness on an on-going basis to keep suppliers responding in a timely manner. Now if you do not actually DO anything with this information then what good is the information.

What to do with the information -
Once you have begun collecting this information you should make this information accessible to your suppliers instantaneously so a supplier can review at any time and be able to adjust their processes to keep up with your response standards. OH you don't have any response standards? Well take some time (3 to 6 months) to look at your suppliers response time overall and average out based on what ALL of your suppliers response times are and establish a set of criteria to meet your companies needs. There is not a given set of times or national standards for responsiveness, nor should there be. These standards should be set by each company to be able to meet their needs. Suppliers should be informed of your companies expectations and should decide whether they can meet those expectations on a regular basis. If they do not feel they can meet YOUR needs then you should consider whether they are the right supplier choice for your company. I can almost guarantee with a high degree of confidence, that if your expectations are reasonable, that most suppliers can meet those expectations that you establish and if they won't there is a supplier in the industry that will! Suppliers are willing to meet your needs as long as they have a way to be able to measure themselves and to be able to communicate with you when they cannot.
Once your criteria is established and you have communicated that criteria with your suppliers you MUST measure and evaluate them and be willing to call suppliers on the carpet when they do not meet your standards. In other words, some suppliers may pay you lip service when you communicate that criteria so you need to be prepared to implement any penalties that were agreed upon. The first time you issue penalties will likely be the last time you have to issue penalties. Suppliers learn quickly that if they agreed up front and you show that you are serious, they will comply with your standards. If they honestly have looked at their processes and cannot comply they will tell you and likely pull themselves out of the competition. Suppliers are in business to make money just like your company so if something is costing them they would rather walk away than to constantly flush money down a hole.

Staple Offer for Corporate Express REJECTED

According to the Associated Press Corporate Express management rejected the proposal within about 2 hours of the offer being made public. CE officials sited the proposal as significantly undervaluing Corporate Express and failing to reflect CE's value.

http://news.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1074569&srvc=home&position=recent

Staples Makes Bid to Acquire Corporate Express

In an email to Staples associates dated 2/19/08, Ron Sargent Chairman and CEO of Staples, notified associates of the proposed offer made to Corporate Express. Below is the text of the email distributed yesterday.

"Fellow Associates:

Today we have taken a significant step in creating a bigger and better platform for all Staples associates to deliver great service and value to our customers around the world. We are pleased to announce that Staples has made a proposal this morning to acquire Corporate Express, one of the world's leading suppliers of office products.

This acquisition will not only significantly expand Staples' North American Delivery operations, the fastest growing and most profitable part of our business, but will also add successful Contract businesses in Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to our portfolio. In addition to expanding our business into new geographies and customer segments, the acquisition will complement our organic growth, representing the addition of approximately $8 billion in annual sales to Staples' $20 billion business.

Corporate Express has a strong management team leading 18,000 associates in 20 countries, and we believe our combined business and people can be even more successful in building a strong, global delivery business. While Corporate Express has not been receptive to our approaches to discuss a possible business combination, we decided to pursue the proposed acquisition because of the tremendous benefits to both Corporate Express’ and Staples' stakeholders, given the complementary nature of our business and the significant opportunities the combination represents. We hope to meet with Corporate Express’ management and complete an acquisition agreement as soon as possible.

We look forward to officially welcoming Corporate Express to the Staples family in the coming weeks and working together to ensure a smooth transition for all associates, customers and suppliers."

The office products market seems to be heating up a bit. The proposed offer is for 7.25 euros per common share of stock. Staples is touting this as a 60% premium from current market value.

Will stock holders snub this offer like Yahoo investors snubbed the Microsoft offer a couple of weeks ago? Let's wait and see!

Read the official Press Release here: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=96244&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1109564&highlight=

John

Is Data Reporting important to Print Buyers?

Is reporting important to Print Buyers?
In my humble opinion it is the MOST important aspect of any Print Buyers job. Print Buyers are analyst's they are hired to be able to evaluate suppliers from a wide range of areas; quality, turn-around, equipment capability, etc. However at the end of a job the buyer needs to be able to track costs from every aspect possible. I will try to provide a base overview of some of the things my customers say are important to them from a reporting perspective.

One of the very first things most organizations want to know is Tracking Purchases. Organizations want to be able to tell how many of any given item was purchased in a week, month, or year. This includes many aspects such as How many brochures did we order? How many weretri-fold, c-fold, etc? What was the total cost of all Brochures? Of tri -fold, c-fold, etc? Systems must be flexible enough to capture basic information, Product, Attribute, Quantity, Cost. Or the templates must be granular enough to capture some of this information such as;Tri -Fold brochure, C-Fold brochure, or Miscellaneous brochure, for those items that may not be high quantity purchases or do not fit within regular standards. Either way is appropriate it is based on what level of granularity and or how easy you want your templates to be when specifying. This type of report becomes probably the most important when you are considering establishment of single source providers for individual product purchases or when trying to get a handle on what, when, and how much you are purchasing. A lot of potential customers tell me their single most point of frustration is their lack of knowledge about WHAT they are purchasing! Before you say it...yes, you can go back to your accounting system and trackPO's back to suppliers and likely they are even coded within your accounting system to allow you to see they where budgeted against your print budget. But even this is flawed as I just had a discussion with a customer that their departments would use their print budget code to make purchases for other things such as; shop rags, or for other NON-PRINT related items. So when the president of the company says; "How much did we spend on print?" it is not the easiest question to answer. One organization (actually several that I know of) have had to resort to hiring an outside consulting firm to help them get a grasp on their actual print spend. The sad part of this is that by implementing a system to track print procurement you could easily get an accurate count of your spend down to what was purchased. One customer was able to identify that they were spending $100 million per year on print but it took them 6 months and several thousands of dollars to find that out, when with a system they could have simply clicked a few buttons and had the most up to date information available at their fingertips.

