Trend toward procurement connections
- Companies with multiple departments or locations have a growing need to organize their marketing procurement processes more effectively and digitally.
- You can automate extensively within the purchasing process of marketing materials: from the procurement connections and print producers to the automatic control and invoice processing of the products.
- Case study: Smid Media Solutions, childcare organization and Prindustry
Case childcare organization
With Nicky Smid from Smid Media Solutions we have a triangle partnership that we use a lot. Smid is the print manager, we supply the software and there is a third party for whom we skillfully unite these two disciplines in an order platform for communication.
In this example that party is a large childcare organization with 60 locations throughout the Netherlands. Every location needs corporate clothing. The childcare organization wanted to organize the stock and ordering of this workwear more conveniently. Smid proposed our brand portal to flexibly unite all wishes in an online system. The organization soon used it not only as an ordering system for workwear. They now use it for all their brand communication. Because in addition to corporate clothing, they often also need posters, flyers, or promotional items. All 60 location managers can adjust these communication materials themselves, in their own portal, within design templates with fixed corporate identity elements. In this way, the head office can trust that all communications have the same appearance. For example, employees can only enter a new date on an invitation to an open day or enter a different theme on a poster.
Automating the procurement
This example shows some trends in automating the procurement process. There is a growing need in the market to organize all communication activities more effectively and digitally. This certainly applies to large marketing departments that are often terribly busy and work with many different employees, in some cases even worldwide. They want to organize their communication management centrally with efficient and consistent workflows. Automation is the answer to simplify and shorten processes.
This is mainly done through SaaS: Software as a Service. You do not have to develop or purchase this software yourself. You only pay for its use, and you use it through the internet, and for its maintenance, you usually pay that per month. Advantages are scalability, having access to all services everywhere and receiving automatic updates of the system. With a SaaS platform, a company manages the processes centrally and employees can easily order from a decentralized location.
Automatic monitoring of the brand also plays a major role. A company with a brand portal with an editor can rely on the fact that all communication products that are required or have to be ordered are presented in the same corporate identity. This saves mistakes, but also a lot of time. Employees no longer spend long figuring out everything about creating marketing communications. And of course, they also save time when ordering this with an automated system.
Within an automated system, all kinds of systems can also be interconnected. A portal can have an integration with an editor, but also with ERP, accounting, or payment systems. A very advanced system integration is a single sign-on. This is a custom product in the software that gives access to multiple systems via one login.
Purchasing and booking in one flow
The childcare organization makes continuous use of new automated procurement options. For example, they wanted to further automate the portals to connect to their ProActive expenditure system. This system is there to manage the expenses of each location. There had to come a connection between the ordering of the communication products in the brand portal and the automatic checking and invoice processing of these products in ProActive’s expenditure system. Prindustry has built a special procurement connection that ensures that you can purchase and book your products in one flow.
The location managers now have access to various web shops from the ProActive expenditure system. They can order communication products in the web shop of the brand portal. This order is imported into the spending system by the connection. Instead of completing the order separately in each web shop, everything is now done in one central system. Only after an automatic approval process, the order is offered to the web shop producer; in this case Smid. The internal approval processes are predetermined and set. You can also immediately enter an order number and cost center in the system. This of course saves a lot of time with administrative actions for the financial administration.
Automatic procurement links
Of course, the procurement of the physical printed products is not complete without producers. When a print order in a brand portal goes to a producer to be made, this link can also be automated.
Prindustry offers access to an Online Print Marketplace with dozens of print manufacturers in every portal. You can add your own supplier(s), but you can also connect a portal with many print media suppliers who offer their products within the Prindustry platform. Such a connection gives the opportunity to reach a wide range. We work with well-known producers such as Probo, Control Media, Saxoprint, Inpromo or Print.com.
This Marketplace is also of great value for our e-commerce web shops. With an open web shop for the sale of printed matter, you can conveniently use this Marketplace to sell and purchase a wide range of white label printed matter products.