The marketing manager of a leading global car firm has a dilemma. Her company no longer employs a print buying specialist, as it’s trying to cut costs, so those duties have been diverted onto her already cluttered desk. She has no knowledge of print, no idea what represents value for money and no real understanding of where to start in buying the simplest print product. So she is left with two choices: try her luck and deal with the printers direct or find a print management (PM) firm willing to talk her through the process.

This is an increasingly common problem in the thinned-out post-recession corporate world and, for the most part, the time-pressed marketers, designers and admin staff who have found themselves reluctant print buyers are opting to take the PM route – and the PM firms couldn’t be happier. It is not just the increase in work making them smile, but the fact that the hand-holding consultancy role they are now being asked to perform is giving them another way, along with the fulfilment and logistics duties some are starting to provide, of proving they are more than just a way of getting cheap print. 

However, there is a downside. Getting involved higher up the supply chain, perhaps even in the design process, opens PM companies up to more culpability, while having a client with little knowledge of the print sector requires a responsible and extremely honest approach to avoid accusations of misleading the blind. Also, there is the danger that if the client ignores the advice and sticks to its misguided guns, the resulting print product will be poor quality and wrong for the purpose, damaging print’s wider reputation, as well as the reputation of the PM firm in question.

DIY print buying
The thinking behind companies dropping print buyers is obviously cost-driven; a belief that print, like pens or paper, is a commodity and can be bought by anyone with a basic grasp of maths and the ability to stick to a budget. However, there are pitfalls. Mark Cruise, head of print management at BSkyB, a firm that brought specialist print knowledge in-house, says that if companies throw novice buyers into the deep end, there will be problems.

"It is definitely not advisable for companies to cut out specialist print buyers or in-house print operations unless they are also planning on dramatically simplifying or reducing their print requirements," he explains. "Handing print buying to someone with little or no knowledge will prove counter productive before long, either through mistakes made, inefficient buying or a combination of both."

It’s no surprise, then, that most take one look at the situation and run to a PM firm. It’s something the public sector has been doing for some time, according to David Burton, director of print and logistics at CDS. He explains that CDS deals predominantly with public sector clients and buyers will rarely be expert in matters of print. Hence, CDS has always offered a consultancy-style service to those clients. What has changed now, he says, is that the private sector is asking for the same thing.

"We have definitely seen a switch over from expert print buyers to people that are less expert, people such as designers, marketers and administration staff," he explains.

He adds that such is the blanket need across public and private sector now for consultancy style services that a traditional brokering-only PM business model is no longer sustainable. He says it’s not enough just to go with the cheapest option – clients want more.

Exactly what kind of advice these new buyers require from PM firms varies, but in general it is not a situation of them saying ‘here’s what we want, do something with it so we don’t have to think about it’. The buyers want to be much more involved than that. They want to remain responsible for the decision, but they want that decision to be better informed.

So for aspects like paper size, paper type, print process, lead times, use of colour, which colours to use, what represents good value – these are all things a print manager should be discussing with their client and advising them upon. But to do this effectively, the PM sector needs to be involved much earlier in the creative process, according to Steve Smith, managing director of Mosaic Print Management.

"We need to be involved right from the start," he explains. "There is nothing worse than a client engaging a creative agency and the concept being accepted, and then it finally getting to us and we know that if we made that item just 10% smaller we could get an extra 25% on the sheet, and that means a massive saving for the client."

By getting involved this early, creative decisions can be made so that designers are designing for print, rather than in isolation from it. However, Gurdev Singh, managing director of direct channels at Communisis, says that if this consultancy service is to be effective and trusted, then PM firms also have to be prepared to advise non-print solutions, if that is what suits the product best.

"If we think we can help the client by proving there is a better way of doing something – email, SMS or even social media – then that is a better solution all round than being print-only focused as the client gets better value and they get a partner rather than just a supplier," he explains.

Cross-media approach
This joined-up approach to consultancy is an alluring selling point to a marketing manager who is likely to have the cross-media buying power as well as the print buying power now under their control. Understandably, considering the time pressures on this increased workload, they would be looking for the easiest option in sourcing this and that is why BSkyB’s Cruise believes that if PM companies are to survive, they have to approach consultancy in the way Singh outlines.

