4 Powerful Ways Standardized Pricing Can Improve Your Print Spend
For companies and organizations with large print expenditures, standardized pricing isn’t just some jargony print term. It’s a pricing option that gives a competitive advantage. Here’s how it can work for you.
A standardized pricing approach assumes your print needs are more than a series of single projects. It involves a print vendor taking the time to analyze and evaluate your projected print projects to maximize your economy-of-scale pricing.
From that analysis, the printer can then turn to their suppliers to buy print materials more strategically and cost-effectively.
The advantages are then passed on to you in the form of a value-based, standardized price list that, among other benefits, saves you time and money.
We’ll take a closer look at those benefits below. But first, let’s make sure we understand exactly what standardized pricing is.
Before standardized pricing: The old way
Let’s say you contact three printers to price an order of 5’ x 3’ banners. Typically, they’re going to develop a quote based on the physical dimension of the item and your requested quantity.
Unfortunately, this approach not only means you’re at the mercy of unpredictable pricing, it also requires a time-consuming process on your end that involves:
- Documenting the print specs for every project and distributing to multiple vendors
- Waiting for the questions to come in and then responding accordingly to each
- Waiting some more for the all price quotes to arrive
- Taking the time to finally choose an option and green-lighting the project
- Hoping you don’t get bait-and-switched after the fact due to differing “interpretations” of your specs
After standardized pricing: The new way
To continue our banner scenario, here’s an example of what standardized pricing looks like.
Rather than give you a single price on a one-off printing project, a printer with a standardized pricing option would instead follow-up your request with questions like:
- How many of these banners do you produce a year?
- How many do you produce a month?
- Do you order them in mass quantities, like 10 at a time, or is it always just one?
- Is your need for these banners predictable or unpredictable?
Now let’s say this printer discovers you actually need 30 of these banners every month. They go back to their banner substrate supplier and say something like, “Instead of buying just one roll of this at a time, we’d like to buy 12 in advance. What kind of discount can we get?”
Assuming the supplier values the long-term relationship, the printer will get a significant discount. And that transforms the entire pricing dynamic.
4 game-changing advantages of standardized pricing
The benefits to this approach really start to add up:
1. Save through bulk purchasing and discounted raw material costs
Standardized pricing creates long-term cost savings. Your print vendor’s upfront efforts to secure bulk discounts and economy-of-scale pricing creates an advantage that conventional per-project quoting simply can’t.
2. Save time by bypassing the quote hunting
If you’re in procurement, you know gathering quotes can burn up hours of your time. And the inconsistency of per-project prices can make the process even more painful. But when you’re working from a standardized price list, you can literally price a project yourself.
3. Predict spending confidently and accurately
Whether it’s at the project, campaign, or program level, standardized pricing empowers you to forecast spending accurately. So when your VP of Marketing wants to see that print budget, you can now do that confidently–and almost immediately–with standardized pricing.
4. Enjoy a pricing structure that fosters a strong, transparent partnership
Standardized pricing doesn’t mean prices are mysteriously fixed. You can and should know exactly what factors are determining your costs—because those factors may change.
In fact, if you’re spending upwards of $250,000 or so a year on print and print-related services, you should consider a contractual arrangement with your print vendor. This can include meeting quarterly to review your prices and updating them based on market conditions.
This is what a long-lasting, mutually advantageous partnership with your printer can look like.
The logic of standardized pricing: It’s a win-win for both parties
It takes a lot of time and effort for a printer to develop a standardized pricing list for you. So why would they opt for this kind of individualized cost structure?
Because when customers use standardized pricing, the printer can predict their own workload more accurately and then adjust their staffing accordingly.
Moreover, by understanding customers’ long-term needs, the printer can turn to their own supply vendors to help solve challenges, not just provide a commodity.
Meanwhile, you’re saving time, transforming your print spend for the long-term, and managing a process you once had little control over.
