CBF Group's blog

So you have received one of our branded Order Confirmations.  Purely and simply this is confirmation that your Order with us is being processed.

Please make sure when you receive the email with the Order Confirmation attached that all the job details are correct as this information is the same as the working jobs sheets internally.  If your information is not correct make sure you tell your Account Manager as this may effect the end price and non of us like nasty surprises.

The information on the Order Confirmation should include the Name of the job, The paper stocks we are using to print your products on, the number of pages in your finished product and the finishing instructions including the folding, laminating, creasing and perforating.  There also should be the basic of delivery instructions on there to highlight that we are sending out the items to your address.

If there is any information that you feel should be on there please drop us a call as unless we know we cannot fix it.

Exposing your magazine or publication online can be daunting but if you’re not doing it already, why not?

The majority of publications rely upon advertising revenues to survive, so why wouldn’t you want your advertisements being exposed to a larger audience especially as it potentially can cost you nothing? Our E-book tools are offered as a free service to all publications and multipage documents that we print.

The flip side we hear daily is, ‘Why do we need your tools when we already have an online version?’ it’s simple, we are just another store front promoting your publication and with our social media following and know-how we make sure the right audience is reading your publication and pages that you want them to. It’s simple maths; why have one publication on lone when you can have two?

Our process is simple but extremely effective. We take your print files and convert them into an E-book with the aid of a personalised header to show it is your page the readers are looking at. We always ask you to describe the publication in your own words giving highlights and article breakdowns. Once live we will send you the link for you to place on your website or to promote wherever you want. We have a taste for social media and our favourite mediums include Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+ and we use these tools to promote our customers E-books.

Want proof that that it’s worthwhile? Then take the Caring Matters magazine below, which we produce quarterly for Carers Gloucestershire. Each time they publish a magazine we create an E-book for them and we have gained them an additional 30-40% additional readers, through their own internal promotion and our support through social media channels raising awareness of their services.

Also, unlike the other E-book services out there, our pages are searchable by Google and other search engines. This means that your publication will appear in listings and also support your advertisers further with their promotions.

Don’t think because the tools are free that they are ‘cheap’ in quality. We have invested a lot of time and money in making sure the offering works for all parties and on all formats including i-phones, i-pads, Android and all browsers.

Why is this all for free? What’s the catch? Again it’s simple. Without your success we have none. So as your chosen print partner we are able to give you all the E-book tools to promote your publication while you concentrate on getting the next edition together. Finally do not think that we build in the cost of this service elsewhere, our printing prices are some of the best in the industry. If you’re are looking to save money on printing your magazine or publication then fill in the 60 second quote form below or call us directly on 01242 237652 to discuss your needs.

It maybe a little bias to say that we have one of the best print management tools offerings in the country.  But in an industry that wants to charge you for processing a job, increasing fees for the number of users or sites you have on the tools.  What about being charged for the number of items you want to have accessible on the tools?  We have seen it all management fees and licencing fees you name it all of which will end up costing you more in the long run.

So if we said no to fees and charges for using our systems because that would help you process your print work, would that be refreshing?  Thought so.  Think of a world where you could put all your resellers, franchisees, staff and even customers if you wish to all access the materials you want them to see.  This world does exist its just you haven’t found it yet.  But now you have.

You may also want help promoting our tools to your user base.  We can help.  With all the ideas to help expose your brand and marketing materials to your databases work with us to make sure you are making the most of the personalisation of print materials, the database management and the brand management.

We win customers because of our tools being stable, useful and able to cope with the printing requirements of every company we come into contact with.  Our flexibility and Account Management / Industry experience is unrivalled.  With tens of thousands of customers having access to our systems why not call us today to find out why we are one of the only growing Print management companies in the country.

Firstly a quote from a very famous, very rich entrepreneur “If you don’t make selecting good suppliers a part of your business growth plan, you’re likely to regret it”..

A lot of people tend to forget that the suppliers that they work alongside on a day to day business are essential to maintaining their business. Without have the raw materials to make what you sell or help promote what you sell you will always have a tough time growing your business.

Business owners need to get out of the mindset that their suppliers are just a means of receiving raw materials at the cheapest possible price. For a long time there had been a stigma around suppliers that we are all just grumpy old men that you have to speak to every now and again to request a quote of place an order. This really is not true. I speak to various suppliers on a daily basis and all of them would bend over backwards for me to make sure I get everything I need to make an informed, calculated decision.

What makes a good supplier?

The majority of up starting and growing businesses tend to focus on one thing when picking their suppliers… price. This is certainly at the top of the list when picking a supplier but there is so much more to a supplier than an invoice at the end of each month.

