April 14, 2011 -- The State of Washington's Department of Printing (PRT) in Tumwater has earned the In-Plant Printing and Mailing Association's (IPMA) prestigious Management Award for its exemplary performance in 2010. This award, presented annually, recognizes one outstanding corporate publishing and distribution operation that excels in efficient management practices to further the objectives of its parent company.
"In short, PRT is an example of government at its best -- an entirely self-supporting state agency effectively responding to a dire budget crisis in a way that reduced costs, improved efficiency, maintained core service levels, while delivering even higher value to the state," explains IPMA Awards Chairperson Chris Anderson. "In a year that they described as being the toughest to date, we found the State of Washington's efforts worthy of this year's management award."
"As the director of this agency, I am extremely proud of our team approach of delivering greater value to Washington State government, while successfully navigating the worst recession in 80 years," shares Director Jean-Luc Devis. The entirely self-supporting 97-person team, generating $27.5M in annual revenue, provides communication solutions through printing and related services. They also assess customer print environments to maximize the efficiency of office print technology and maintenance resources. Customers include all Washington state agencies, political subdivisions, higher education, as well as other government agencies. "We handle one third of Washington State Government's total print spending, outsourcing about a third of those projects."
While the economic crisis has been particularly challenging for the industry as a whole, their department's situation was compounded by statewide mandates to print less, publish more via the Internet, and reduce office paper usage by 30%. "Our team stepped up to the challenges by focusing on the core competencies of our business and capitalizing on new technologies to deliver more value to our customers," he explains.
Working with customers to reduce costs, along with a rapidly declining revenue stream, made finding ways to become more customer friendly essential. "We are very proud that we were able to reduce expenses in tandem with declining revenues," Devis proudly notes, "and that we continue to enjoy high customer satisfaction ratings, while delivering tremendous value to our customers. Our actions have resulted in increased sales per FTE of 1.5%, ranking us as a top performer compared to commercial printers and the in-plant community. I am very proud of every member of this organization."
Some of their achievements in 2010 included:
- Launching an on-line ordering system that enables customers to monitor and control spending, place orders directly from their desktops, proof jobs instantly on-line, store frequently used files on-line, place orders and view account history from any internet-accessible location, price basic jobs, convert Microsoft Office files into PDFs and retain electronic records for easy reordering and reference;
- Re-Engineering print jobs so they can be produced and mailed for a fraction of the cost without sacrificing quality. Three state departments alone have already saved a combined $454,000 from these collaborative efforts;
- Reducing the number of envelopes from 400 to 9 standard envelopes, the state has realized a significant savings. Two departments have already saved a combined $200,000 annually;
- Benchmarking their pricing annually with industry peers and local competitors. In 2010 comparing their pricing of 17 typical print jobs with outside vendors, PRT was the lowest bidder on 47.1% and lower than both mean and median prices on 82.4% of these jobs;
- Bundling of printing, copying, scanning and faxing as a single coordinated service has saved one department $360,000 per year. It's estimated the state will save as much as $6 million annually by implementing this type of Managed Print Services throughout all of Washington's state agencies.
Washington State's Department of Printing will be formally presented IPMA's Management Award for their extraordinary efforts during IPMA's Annual Awards Banquet, Wednesday, June 8, in Charleston, SC, held in conjunction with IPMA's Educational Conference, June 5-9.
