Tips, tricks and advice for advertising management and print production.
Jennifer | 10:11 pm | September 17, 2007 | printers, printing, budgets, workflow, money, planning
The best way to make sure your job goes according to plan is to pick the right suppliers - people who will work with you to ensure a good product. There are several ways to make sure you get a good supplier:
* Check with other businesses that have had good printing done. Ask them who the printer was on a piece you liked and for the salesperson’s name as well. A good printer rep is the best insurance against a bad job.
* Check all references provided by the printer. Remember to ask questions about what is was like to work with the printer both during and after the piece was printed, not just about the quality or price of the job.
One supplier does not fit all
Suppliers specialize not only in the types of printing they do (offset, screenprinting, etc.), but also in the markets they seek out. Some printers specialize in large pieces like annual reports and high-end art printing. Others concentrate on business cards and stationery packages. If you use a printer who isn’t suited to the type of job you need done, you could pay more.
When you are getting references and meeting with suppliers, make sure to get their equipment lists and ask what they specialize in. Good reps will let you know where they fit in the local market.
Press size and colour determine your ideal printer. If you are doing 30,000 annual reports that are 4 colours throughout, a big press is a good choice. If you are doing 5,000 postcards, a smaller, cheaper press will do the job.
Dealing with suppliers
Once you have a good list of suppliers for your projects, you need to start working on good relationships with the salespeople assigned to you. A good client-supplier relationship will save you money and time.
At the start of the bidding on a job, let suppliers know that they are in a competitive bid situation. Most suppliers know where they stand price-wise and knowing they’re in competition will get them to sharpen their pencils. Don’t send one printer’s quote to another printer and tell them to try to beat the price, they’ll just take $50 off the price and it prevents you from getting honest prices.
One red flag to look for when working with a new supplier is the low-ball quote. These quotes are designed as loss leaders and usually have the objective of getting you in the door. Remember these printers have to make their money somewhere. You will find that the low price you get once is never seen again. Even worse, you could find yourself watching charges rack up once they have the job, due to changes that weren’t specified in the final price. If you think you have a low-ball quote, talk to the supplier a bit more. Sometimes they’re trying to get rid of an overstock of paper or their presses are quiet - the low quote may be genuine.
Jennifer | 9:49 pm | | process, workflow, money, plan, planning
Campaigns can get complex. But it’s easy to keep track of it all if you can follow the general flow of the job.
Reverse Engineering: plan back from your deadline
The best way to get a campaign out the door is to begin planning as soon as you can. This is a very simple breakdown of the stages of the job:
* Scope and budget for the project is laid out. Date needed is also set.
* A creative brief is sent to the creative and production teams to start work. {This brief is used by production to negotiate with suppliers and set creative limits.}
* Suppliers are contacted about everything from design to printing.
* Creative is completed and job is made ready for the printer.
It gets a lot more detailed than what I’ve laid out, but that should give you a rough idea.
The best way to make sure you have a realistic deadline is to look at your deadline and work backwards. A great way to do this is to create what is known as a Workback or Critical Path This workback should be given to all team members. This is their opportunity to let you know if they don’t feel they can stick to the workback deadlines.
A workback is a handy tool for discovering where bottlenecks might occur. If you are working on a group of collateral pieces for a trade show, you may discover that the designer would need to supply 6 designs in 2 days. That probably won’t happen, so now is the time to move things around.
A workback also has the advantage of giving you an opportunity to buy yourself time before the job begins. For example, your printer has told you he needs 4 working days to complete the job. You allow 5 days on your workback. This now means that should something go wrong (and it often does) you have given yourself some time to fix it.
Managing the Job
With or without a workback, you’ll still find plenty of people miss their deadlines. The best way to avoid big problems is to ensure that small delays don’t start backing things up. Watch the amount of time that is getting eaten up and put a stop to delays and missed deadlines before you run out of time.
If you think you are getting into trouble, you need to flag it to everyone involved and either get it back on track right away, or begin to discuss new delivery dates. Sometimes telling people the job will deliver late is a good way to get them to pay attention.