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. A large proportion of this advertising involves a huge proportion of physical printing of some kind. Some common examples are leaflet printing, point of sale posters, magazine inserts, printed merchandise 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.

But a recent news story in the print indusrty press revealed that Orange also spends £7 million every year in the UK on ‘print management‘. Not on the actual costs of printing; this is spent on a company to actually manage all their printing activities. It might seem a little OTT to spend this much on a third party service merely to oversee printing. But a good understanding of the benefits of print management would soon clear it up. The basic fact comes down to this. It has been proven in the business world that if you are willing to invest in print management you can actually end up SAVING a large amount of money rather than trying to manage printing yourself.

A big chunk of the money saved is due to lowering the amount of wasted print material. 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. If you consider unwieldy and complex print marketing strategies this is quite often the case and these costs are written off as ‘inevitable’. Print management as a concept came about because businesses who relied on printed media needed to find a solution to these inefficiencies.

On the other hand, an equally large part of the cost savings brought about by print management are through logistical planning and project management. Print jobs and schedules are planned in scientific detail to reduce the cost associated with electricity use, overheads and purchase of unneccesary equipment. 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. This of course means that you can get more printed for your money. 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. Is your company making use of this opportunity?