How the Government Printing Office Increases Printer Profitability by 10% or More

The U. S. Government Printing Office (GPO) can offer relief to printers in an economy that squeezes every aspect of their business with higher costs and fewer opportunities. The GPO is the federal government’s primary centralized resource for gathering, cataloging, producing, providing, authenticating and preserving published information. That’s just about everything printed for the federal government. Further, as required by Title 44 of the U.S. Code, all federal agencies are required to use GPO to procure their printing.

For all outsourced work, the GPO awards its procured contracts through a bidding process. With more than 10,000 printers registered to bid on GPO work, it would seem that competition is fierce for the more than $400 million in jobs the GPO awards each year. The good news is, only about 400 or so printers are active bidders, allowing room for additional competition.

A printer must become a “qualified” GPO vendor in order to be awarded work. A printer must properly register with GPO, provide equipment lists and other detailed information, and submit stellar samples that can pass the muster of a rigorous GPO quality review. All of this is not easy, and entails the assistance of a professional who knows the GPO business inside and out.

Once approved the printer still needs to grapple with the rules, regulations, paperwork, and red tape. A printer must be able to read and understand the subtleties of the solicitation, specifications, contract terms, quality assurance guidelines, paper specifications, terms and conditions and other requirements. Doing work with the GPO is much different than working with corporate accounts. When a mistake is made, the printer cannot take the GPO to lunch and sweet talk its way out of the problem. The printer must know the rules and follow them exactly.

Often printers will say GPO work is so competitive, the jobs go for paper cost or below. The truth is, the jobs do not sell at paper cost or below, and printers in the know are generally the profit leaders in the industry. Here are the three most important things these profitable printers have in common when it comes to GPO success:

1. Open capacity is a unique opportunity to build profitability. Once a printer is at break-even, every value added dollar brought in thereafter goes directly to the bottom line. For example, if a printer is charging $400 per hour for a four-color web press that runs 70 percent of the time, and the printer is at break-even, then 100 percent of all value added dollars brought in during the 30 percent open capacity will yield profit—even if sold for $100 per hour instead of the normal $400 per hour. The alternative is to bring in no revenue, and consequently no profit, by allowing the 30 percent downtime and the equipment and operators to sit idle.

2. Knowing the customer is as important in successfully accomplishing GPO work as it is in accomplishing work for any major commercial customer. Each has its own method of operation, rules and regulations, idiosyncrasies, even labeling and packaging requirements. In the case of GPO, these requirements fill volumes. Therefore, successful printers understand the importance of working with a GPO expert in order to maximize profitability.

3. Obtaining GPO bid opportunities that are highly competitive is relatively easy. These are readily available for a fee from a GPO bid service or for free directly from GPO on its Web site. Having those more profitable GPO bid opportunities available with sufficient time to bid is a different matter. Also, there are the matters of amendments to which a response must be made before bid opening, how to assure 21-day pay so a printer does not have to wait for extended periods of time on its money, having access to past histories of prior jobs, reports on competition, and promptly obtaining accurate results of bids. Only an expert in GPO can fill these voids.

Having current information on GPO, building a precise GPO sales plan, and knowing and following the rules are all critical components to success and profitability. Being on the short end of the GPO stick is not pleasant and can be quite expensive. The majority of the 400 active GPO vendors use a government print management firm that provides full representational services, accurate information, market intelligence, past price histories, and access to all available GPO solicitations.

With a government print management firm at your side, you receive assistance with paper work handling, specification interpretation, proposal preparation, bidding process management, assistance through the production process, change order negotiation, invoice preparation and collection, and cutting through the government red tape. The bottom line is this: If a profitable printer averages 4 percent profitability before GPO, partners with a professional government print management firm to avoid the long and expensive curve of learning to do work with GPO, and then adds the appropriate work, that printer can increase profitability by 10 percent or more utilizing what would otherwise remain idle downtime.

By Deborah Snider, senior vice president of Government Print Management.

Government Print Management (888-876-5432) represents more than 250 commercial print, direct mail and print marketing suppliers to gain profitable print jobs from the U. S. Government Printing Office (GPO) and other government entities. Unlike a government bidding service, Government Print Management offers professional print expertise, a unique understanding of government print procedures, an exclusive information data base, client legal representation, proprietary communications tools and an exclusive system for obtaining, categorizing and disseminating GPO and other government bid opportunities. For more information, visit www.governmentprintmanagement.com or call (888) 876-5432.