Many people will find this statement controversial but probably the most important trait to look out for in a supplier is competency. You’ll want to find a supplier that can offer you the latest and most up to date products and services. Your supplier should also have a good knowledge of their industry with a willingness to talk to you about how to improve your business and move it forward. Never settle for a supplier that is just happy to push the paper work out, you should be getting a whole lot more for your money. Any decent supplier will be more than happy to put in the time with you and work alongside you to help grow and improve.

Reliability is one of the keys traits to look for in a supplier. What systems and backup do they have to ensure you receive exactly what you ordered and within the times lines you set them. People always tend to look to big companies for reliability because of the financial backing they have, it is always worth looking in to smaller suppliers as well. With smaller businesses they will always fight a lot harder to keep your custom and will always make time to give you their full attention.

Stability is always another factor to look into. Never be afraid to ask your supplier how long they have been trading for or even ask for a credit reference. If they having nothing to hide then they will be more than happy to oblige. Also do a bit of your own research. Does the company have a high staff turnover? If so then there is something not quite right. How many regular customers do they have? It doesn’t matter if a company boasts they have 1,000 new customers a day, if those customers don’t use them again then yet again there is something not quite right.

Most people wouldn’t even think twice about it but location of your supplier is extremely important. It is no good your supplier being the cheapest one out there saving you lots of money if it takes you twice as long to receive your goods. Also their set prices may be cheaper but calculate how much extra carrier charges etc may be costing you on top of that. It is not always possible to get the supplier you need in your own town or even if your country but if you ever do need to go further afield always ask about extra costs that maybe incurred for storing, transporting etc.

Supplier tip – Build up a better relationship.

Going back to what I mentioned earlier, not all suppliers are grumpy old men at the end of a telephone.  Make sure you speak to them and try to get to know them on a bit more of a personal level as well. The fact that your suppliers aren’t offering to work closely with you to improve quality, reduce defects and cut costs doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t want to. They may be under the impression that you are the reluctant one. So if you want a tighter working relationship with suppliers, let them know. You may also drop a hint that those who don’t want to work with you may see some of their orders being diverted to those who are more agreeable. Either way, you’ll know whether it’s your supplier’s reluctance, or their perception of your reluctance, that’s getting in the way.

If you would like to receive any further information on what you should expect from you Print supplier then contact a member of the CBF team any time. W: www.cbfnet.co.uk Twitter: @CBFprinters

Adam & the CBF Team

The good old phrase that gets bounded about daily in my life is ‘people buy from people’ and although it’s become a running joke in the CBF office – it’s so true.  This comes back to your personality and the presentation of you and the receiving attitude of the recipient so how do you get that across with print items?

Have you taken a step back and looked at how your company branding is received? Are you a corporate that needs to keep very straight in its image or are you trying to portray young, dynamic almost fluid branding .  Each are poles apart however it is possible to be corporate but be approachable, just take a look at the international brands Microsoft, IBM and Apple.  Each have an huge international presence but keep their branding full of colours and smiles from all walks of life to give us all the impression that they are a nice business to deal with.

So taking a leaf out of their book, remembering that there are very few new ideas in the world on re-vamped and tweeted old ones.  Take your corporate colours as starting point.  In this country we know that red generally is there to highlight things i.e. danger and warnings but marketers have used this to their advantage (i feel) too much and it has debased the ‘Warning’ currency.  Now we all like a warm feeling when it comes to colours but I bet you haven’t thought about what makes you click on a link – like this.  Actually it’s not a link but by making it blue and underlining its presence immediately draws the eye.  Don’t forget you have had years of ‘Chinese water torture’ teaching you that a blue underlined bit of text is something to click on with your mouse pointer.  How does this help your print personality I hear you say well in the most basic form of marketing that one link has not only got your attention but encouraged you to interact with it and that is what I’m guessing is what you want from your branding because that is what we ALL want.

Transform that into print and the interactivity is lost but the attention grabbing follows the same pattern.  We want all our customers to know that we know what are talking about but you must talk in their language for them to understand.  Your print personality is then tailored directly at them it may even be personalised to them with their company information, or cross sell items to help enhance their work or personal lives.  But whatever the purpose of the printed item, make sure your branding is clear throughout the document and try to speak directly to the reader to not only develop a ‘like minded’ thinking but a call to action to help them, help themselves; that way both personalities meet and move forward.

It’s here and benefiting us all. The electronic book is no longer a threat to you and your publication as we have invested in all the tools and processes to give you access and the means to have your publication online accessible to all. The best part is that it’s for free.

So for every publication we produce we can place all the pages on a personally branded section of our site. Conveniently setup in Category and Publication sections each one of your publications/books can be read through by all readers giving you an extra selling point for your advertisers and contributors knowing their work will be published online. Once posted online we can even enable each publication to have its own comments section for members of the public or even you to write some blub about that specific edition.

