Springwood managing director Gordon Wood took his own experience of running several print firms and turned it into a business tool direct on the desktop. Part reference manual and part diagnostic application, it aids continuous improvement as well as bigger strategic shifts.

Bradbury, who started out with his brother-in-law and a small Itek press in 1995, had gone from serving local schools’ print needs to winning the mailing house contract and subsequently adding stationery.

We went from no business to a growing business, says Bradbury. In 1998, the firm made its first move into digital to produce short-run books for the mailing house owner’s publishing business. We got into digital early on, and we’ve built up a lot of intellectual property there, says Bradbury.

Back on track
By the time problems arose, the firm had moved into a larger custom-built 550m2 factory. We’d lost half our business and our traditional print products were shrinking too due to the rise of the internet, he says. At this point, Springwood came to show TDPC an early version of EBM. It was very crude but it gave us the chance to look at the difficulties our business was in and to find a route through them.

The firm took the step of entering into a strategic partnership with a printer that offered complementary services, which would share its premises to ensure the overheads of the bigger factory were fully covered. TDPC also brought finishing in-house and made changes to increase sales and improve efficiency.

We’ve gone from a company that had lost its way to one that has found it, says Bradbury. We’re very confident for the future. Commercial manager Rachel Tait puts that optimism down to something beyond equipment and strategy: It’s an attitude. We used to say we ought to do things, now we make time to do them.

Bradbury says: If you’re in decline, you can take a very fatalistic approach. But while the management is partly to thank for attitude changes, TDPC does believe EBM’s Wood and associate consultant Chris Springford helped. I think it’s absolutely essential to have someone in the background who keeps you motivated, says Bradbury. EBM is great in that it shows you what to do. But Chris and Gordon come in and check up and ask difficult questions.

The turnaround strategy was devised by Tait and Bradbury, and two other senior managers, Bradbury’s wife Sally, who is company secretary, and company administrator Trudy Ashton. Tait completed a post-graduate course in print management to ensure the firm had a professional approach to management.

After the relocation and following decline, TDPC needed to cover the additional overheads of the premises. To that end, a fifth of the 550m2 site was let out to B2 multicolour print firm Print Projects. The deal works on several levels – not only does TDPC get rent, but Print Projects can also supply larger colour jobs that aren’t right for TDBP’s B3 litho and digital machines. Print Projects is also a trade plate maker, saving its partner from needing to invest in its own CTP kit.

Next on the EBM-driven agenda was to increase any production capability found lacking. Between its two litho presses, four digital presses, a pair of Océ 2110 monochrome machines and Océ CPS 900 and 650 colour kit, TDPC’s print firepower was adequate. The shortcomings were apparent in post-press, and specifically in perfect binding, an integral part of short-run book work. When the work was outsourced, TDPC found finishers couldn’t meet the need for fast and reliable turnaround times required or understand that the concept of short-run printing meant that copious overs weren’t available for machine set-up.

Return on investment
TDPC decided in-house perfect binding would enable it to offer the turnaround times its customers needed and that investing in equipment that didn’t need extensive set-up better suited digital short-run production. But before signing for the kit, Bradbury needed to be sure of return on investment, as the firm itself didn’t have enough work to fill a machine. We knew how much we were paying on out-work for perfect binding and we did some market research, he says. We found we could do trade work as other people had the same problems as us. So the firm invested in a Horizon perfect binding line, solving its own production problems and bolstering turnover with additional trade work.

The final problem identified by EBM was sales, and here TDPC adopted a multi-pronged approach to increase revenues while addressing the costs. Its first step was to buy the order books of three local litho businesses beginning with Pascal Print in 2004, followed by Stanton Print Services in 2006 and concluding with AHA Print Services in 2007. They all faced the need for investment and change, either to move into larger-format litho or digital, says Bradbury.

With a turnover of £1.1m and a staff of 16, TDPC is by some measures heavily staffed for the size of its order book, which the firm acknowledges: It sounds like a lot of people but that’s because it’s been a lot of small-value jobs, says Sally Bradbury.

EBM has allowed the firm to identify these shortcomings. It’s made us focus on costings, says Sally Bradbury. Having analysed its cost base, Tait says: We identified that we have a lot of small orders going through, which are costly to administer. Having unearthed the problem, the firm is implementing a web-to-print system from fellow Northamptonshire firm RedTie. By moving to an online storefront model, it hopes to continue producing small orders but make administration more efficient by moving to a contract-based approach.

Bradbury managed to secure matched funding from the local Business Link to invest in web-to-print. There’s a transformation grant available from Business Link to cover 50% of the costs, he says. One of the mantras of EBM is to make incremental improvements, as small as 1% each to as many aspects of the business as possible, on the basis that the myriad little projects all cumulatively add up to a big boost to the bottom line.

Tait is also working to improve supplier relationships, in a bid to cut the prices the firm pays and the administrative overheads of dealing with multiple suppliers. To do that, the firm is using the Vision in Print (ViP) purchasing strategy. Tait’s first focus is on one of the biggest costs: paper. We’ve worked out our spend for the year and gone out and asked the merchants we currently use to tender for the business, she says. We’ve currently got six merchants and we’re hoping to get it down to two as a result of the tender.

Once paper purchasing has been addressed, the firm plans to work further with ViP to improve efficiency as much as possible, starting by identifying the areas to address before embarking on its next phase of efficiency improvements. That’s not to say EBM has run its course – it is still helping to identify areas for improvement and to guide the firm in how to achieve them. We’ve got several projects on at the moment, and I don’t think we’ll ever run out of things to do, says Tait.

Printer The Direct Printing Company
Sector Trade, education, general commercial
Turnover £1.1m
Staff 16
Problem Lack of profitability following the loss of a major client and decline in markets
Solution Applied management tool Springwood EBM to develop and implement strategy

INSPECTION LESSONS
A strategy for success
• Recognise that you’ve got a problem
• Make the time to step back from the day-to-day issues to assess the bigger picture
• Use all the tools at your disposal
• An external mentor is useful as it makes the management accountable to someone
• Break things down into manageable projects and make sure each project is owned by someone
• Be open, it gets staff buy-in