Print Services
Strategic Sourcing

Increasing Agency Value through Budget Optimization and Relationship Management

Strategic Sourcing Services For Print Services

At Corcentric, our strategic sourcing team deeply understands the intricacies of print services and the role they play in sales and marketing. We can help you not only identify the right partner to meet your organization’s needs but establish practices that drive cost transparency and strengthened relationships with your print provider(s).

As an integral component of sales and marketing strategies, print materials are crucial to any business. Providing sales collateral, brochures, flyers, and more, Sales and Marketing departments require commercial print partners with the capabilities and creativity that reflect the needs of the business. With no shortage of print shops in the market, each offering a wide range of services, selecting a best-fit vendor can be a complex undertaking. With deep insight into the commercial print landscape, Corcentric’s marketing sourcing experts can help navigate the industry to find a the most qualified and capable providers for your company’s needs.

Essential to supporting campaigns ads, print items reinforce other marketing activities; fostering brand and messaging consistency. Corcentric’s print value optimization experts recognize the importance of commercial print to your marketing strategy and can help identify a partner whether you’re looking for digital, off-set, sheet-fed, or ink-jet printing. Our proven strategic sourcing process ensures your print product quality standards, service levels, and volume/ demand requirements are met.

Through our past experience in this space, Corcentric print services spend management experts developed the following process to identify a best-in-class supplier and achieve results for our clients:

Understand the current state of your print services, including suppliers utilized, job frequency and sizes, and collect necessary print specifications.
Establish a scope of work, detailing print requirements, job volumes, specifications, turnaround times, and other qualitative requirements.
Based on the scope of work, identify potential print shops able to provide services, high-quality deliverables, and value-added services.
Develop Request for Proposal documents, including scope details and soliciting information on print and fulfillment capabilities, equipment, and other qualitative requirements.
Obtain pricing details from bidders for print jobs based on historical and/or forecasted job volumes, including a breakdown of the cost components (i.e., set-up, press, materials, etc.)
Analyze bid responses and qualitative responses using pre-established selection criteria in order to down-select to finalist bidders.
Negotiate pricing using market intelligence from RFP process.
Establish a best-in-class agreement with awarded supplier(s), including KPIs and SLAs to monitor performance.

Leveraging our vast industry experience and strategic sourcing best practices, our two-pronged approach works to not only optimize your commercial print budget, but also enhance your provider relationships. Corcentric’s commercial print sourcing experts have an in-depth understanding of print services, the suppliers in the space, and marketing trends. We’ll work to provide your organization with improved visibility into the cost components of your print jobs, and establish a paper buying or indexing program to effectively manage material costs. In addition, we’ll drive stronger vendor relationship management with your commercial print provider, establishing best-in-class agreements including clear KPIs and SLAs for effective performance monitoring.

Strategic Sourcing Marketing Services

We have more than two decades of experience helping Sales & Marketing groups identify value in their agency relationships through strategic sourcing efforts – a service that includes:

Case Study

Professional Services Print

A large professional services firm with over $5.5 billion in revenue was looking to reduce their costs by 20%. The client approached Corcentric to collaborate with their internal strategic sourcing team in order to source their print services after identifying this category as a potential savings opportunity through an internal savings analysis.With over $6 million spent on printing services within the organization, Corcentric used our database of price points and market intelligence to determine the savings opportunities in the category, as well as potential value-added services that the client could benefit from, such as warehousing, design work, form services, and order processing improvements.

Using specifications gathered through supplier interviews and client provided documentation, Corcentric went to market and identified potential partners for these services. Through our strategic sourcing initiatives we were able to qualify a supplier that could provide services with 31% savings compared to the current provider. Following the success of the printing services sourcing initiative, the client engaged in additional sourcing initiative with Corcentric in marketing, fulfillment, and facilities operations.