2. E-auctions & Reverse Auctions
Printers say…
Shocking!
Crazy!
Are we still allowed to make money???
Print buyers say…
Great tool to cut prices!
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3. E-auctions & Reverse Auctions
What’s it all about?
New way of ‘selling’ jobs to printers
Procedure:
• Information gathering, at selected printers
• First quotes by printers
• Top 5 e.g. is selected
• Online, live ‘auction’ of jobs
• Printers see the price level of competitors and
can adjust their prices, downwards of course…
• Other criteria than price can be taken into
account for ranking
• Outcome: either winner gets it all, or
negotiations with top 3
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4. VIGC Study
3 parts:
Survey - General part: how good do
printers know their customers, how do
buyers appreciate the printers
Survey - E-auctions as such
Interviews with printers & print buyers
Survey:
Online survey
100 participants, 2/3 printers, 1/3 print
buyers
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5. Do Printers Know what Buyers Want?
Same question for printers / print buyers
How important are following factors in
choosing a printer?
• Price
• Quality
• Service
• Creativity
• Flexibility
• On time delivery
• Financial stability
• Stability of workforce
• Thinking along with customers
• Personal contacts
• Skills (printing)
• It-skills
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6. Do Printers Know what Buyers Want?
Same question for printers / print buyers
Rating on a scale from 1 (not important) to 5
(extremely important)
Sometimes interesting differences between
what printers think is important and what
print buyers really consider important…
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7. Do Printers Know what Buyers Want?
Rating on a scale from 1 to 5
Printers Print buyers
Price 3,94 8 3,94 7
Quality 4,11 5 4,56 2
Service 4,31 3 4,34 5
Creativity 3,23 10 3,42 11
Flexibility 4,40 2 4,47 3
On time delivery 4,44 1 4,78 1
Financial stability 3,08 11 3,66 10
Stability of workforce 2,90 12 3,06 12
Think along with customers 4,13 4 4,16 6
Personal contacts 4,02 7 3,68 9
Skills (printing, graphic arts) 4,03 6 4,38 4
IT-skills 3,26 9 3,75 8
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8. Do Printers Know what Buyers Want?
But… if we ask this in a different way…
Which factor is the most important, the
second most important and the third most
important?
Then we see something different…
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9. Do Printers Know what Buyers Want?
But… if we ask this in a different way…
Most important factor Printers Print buyers
price 42% 45%
quality 10% 36%
service 23% 3%
creativity 0% 0%
flexibility 16% 9%
on time delivery 0% 0%
financial stability 5% 6%
stability workforce 0% 0%
think along with customers 0% 0%
personal contacts 3% 0%
Skills (printing, graphic arts) 2% 0%
IT-skills 0% 0%
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10. Do Printers Know what Buyers Want?
But… if we ask this in a different way…
Number of times mentioned
in top 3 Printers Print buyers
Price 96% 1 97% 1
Quality 54% 2 76% 2
Service 48% 3 30% 5
Creativity 3% 8 3% 8
Flexibility 43% 4 33% 4
On time delivery 0% 11 0% 11
Financial stability 26% 5 39% 3
Stability workforce 3% 8 3% 8
Think along with customers 0% 11 3% 8
Personal contacts 13% 6 6% 7
Skills (printing, graphic arts) 8% 7 0% 11
IT-skills 3% 8 9% 6
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11. Do Printers Know what Buyers Want?
Scale 1-5 vs Top 3
On time delivery
• Highest ranking for both
• But nowhere in Top 3…
Skills
• Resp. 6th / 4th ranking (printers resp. print buyers)
• But only 8% / 0% in Top 3…
Thinking along with customers
• Resp. 4th / 6th ranking
• But only 0% / 3% in Top 3
So… it seems that both printers and print
buyers take these for granted…
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12. E-auctions, the Printer’s Vision on it
Q: already being approached by
customer to participate in e-auction?
39% yes, 61% no
If not, would you consider to participate?
• 46% yes, 54% no
If yes, how did you evaluate it?
• Scale 1 (very negative) – 5 (very positive)
• 1: 48%
• 2: 38%
• 3: 10%
• 4: 0%
• 5: 3%
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13. E-auctions, the Printer’s Vision on it
Q: was the e-auction organised by
existing customer?
63% yes, 37% no
Q: did you get enough time to prepare?
58% yes, 42% no
Q: were the specifications, questions, …
clear enough?
48% yes, 52% no
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14. E-auctions, the Printer’s Vision on it
Q: were there printed samples?
38% yes, 62% no
If not, do you believe they were necessary?
• 83% yes, 17% no
Q: were there technical problems during
the auction?
