Monday 23 November 2009

My festive friend, Norm, was gazing blankly at an Oxford Street window when I came across him. "Shopping early for Christmas?", I enquired. 

"Just pondering over the odd bottle for one or two of the best customers", he grunted. "Don't want to overdo it. I give them a good service all year round. It's just a little personal touch."

"I thought finding ways to cut costs was all the rage for companies at the moment", I jokingly added. That seemed to spark Norm off.

"Not in printing", he retorted. "You can't cut costs easily without risking production efficiency. Sure, you can buy materials cheaper, or at least try. But printers do that anyway as a matter of course."

"So how do you deal with it?" I tentatively posed.
"By recovering costs!". He spat out the sentence with an aggression unusual even for him. "Every pound recovered is worth ten times that and more in sales terms. It's all net profit. You've done the work. Just charge for it."

My suggestion that printers should do that automatically was met with yet more scorn. "They forget or are too timid to charge for corrections, new film or plates, proofs, sealer - the list seems endless. It is amazing what some printers fail to reclaim. I remember Alf taking a job with one printer - he introduced a good MIS system, mind - he recovered the thick end of £100,000 in one year."

"Don't worry about me spending a few bob on some presents. A lot of printers' customers must think it's Christmas all year round." It's a funny old game, printing, isn't it?

(I wonder which MIS system Alf installed? Make recoverable costs easy to identify and justify with Printpak.  You can even download a free copy.)

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