What Your Business Can Learn from Orange’s $11m (£7m) Print Management Budget

The multinational mobile phone company Orange is one of the biggest cell providers in the UK and Europe. This is due in large part, much like any other big company, to the fact that they spend large amounts of cash on advertising and branding. Advertising and marketing in print format (ie on actual paper) forms a big proportion of this budget. Some common examples are flyer printing, instruction manuals, advertising billboards, magazine inserts 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.

However according to print industry journal PrintWeek, Orange spends approximately £7m per year on what is known as ‘print management‘. Not a penny of this is actually spent on ink or equipment or printing costs – it all goes into the strategic planning of that printing. It might seem a little OTT to spend this much on a third party service merely to oversee printing. Yet that thought wouldn’t last long if you understood what print management is capable of. The basic fact comes down to 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 significant proportion of the savings come from the reduction in print waste. Millions of dollars are lost every year by mistakes such as incorrect color calibration, problems with paper stock and simple typos which were ignored before sending to print. When you’re talking about large and complex print operations these are the kinds of things that frequently go wrong. It is because commercial printers needed to find an efficient solution to these that the discipline of print management was born.

On the other hand, an equally large part of the cost savings brought about by print management are through logistical planning and project management. By scientifically planning and project managing print jobs versus resources and available printers, print management companies are able to maximise efficiency. For example if you are using a large number of printing machinery units during peak times, by planning ahead and spreading the load you can use less machines, and less power, at any one time. Do the math and the outcome of this is that your printing costs come down. Ultimately this means you can print more and generate more return out of your print investment.

Here’s the good bit: print management is no longer the exclusive domain of huge enterprises like Orange. In the past decade the gains in digital printing technology have meant smaller scale print management solutions are possible for small to medium enterprises, meaning that the rest of us can enjoy the same kinds of cost savings the ‘big guys’ have been enjoying for years. So are you making the most of this chance?

Possibly Related Posts:

• How To Work At Home And Use Business Ideas For Home Businesses And Make Them Work In Your Favor
• Run Your Own Home Business With These Tips
• The Best Things To Do For Your Home Business
• Follow These Powerful Suggestions To help Make Your Small Used electric violin Enterprise A Achievement
• Suggestions To help You Perform From Electric violins !