Major Challenges for Today’s Print Buyers
By Margie Dana
From time to time in our PBI LinkedIn Group*, I initiate general discussions to get a sense of current challenges faced by print customers. I posted this very discussion recently. The comments were a mix of client issues, career issues, and provider issues. Can you relate to any of these?
Client Issues
- Getting clients to follow a schedule.
- Getting project managers and creatives to include me in the design phase early enough, so that I can identify production issues and help ensure the job files are set up properly.
- Working with clients who don’t know what they want.
- Working with clients who think that producing printed materials should always be as fast as a photocopier.
Career Issues
- Whether we’ll have a job in the next year or two.
- Having enough time to do R/D on a complex project.
- Whether we can learn tricks & tips from the big outsourcing organizations to use to our advantage.
- Using sophisticated measurement and verification techniques to obtain consistent print quality from all of our providers.
- How do I make my role essential to my company?
- How can I develop my skills – and what exactly should I be learning?
- How much effort and expense should I (my firm) put into ongoing technical education in print manufacturing?
Provider Issues
- Getting estimates in a timely manner with correct specs. I’d like makeready and run/M broken out, too.
- Getting printers to appreciate that schedules change.
- Negotiating with printers on last-minute specs.
- Timely communications from printers, for example, knowing when a job has shipped (even an email would do).
- Getting providers to be transparent; that is, I want to know what’s happening with my job, especially when things go wrong. I’d rather know what’s going on.
These are just a few examples of challenges print buyers face right now. What would you add?
*The PBI LinkedIn Group is restricted to print customers, marketers, and designers.
©2011 Margie Dana. All rights reserved. Your comments are encouraged. You’re free to forward this email to friends and colleagues. However, no part of this column may be reprinted without permission from the author. Comments?