Services

Category:       Sheet-fed printing

Savings:         £115,000

Reed Business Information (RBI) is one of the world’s leading business-to-business publishers.

Procurement managers decided that the printing of its sheet-fed portfolio of 15 magazines, which had been undertaken by the same two companies for several years at a cost of almost £1 million a year, should be put out to quote.  They wanted to offer the work to a wider range of suppliers and make sure they were paying the best market price. The procurement team also wanted to explore whether there was a better way to supply the paper for the magazines. Traditionally it had been bought by RBI and sent to the printers, but they wanted to know if it would be more economic for the printers to buy it themselves.

They decided to ask TradingPartners for assistance, whose delivery managers examined RBI’s requirements in detail and set about scanning the market for suitable suppliers. A detailed Request for Information exercise checked everything from geographical location to environmental policy. TradingPartners shortlisted 50 potential printing firms, of which 24 were deemed capable of undertaking the work and were invited to quote.

Marianne Bushell, Group Print and Paper Manager, said “We teamed up with TradingPartners to look at all areas of spend because we thought it would bring some savings.  We were already planning to negotiate the sheet-fed magazines, so the project came at the right time for us. TradingPartners worked with the RBI supplier list and after an intense period of exchanging information, nine suppliers who could meet our start prices, went on to compete in the negotiation event.” Final bids represented savings of 12%, well surpassing expectations.

Marianne Bushell added, “We were very pleased with the result.  The saving was much better than we had anticipated.  The project has saved us a great deal of time and money.  Now we are looking at other areas of spend, where we can make similar gains working with TradingPartners.  Bringing all this together helped us see that we could focus more clearly on relationships with our suppliers.  It means we can be more systematic in our approach and make sure we gain maximum benefit from our supplier relationships.”