"For PM, it’s no longer enough of an offering in itself to look after just the print element," he says. "A PM company must offer design assistance, marketing tools, back-up, logistics, fulfilment – they need to offer a lot more."

While this all makes for added value sells that the PM company can use to replace the low-cost print sell lost from ever depleting margins, there is a downside: taking on a consultancy role gives the PM firm a great deal of power and with that comes a great deal of responsibility. This manifests itself in two particular problems, the first one being culpability.

If the print buyer is overly reliant on the print manager and is following advice to the letter, then if something comes in over budget, or the product does not fit the brief, then responsibility for the failure will likely be placed at the PM company’s door. This is especially a problem when work needs to be turned around within a tight timeframe, according to Mosaic’s Smith.

"A lot of the campaigns we do are very time critical," he explains. "If we were to advise them to go down a certain route, which then proved to be flawed, it is a massive issue for the company and therefore for our reputation. So we have to be very careful that the right advice is being given."

A way around the problem is to ensure that when advice is given, rather than a single, ‘best’ option being provided, a range should be put forward. This means that the PM firm is still doing their job in consulting, but that the buyer has a range of options to chose from. 

"We give the client all the scenarios and they make the decision," says CDS’s Burton. "If we make the decision, we are in danger of not giving the client what they wanted. The risk is we have not understood, and then we are liable."

The second way responsibility can throw up some problems is that the PM company is potentially dealing with a print buyer with no knowledge at all of the print process and existing and historic pricing levels, which makes that person extremely vulnerable. Hence, PM companies have to ensure that they are acting responsibly, honestly and transparently.

"We do have a responsibility when it comes to people who do not necessarily know print," admits Burton. "We would never do anything that tries to con the client. If a client is looking for Rolls Royce, we would give them Rolls Royce. We have to be open and honest; it is key to the service and it is what the client is looking for."

But while the PM firm can be as open and honest as possible in their advice to the client, there is no obligation on the client to heed that advice. Consultancy is not about instruction, if the buyer opts to ignore the PM firm they can do. The danger is that if a PM company says those leaflets cannot be produced to that spec for that price, the buyer will simply drop the spec and that may mean a final product that is ineffectual and not fit for purpose, damaging both print as a medium and the reputation of the PM company.

"There is definitely a danger that if the client instructs the PM firm to act on price alone, then the quality of the print will inevitably deteriorate," says BSkyB’s Cruise.

But is it the duty of the PM company to be the enforcer of ‘good’ print? If the client wants to push for a low price and is unperturbed by the fact the final product is under par, then the PM company has no real cause to intervene – as long as the company tells the buyer the quality will suffer at the lower price, their duty is done. While this may not please the purists, who believe bad print is worse than no print, it does perhaps represent an economic reality that the PM companies are having to face.

Fit for purpose
That said, CDS’s Burton believes this is a scenario unlikely to occur, as he says buyers deserve more credit than that. He reveals that the phrase ‘fit for purpose’ is arising much more from the buying side, with clients asking questions about whether the print needs to be full colour, for example, in order to fulfil the brief. To do its job properly as a consultant, Burton says a PM firm has to aid the buyer in this process by not insisting on the highest quality print if it is not needed, but being more insistent when it is needed.

Through discussions like this the buyer will increase their knowledge of the print sector and the more consultancy work the PM firm does, the better knowledge the buyer shall acquire. While a return to knowledgeable print buyers is good for the industry, it may be less good for the PM firms – they may be educating themselves out of a job.

Singh, however, sees it differently. "There is admittedly the problem that if you pass on your knowledge and educate the client, they may well then take that knowledge and go elsewhere," he admits. "But we train our own staff and they train the customers, and in doing this, by sharing knowledge, the client opens up to you in return. In this dialogue we can show our expertise and the customers we deal with time and again are those we can show unequivocally that we can provide best all round value, rather than just cost value. They need the knowledge to be able to realise that."

Conversely then, in order for the consultancy services PM companies are now providing to be fully appreciated by the client, they need to educate the buyers out of the position of ignorance that allowed those consultancy services to be viable in the first place. However, as Singh says, in engaging in an open and honest relationship, and by this proving the worth of the PM business model that now includes more than just buying power, PM firms have ensured that, though print buyers may well acquire the knowledge they need to fly solo, it is likely that they will stick with the PM model that has proved itself to be indispensable.

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