Commercial Print

Commercial Print commonly refers to printed materials that communicate with customers, external stakeholders and employees. This includes everything from brochures, direct mail, course catalogues, market research, dent information kits, flyers, marketing materials, annual reports to employee communications such as pension and benefits statements.

Commercial print jobs are generally subject to two or three competitive bids and highly labour-intensive print production management activities. The landscape of suppliers is very crowded and available capacity is highly cyclical, driving pricing on a per-job basis. Quality can be inconsistent, and print jobs are usually subject to intense pressure to complete and distribute within narrow windows of time.

Strategically sourcing Commercial Print must create new and actionable management information such as management information about costs, including total annual expense and the cost of obsolescence. Once the type of materials produced (brochures, direct mail) is detailed, the next step is to determine the type of equipment required to produce an optimal product (offset, digital print, web print).

Although some small jobs will surface that may not fit into the overall strategy (invitations, poster sized cheques, etc.), approximately 98% of all commercial print should be subject to an overall Sourcing strategy to select a well-defined supplier base and e-enable management of bid processes and print jobs through the approval and production cycle. There are several robust software products and suppliers available in the marketplace to ensure viable execution of a strategy that results in 20-45% cost savings regardless of cyclical volumes in the marketplace, while significantly improving all supporting processes.

ONTALA gets results.