So why should I be so concerned with what I am spending in print?
Because likely your companies CORE business is not print procurement. It is more likely things like manufacturing or service related industry. So when budget crunch comes, a couple of the most likely areas that management will look to cut will be the marketing department where likely all of the print purchases come from. So indirectly (or quite directly) print procurement is the likely area to be cut without any solid information as to whether that is the best choice or not. If a buyer can show and provide accurate and solid information to the company president as to what is being spent, it is easier for them to weigh the Return On Investment and likely they will look to cut costs in other areas of the company if you can show the value that print is providing to the organization. Presidents are going to cut areas that cannot show or even have a handle on the spend. Reporting provides the president with not only the information but assurance that your department is aware and can react quickly to decisions that may need to be made.

How equipped is your organization to be able to respond quickly and accurately to your managements inquiries?

Next episode - evaluating supplier responsiveness!

Is it time to consider PDF a threat?

As Joel Hruska points out in his article on ARS Technica, Adobe seems to not be doing themselves any favors once again. Printers should seriously consider the possible damage that could be caused to a 6 figure piece of equipment because of a $49.00 piece of software. Read Joels article here: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080212-is-it-time-to-consider-pdf-a-threat.html

Has it all been said?

One of the interesting things about going to conference's is the opportunity to talk to people and explore the surroundings of a conference find restaurants nearby etc. A part of that interest comes in hearing the topics of the conference being discussed over the dinner table with people you have met only a day or two before and sometimes people you work with for years. I find it interesting in hearing the conversations of what was missing or what the conference lacked because likely those things do not get on the evaluations after the conference. At this show I have heard a recurring theme over the last couple of days there is some great information but none of it really applies to my business or my situation. Or, "they should have..." you know...they should have talked about this... OR they should have talked about that...Or why didn't they have this company or that company at the show. Sometimes this is just "Babble" you know the kind where the person saying it doesn't really know what they are talking about they just want to hear their own voice...or their afraid of the silence that might suddenly appear around the table. Other times though there are some good ideas...the one I heard today seemed very pertinent to this particular show. Companies are using systems to purchase and track their print costs and sometimes they are not always the right system for the job. So why did we not hear about purchasing and procurement systems? Why did we not hear about processes to make your production more efficient? Or even what kind of reporting is important to our supervisors or is reporting important even? The short answer for most of this is that I think there is a wide variety of personalities in this type of work. You have creative types that by their own admission spreadsheets scare them, and then you have the analytical's, the ones that if you stuck a paint brush in their hand they would think you wanted them to paint the house! It is a tough mix in this industry and I am not saying it should be all one way or the other, I just think there isn't enough focus on the analytics, the business side of producing print the processes involved in actually take a set of specifications and turning them into a brochure. For the next few weeks I think I will try to answer some of these questions you may have walked away without answers to. I think the reporting questions are probably some of the most important questions to answer as from a system producer perspective this is always one of the first questions about our system that I get from the decision makers in a company. So I will try to start with the questions and hopefully provide some answers for your boss. So back to my original question; Has it all been said? I don't even think it's been asked yet!!!
By the Way! This is a great show and has a LOT of variety!
JG

A Quick Note From Print Oasis 2008

Good Morning from Amelia Island FL.
The weather has been incredible these past few days...Sunshine, Warmth, the Ocean Breeze! The conference is busy and active as usual with great speakers and LOT's of Exhibitor's.
There are more exhibitor's at this years show than at least the last 4 years reaching more and more Print Buyers. It is 8:30 in the morning and the lecture I am sitting in is full of attendee's. My rough count is 250. The show floor is busy and filled with Print Buyers looking for everything form the latest in promotional items to variable data printing formats and technologies. There are Printers, Office Supply companies to Software Solutions providers exhibiting at the show. Tonight is the Paper show where some of the leading paper companies will be displaying their goods and materials for all to consider.
I am currently sitting in on Steven Lance and Paul Kurnit as they discuss branding 2.0 The session is focused on advertising and the print industry. The show is full of great information for all print buyers across any industry. Steven and Paul will be doing a book signing later today on the exhibit floor. Well time to get back to the show! Wishing you were here!

Print Oasis 2008 this weekend!

This weekend is Print Oasis 2008 being held at Amelia Island Plantation resort in Amelia Island Florida. The show begins Saturday and runs through Tuesday, with opportunities for Print Buyers and Suppliers to mingle and gain knowledge of the latest happenings in print procurement. This is a great opportunity as well to talk with print buyers from all over the country and gain insight into the needs of print buyers. James Tower will again be exhibiting at the show. I will be there along with one of our sales reps to discuss Cross-Wind and our many other services we provide to print buyers. If you are at the show please stop by and say hi and tell me what you think. You never know you might just get mentioned in my blog! Hope to see you there!!
Information about the show can be found at: www.printoasis.com