For Print and Promotional Products, There’s a Better Way
Does your company have a purchasing department? There’s plenty of logic behind the idea as it only makes sense to have a group of people dedicated to sorting through vendors, assessing quality and capabilities, and keeping track of reliability and customer service performance. Why not collect in one area the people with the most knowledge of suppliers and the greatest familiarity with your corporate purchasing procedures? It also allows those skilled at negotiating to do just that on behalf of your company.
But it can be less logical to allow your purchasing department to handle everything. People skilled in the purchasing process do not necessarily have the same level of expertise in all the individual areas for which they are responsible. They may be very skilled and knowledgeable about placing frequent and systematic orders for the raw materials used in your manufacturing process, the equipment needed by your service people, or for other needs central to the basic mission of your company or organization. But…
Let Them Do What They Do Best
Those skills may not transfer to printed materials and promotional products. Ordering 7000 lbs. of extruded aluminum every two weeks may be right in the comfort zone of your purchasing people. But what about when the need surfaces for:
- critical corporate forms customized to reflect each of 14 different offices in three different time zones, reordered at different times, in different quantities?
- that elaborate new 24-page corporate capabilities brochure that has to represent your company at its best for the next year?
- those promotional giveaways for your corporate safety program and trade shows your company will be exhibiting at, or holiday gifts for your best customers?
The purchasing department has very little opportunity to develop meaningful expertise in these areas. That’s where Superior Business Solutions can be a big help.
Printing and Promotional Expertise Is Our Department
It is easy to unburden your purchasing department from these “one off” or out-of-their-element responsibilities, and improve your company’s performance in the process. By entrusting Superior Business Solutions with management of your supply chain for print and promotion products, you’ve upped your company’s game.
We’ll start by auditing and analyzing your current practices, and identifying ways you can streamline your selection, procurement and inventory management systems. This includes everything from commodity labels and forms to the full range of custom (and customizable) business forms, marketing collateral materials and promotional items. And it covers the whole process, from the moment a need is recognized through fulfillment.
With our proprietary automated e-procurement technologies like Corporate Kiosk, we can help you empower your end users to manage and control the acquisition of these items. But you decide who and how many of them have this capability by role or job function, and you determine the parameters and guidelines that will govern their options. That way you control the quality and consistency of your materials across the enterprise, while making life easier for everyone involved.
Not a Big Deal – Just a Big Improvement
A change of this nature sounds intimidating. But our consultative approach makes it painless. We seamlessly integrate our supply chain management and process improvement solutions into your current practices. You’ll see the results of better buying and considerable time and cost savings, all while freeing your own purchasing people to spend their time more productively.
Our unified, centralized supply chain management solution gives you a virtual purchasing department for print and promotional products – but one that has greater access to more high quality printing suppliers and far more promotional product vendors with an almost unlimited variety of creative and functional products available. It brings all those benefits I mentioned up front, but with an even bigger upside.
I’m a business guy, and from this side of the desk, it seems like a no-brainer. But that’s because I’ve seen us help countless companies save money, improve their quality control, and avoid the time wasted by employees who duplicate efforts as they “reinvent the wheel” every time they need to order (or reorder) a form or select a promotional item.
Maybe at this point you’re sitting there thinking – “yeah, but I’m not exactly sure how this would work with what we’ve got in place.” That’s an easy one – give me a call, and let’s talk about it. No pressure at all – but once you see how easy it can be, you’ll have trouble thinking of a reason not to do it!