The Ebook/Emagazine viewer presents itself in a small easy to click through version and also a full page version so people can zoom in on specific articles and images. Check it out here: onlinemagazine.cbfnet.co.uk

The final icing on the publication cake is that we like helping you promote your publication you may have seen that we love our social media including twitter, blogs and forums so we are determined to tell everyone that we have your latest publication online for all to read reaching our nationwide audiences. This is of course if you want us too…

What’s in it for us and why is it a free service, I hear you ‘What’s the catch?’ well we all know that it’s hard enough to promote our own businesses so we have taken the view of helping others to help you be more successful ultimately means that you are more likely to succeed and therefore more likely to keep producing printed materials.

If we can help you answer any questions about the Ebook service just pick up the phone or drop us an email we would love to help you. Speak soon.

Outsourcing your Print processes can be a complicated task.  With so many elements of your business buying print on a daily basis it’s often hard to channel your buying to set supply chains and get the combined buying power/economies of scale if multiple parts of your business are using different printers for different items. 

This is where CBF come in.  By centralising buying power your print spend can be reduced up to 25% we have proved time and time again that outsourcing your print materials can not only reduce costs but it improves efficiency with the process, rollout and tracking of orders making your business more profitable.  This combined with maintaining brand standards, paper stock management and online artwork manipulation tools your savings for outsourcing just keep coming.

So where do you start your journey to print outsourcing utopia?  Firstly by analysing your spend and how you order your printed materials.   

The basic questions you need to answer include:
Tighter brand standards/controls needed on your print?

Is your print spend controlled by budget restrictions?

Do you need more than one person to order print materials in your business?

Do you need to give the persons ordering access to personalising tools?

Is there multiple sites or departments that need to be delivered to? Are some of those international?

Can your business improve with print process improvements?

Does print outsourcing help your become more scalable?

If you answer yes to any of these questions then Print Management Outsourcing is for you and your business.  There are many outsourcing models some will suit and some that don’t.  But essentially one print supply chain will make your business run more efficiently and profitably.

Our outsourcing model gives you the controls to manage budgets, digital collateral & artwork manipulation, Print Storage and Turnaround times.

Are your procurement teams wasting time getting multiple quotes, chasing suppliers and trying to juggle multiple jobs? By outsourcing your print materials would eliminate the headaches of all the multiple supply chains. Most print management companies manage their own supplier database on your behalf getting the best rate possible with their buying power and some like us (CBF) have our own production sites as well as a comprehensive supplier list to make sure you never get a raw deal. 

So if you or your staff are tearing their hair out chasing to get jobs finished on-time then drop us a line. 

We have been managing print since 1986 we can help.

As we deliver printed materials nationally and internationally on a daily basis, we have learnt that there are better ways than others to organise multi site role outs or drops of multiple items.

So where do you start? Timelines, regardless of whether you’re sending to 5 sites or 500 sites across various locations you need to work back from the point of completion. Taking that into account, we know that the majority of mainland U.K deliveries are next day and depending on your international locations can take up to 7 working days, depending on sending tariff. As a note, if you are delivering to one or multiple of the Royal Mail distribution depots make sure you adhere to all their packing requirements i.e. box labels, numbers of items per box. Final courier tip is make sure you have access to the delivery information from your courier, the name, time and confirmation of drop is essential especially if a remote location denies receiving their goods.

Print production planning next, this is massively variable depending on the complexity of your printed items, but most print jobs can be completed within a 5-7 working day window, so if we work with that as a guide. Now this is where you need to pre plan with us to find out about production timelines and fulfilment requirement options. You may want to think about releasing certain sites before others so make sure you pre plan these options alternatively you may be happy with getting parcels out as soon as they are ready in part and not as a completed set this will speed up the final drop being delivered.

Finally artwork and item planning, depending on whether you design your artwork in-house, with a professional agency/designers or do it yourself, make sure you create all artwork pieces to our guidelines (normally CMYK, 3mm bleed and all text converted to outlines). If you are looking to have various items fulfilled together make sure you get these artwork pieces get submitted together as they will be printed in sequence and will need machine time planning.

This is just a basic guide for a more in-depth plan and a print quote drop us a line and we can help you achieve the print plan you’re looking to achieve.

Varible data can be supplied to us manually via a spreadsheet (excel or csv) file or through a finished artwork document using Quark, PDF, Indesign or Microsoft Word.

THe alternative is to automate your files to us either via email or over secure VPN/FTP transfer methods.  We can work with your internal software output to create the variable data print items you are looking to achieve.  With a dedicated IT team managing our IT infrastructure we can cope with most scenarios.

As all variable data jobs are different please contact us for a print quote – www.cbfnet.co.uk or 01242 237652.

Thanks
Lawson

Using technology to simplify your processes and take some of the burden out of your office seems like a complicated process but with all the tools available to use and the IT strength CBF have we can not only make light work of your print outsourcing but make the change over process simply and as smoothly as possible.

What’s the process?
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