The Principle Of Print Management: Saving Money By Being Organized
The multinational mobile phone company Orange is one of the biggest cell providers in the UK and Europe. This is not least because of the large scale advertising and marketing campaigns it runs, just like any major brand. A big chunk of this advertising budget is spent, inevitably, on printed paper marketing in one form or another. Some common examples are leaflet printing , booklets and pamphlets, consumer magazines, billboard posters and direct mail materials. You can imagine that they would spend a huge amount of money on producing this type of material, with colossal budgets to boot.
Yet according to a recent news story within the print industry, Orange in the UK also spends £7m every year on ‘print management ‘. Remember this is not spent on the actual printing costs, but on the overall planning and management of all that printing. In these times of recession this amount of money may seem excessive, even for such a big company. Yet if you understand what is meant by print management, you might begin to see why such sums are justified. The simple fact of the matter is this. Companies which spend money on a print management specialist actually tend to save money compared to those who try to manage their printing by themselves.
A large part of these savings comes down to reducing wastage. Every year, millions of dollars are lost forever in the ‘collateral damage’ caused by color calibration mistakes, messed up print jobs, typographical errors and the like. If you consider unwieldy and complex print marketing strategies this is quite often the case and these costs are written off as ‘inevitable’. Print management as a concept came about because businesses who relied on printed media needed to find a solution to these inefficiencies.
Aside from reducing waste, another thing print management is able to achieve is planning the logistics of all the varied print campaigns so that resources and time are used most efficiently. By scientifically planning and project managing print jobs versus resources and available printers, print management companies are able to maximise efficiency. A classic example is when poorly managed campaigns lead to a maxing out of printers and equimpent during busy periods – if you plan ahead and spread out the jobs you can reduce significant overheads. This in turn can dramatically bring down the costs of printing. So you can either achieve the same amount of output for less money, or reinvest the savings in more print marketing and ultimately more ROI.
I know what you’re thinking – that’s all very well for Orange, but what about our company?. With digital printing revolutionising the industry in the past few years print management is now actually accessible to SMEs who have relatively far smaller printing campaigns to consider. So are you making the most of this chance?
