Maximize Your Spend by Optimizing Print and Fulfillment Services by Jeremy Suratt

Here at Iron Mountain, we put a lot of thought into how we can go beyond off-the-shelf fulfillment services and deliver real value for clients. One way is by working consultatively with our customers to make their marketing programs more effective and efficient.

Through years of experience, partnering with some of the nation's biggest brands, we've refined a number of best practices proven to reduce clients' overall spend and improve their results. These practices have been compiled into an ebook titled 7 Steps to Optimizing Your Print and Fulfillment Program, available for download today.

In this ebook, you'll find actionable advice to help you manage your print and fulfillment programs more strategically. For example:

Start by getting a clear understanding of your current practices. Tracking key metrics will show you how efficiently you're operating and help you set targets for improvement. Your fulfillment partner should be routinely capturing and providing data on real-time inventory levels, order frequency, monthly usage, orders by user, obsolescence and more.

Print smarter. You can dramatically lower your costs by taking a hard look at the documents you print and how you print them. (Your metrics from tip #1 will help you here.) Are you printing more than you need because offset costs less per-piece when you print larger quantities? How much is obsolescence costing you? What if you produce a piece using digital print, instead? Print-on-demand can not only lower your production, storage and obsolescence costs, but also helps you keep materials fresh and up to date, as well.

Take control of your inventory. Your fulfillment system should not only tell you how much stock is in inventory, but also who's ordering what, how much, and over what period of time. You should be able to place restrictions on users what they can order, how often, and how much - to eliminate frequent reprinting due to people who habitually order more than they need. Establish optimal reorder points to avoid back orders (which can cost you sales), as well as rush reprints (which cost a bundle). And consider having your fulfillment services company switch critical pieces to print-on-demand when quantities get low, so you're never out of stock.

You undoubtedly put a lot of time, effort and money into developing relevant content that will draw prospects to your company and its products or services. Ask yourself, how much better could your results be if you had deeper insight into what's working well and what could use improvement? And wouldn't it be great to reduce your production costs, so that you could put those savings into expanding your marketing campaigns? 7 Steps to Optimizing Your Print and Fulfillment Program offers concrete steps to help you achieve these ends, so I hope you'll download and read it today.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2014/service-lines/marketing-production-...
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