Are you planning to issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) for print and fulfillment services? There are many different ways to structure your proposal request. As programs grow, understanding how print and fulfillment works can help teams bring more structure to inventory, shipping, and materials distribution.
Print and Fulfillment RFPs: An Important but Time-Consuming Process
Your printed training manuals and course materials are important to the success of your training programs. They need to be high quality, cost-efficient, and of course, delivered to instructors and learners on time. If any one of these criteria isn’t being met, it may be time to think about switching your print and fulfillment vendor.
The process of selecting a new partner can be time-consuming—time that your team doesn’t have to spare. And these types of changes come with risks—namely, the risk of the unknown. Will a new partner be able to deliver on all that was promised? Is the transition going to add work to your plate? Will you have to change some of your long-standing processes to fit into a new vendor’s workflow?
These are the real questions we want answered in our RFPs. But most proposal requests miss asking key questions that would provide these answers.
Where Most Print and Fulfillment RFPs Fall Short
Many organizations undergo an RFP process that is meant to level the playing field by gathering standardized data from each vendor. The goal is to make an apples-to-apples assessment of costs and capabilities.
Most print and fulfillment RFPs are designed to assess three criteria:
1. Capabilities
Do your needs fit within the print and fulfillment vendor’s “sweet spot?”
2. Quality
Will they deliver as promised and expected?
3. Cost
Do their costs align with your budget and expectations?
While all these metrics are important, they should be considered a basic “cost of doing business.” The providers who opt to submit a proposal will already know their capabilities meet your project specifications. And, they’ll have been in business long enough to have some track record of success. This means cost alone becomes the great differentiator.
And while cost is important, what most organizations really want to know is what they’re really like to work with each day. Because it’s the small details that, if overlooked will create the biggest hiccups that can easily derail your day.
The Questions You Really Want Your RFP to Answer
While it’s important to have a firm understanding of each potential provider’s capabilities and costs, you should also be able to assess how they rate against these four questions:
Are they transparent?
Do I feel they will be honest and forthright when challenges inevitably arise?
Will there be any hidden or unexpected costs?
Do they charge additional fees for ongoing tasks like receiving, storage, and order returns?
Are they going to make things easier for me, my team, and other stakeholders?
Are they willing to create or customize processes and tools based on what other departments or even end-users need, like reports and invoices?
Will they just take my orders, or add value?
Can I count on them to provide ideas and recommendations to make things better?
How do you get this information from just an initial written proposal? By making four simple requests as part of your submission criteria.
Four Requests to Include in Your Print and Fulfillment RFP
When writing your next request for proposal document, ask prospective partners to provide the following as part of your evaluation process. When you need a practical reference point, see how AJ Tutoring handled print and fulfillment to understand how a peer approached inventory, shipping, and materials distribution.
1. A More Detailed Estimate
Most print and fulfillment estimates consist of a roll-up of print and shipping costs that may also include price break quantities, per-piece costs, estimated shipping costs from a few sample destinations, and all warehouse storage and pick/pack fees.
This type of top-line estimate does nothing to demonstrate whether a potential provider understands your needs, processes, and workflow. It doesn’t establish full transparency. And, it doesn’t allow them to showcase new ideas that might help you save money or create efficiencies.
When providing the estimate, respondents should be able to show you how they calculated:
- Average print cost per title and/or per course
- Average number of items in a package
- Average box weight
- Average orders a month
- Average cost of shipping
- Total cost per class or course and the annual cost per class or course
2. Sample Reports and Invoices
Reports and invoices typically play only a small role in the RFP process. Yet this is one of the areas that can cause a significant amount of extra work for your organization. If you don’t discuss details like what types of reports you need, in what format, and how data should appear on invoices early in the process, you won’t know it’s a problem until after the fact.
This type of data not only informs decisions that impact programs and resources, but it also needs to be served up in a way that supports your existing processes so all departments—from operations to accounting—can do their jobs more efficiently.
The best way to understand what you can expect, and whether it’s even possible to meet your requirements, is to request samples of a few standard reports and invoices as part of their initial proposal. This will also allow you to see what’s considered standard vs. custom, and discuss whether there are additional fees for any custom reporting.
3. Introduction to Your Print and Fulfillment Team
We are continually surprised by the number of RFPs we receive that ask few if any questions about the specific team that will provide ongoing service and support.
Your team is a critical component to the success of the relationship. As part of the vendor selection process, you should have full visibility into questions such as:
- Who do you direct questions to?
- Do you have a dedicated contact, or are you put in a support queue?
- How should you communicate with them?
- How will they communicate with you?
- How often?
- About what?
- What should you expect of them?
Ideally, you will have the benefit of working with one primary point of contact for the duration of your relationship with a print and fulfillment provider. This will help streamline communication and provide congruency across each print run.
4. A Print Sample of Your Materials, Not Theirs
It’s common for organizations to request print samples from potential vendors to demonstrate proof of quality. But this is a flawed exercise. Of course a prospective new partner is going to send the highest-quality sample that matches your specifications. It also lacks any meaningful context. How did it compare to the proof? How well does the piece hold up over time with continued use?
As part of the initial proposal, confirm whether the prospective vendor is willing and able to provide a printed sample of your training manual or course book from their presses. Once you have narrowed down your pool of prospects you can then go back to them with this request. This allows you to see firsthand how well they do with your files, not someone else’s.
Before you issue your next print and fulfillment RFP, look for opportunities to ask questions that go beyond standard capabilities and cost. A related need often appears around training materials fulfillment, especially when parallel program workflows that need better coordination have to stay consistent.
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