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Why a Print Audit is Imperative
It is well recognised that soaring operating costs can comprise many small, ‘unnoticed’ costs, often so innocuous they are in effect hidden from view.
Print costs are one area of a corporation which can hide an absolute wealth of unnecessary costs. Overruns, extra proofs, late copy and ineffective ordering all combine to grossly inflate any given print job.
It is not unheard of that overruns can increase, even double, the price for any given job, should a few of the above factors combine. |
In summary, the reasons your print audit is imperative are as follows:
- Corporate Purchasing Officers are rarely experienced printers, so they can often have little option but to swallow whatever story their print rep spins for them.
- Unless your Purchasing Officer is well versed in certain aspects of today's commercial print industry, he or she will not only be unable to dispute much of what their print rep tells them, but will also have no knowledge of how to effectively place print orders so as to take full advantage of numerous and various print processes.
EXAMPLE: If you know what you’re doing, it can actually be cheaper to order too much of an item and throw the surplus away, than it is to order the actual required quantity of two separate print jobs.
- The prime directive of a Purchasing Officer is to purchase. The purchase is often at the end of a whole chain of circumstances over which the Purchasing Officer has no control.
The end result is your Purchasing Officer may be forced to buy badly because of a looming deadline resulting from poor planning elsewhere in your organisation.
- Poor planning can also lead to other costly ‘extras’ which impact on your bottom line. These come into play especially when your print supplier has been contracted, because he will be looking for any way to add extra charges to the job in an effort to recoup profits.
Extra proofs because the copy wasn’t thoroughly prepared, late changes to copy, last minute input from the project manager’s superior . . . all these and many others will lead to extra charges being added legitimately to the job.
- There is a common, if not widely known, term used frequently by print supplier insiders – the FMA charge, euphemistically known as the “For Miscellaneous Arising” charge. And many print firms are always alert for circumstances wherein which they can levy the FMA charge.
Is your current print supplier one of these?
- Because the ROI is so low in the print industry, some print industry sales representatives are consummate in forging, and then abusing, friendly relationships with Purchasing Officers.
- It is often very easy for print suppliers to incrementally increase their charges over a period once a relationship such as this has been developed.
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