31% yes, 69% no
Q: who got the order?
No idea: 34%
The cheapest: 28%
Best price/quality: 0%
Shortlist, further negotiation: 31%
Other: 7%
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15. E-auctions, the Printer’s Vision on it
Note: now are sample gets thin…
Q: if you got the job, did it generate
extra work?
1 resp. (17%) yes, 5 resp. (83%) no
Q: were jobs conform specifications?
0 resp. (0%) yes, 5 resp. (100%) no
If not, did this have an influence on the
production cost?
• 5 resp. (100%) yes, 0 resp. (0%) no
Could you charge these extra costs?
• 3 resp. (60%) yes, 2 resp. (40%) no…
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16. E-auctions, the Printer’s Vision on it
Q: did you get other jobs than those that
were auctioned?
3 resp. (50%) yes, 3 resp. (50%) no
Conclusions
The opinion of printers on e-auctions is
very negative
And often with reason…
• Technical problems
• Not enough time to prepare
• Not enough or not the right information
• No extra jobs, only lots of paper work and a
lower (or no) margin…
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17. E-auctions, the Buyer’s Vision on it
Q: how important are cost savings?
Scale 1 (not important) – 5 (very important)
• 1: 3%
• 2: 9%
• 3: 14%
• 4: 27%
• 5: 45%
Q: how do you want to realise savings?
Asking more printers for quotes: 58%
Working with printer to save costs: 64%
Standardising print jobs: 42%
Centralisation of print buying: 55%
E-auctions: 15%
Buying raw materials (e.g. paper) themselves: 24%
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18. E-auctions, the Buyer’s Vision on it
Q: did you ever consider e-auctions?
10 resp. (30%) yes, 23 resp. (70%) no
• Yes: mainly corporates,
• No: e.g. publishers, financial corporations
If not, why not?
• Never heared about it: 6 resp. (24%)
• Don’t believe in Internet-technology: 1 resp.
(4%)
• Don’t believe in ROI of project: 6 resp. (24%)
• Don’t believe in a good relation afterwards: 12
resp. (48%)
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19. E-auctions, the Buyer’s Vision on it
Q: what did you expect to get out of it?
Cutting costs: 7 resp. (100%)
Time savings: 3 resp. (43%)
Better insight in market prices: 6 resp.
(100%)
Q: who got the jobs?
Cheapest bidder: 2 resp. (40%)
Negotiations with Top 3: 3 resp. (60%)
Q: agreements regarding changes?
4 resp. (67%) yes, 2 resp. (33%) no
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20. E-auctions, the Buyer’s Vision on it
Q: more e-auctions in the future?
7 resp. (100%) yes!
Q: would you do it different?
5 resp. (71%) yes, 2 resp. (29%) no
What would you do different?
• More information to printers
• Getting to know people behind the screen
• Better specifications
• Less paperwork
• Being more professional…
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21. Some Interviews
Printers
They’re not happy… they feel they don’t
have any control over it
Too much paperwork, not in relation to
possible profit
Some questions are intrusive… (e.g. price
structure, pricing policies)
Sometimes complex jobs need to be
treated as commodities
The outcome isn’t clear and this leaves a
bad impression
And ‘accidents’ happen…
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22. Some Interviews
Print Buyers
They are looking for professional and stable
partners, also financially stable
They also cry for partnerships, for problem
solving!
• And they expect initiative from their printers!
Most important trend: bringing down the
number of suppliers
Cutting costs is important, but cutting the
complete cost, not only the print cost…
• Look at it in a broader perspective!
Cost savings with e-auction: 10, max. 20%
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23. Some Interviews
Print Buyers
A pharmaceutical company…
• The did e-auctions, for rather complex
promotional material
• The didn’t do e-auctions for very
straightforward stationary…
• Why?
• Because their printer had installed a web-based
ordering system and also did the logistics to
deliver the ordered stationary to the desk…
• And this was difficult to replace…
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24. Conclusions?
Printers don’t exactly know what their
customers consider important
E.g. financial stability, partnership
Printers don’t like e-auctions
The organisation of e-auctions can be
improved
• E.g. less paper work, better support, better
specifications, printed samples
They (usually) don’t generate extra work
But print buyers do like e-auctions…
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25. Conclusions?
Do they make sense?
Well, they might…
• If it’s for more or less standardised print jobs
• Not for ‘project’ print jobs!
• And don’t use a nuclear missile to shoot a
mosquito…
• Lots of extra costs, work involved…
But beware…
• The organisation must be perfect: no technical
problems, not too much paper work, good
questions and clear specifications
And there is a need for a personal
approach…
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