CBF Group's blog

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.

As we have a national courier contract we casn deliver anywhere accross the UK and Europe next day.  We can also send parcels accross the world but the timelines do vary from country to country.

All our parcels are monitored and tracked so we cqan trace them for you if you need to know their locations.