DAYTON, Ohio, May 18 -- This month, Standard Register unveiled the full scope of its enterprise suite of Managed Services offering. Long focused on improving document management processes, Standard Register is leveraging its expertise to provide a comprehensive suite of services to help organizations better manage documents and print-related spending across the enterprise. Utilizing an experienced PrintConcierge(TM), Standard Register can address any or all of an organization's document requirements from desktop printing and content management, to print facilities management and distribution services, and commercial print sourcing. "With print costs estimated to be six percent of annual corporate revenues, organizations want to align with fewer, more capable partners," said Dennis Rediker, president and chief executive officer, Standard Register. "Our Managed Services are aimed at improving document management and print supply chain processes and costs, while simultaneously helping our customers communicate with more impact and relevance." Because print occurs in any one of three main environments and is often managed by a myriad of silos within an enterprise, it is often necessary to take a holistic view of the spend across the entire print-related supply chain -- from desktop or network printing and content management, to centralized print shops and data centers, to externally produced variable digital color and high-end commercial printing -- to maximize efficiency and cost savings. "Print can be complex, cumbersome, and as a result, costly," said Keith Nickoloff, president, PathForward, Standard Register's Professional Consulting Services. "Most often, it is not measured or controlled, making matters worse. By placing an expert PrintConcierge at or near a customer's site, we can help organizations recognize significant savings enterprise- wide." Standard Register's Managed Services considers supply chain and lifecycle expenditures to maximize efficiency and cost savings. At the hub of the program, the PrintConcierge provides a single point of accountability and introduces both expertise and one-stop control over document and print-related programs, processes and vendors. An enterprise-document-management and print- supply-chain strategy establishes "less paper" goals, business rules and integrated reporting to determine if and when documents should be printed, and which output devices will be most efficient and cost-effective. This strategy helps to measure compliance and monitor consistency, as well. Standard Register is uniquely positioned to help companies achieve cost efficiencies and communications effectiveness with its industry-leading library of best practices, benchmarks, technology partners, Lean Six methodologies and deep domain expertise in business process management. "Because we are hardware independent, we can effectively align our goals with customer goals and deliver best-of-breed solutions," notes Nickoloff. Desktop In the office, Standard Register works to identify, document and analyze the fleet of distributed printing devices, their related total cost of ownership, utilization, capabilities and associated workflow, and then meshes industry experience to develop a go-forward recommendation to achieve cost reductions and leverage investments. Going a step further, Standard Register implements least-cost print technologies and educational programs to help ensure that the right print application is sent to the right output channel in order to optimize the quality, cost and delivery of printed documents to the end-user and the enterprise as a whole -- and helps ascertain if the document should be printed at all. As our tagline suggests, "Print smart or don't print at all(SM)." Centralized When looking at the centralized print environment, the goal is to increase utilization of the right equipment, where appropriate, and to reduce the total cost per copy to the enterprise. It may also serve the organization to send work offsite where it can be done at an even lower cost per impression, especially when more sophisticated finishing and delivery are required. Through identification, documentation and analysis of technology-based workflow and applied rules for procuring, producing and distributing print, comes optimized asset utilization and reduced costs, while providing end-users with better, faster methods to produce their printed output. External The largest amount of spend is generally referred to as Commercial Print of marketing collateral and related fulfillment services. Commercial Print also tends to be the most uncontrolled spend. Virtually all organizations rely on commercially printed materials as the primary medium for important business communications, including marketing brochures, promotional materials, direct mail, annual reports, product and user manuals and other informational items. It is in this environment, in particular, that bypass spending can greatly reduce an organization's purchasing power and hampers capture and control of print spends and savings opportunity. While improved print sourcing techniques can deliver savings averaging as much as 45 percent, the real opportunity is in the reengineering of the associated print supply chains. By working up and down the supply chain, designing for manufacturability, designing for digital, and deploying the latest demand management methodology, significant savings can be recognized. A successful print supply chain requires managing with a set of rules, disciplines, subject-matter experts and appropriate incentives to drive desired behavior, take costs out all while improving what ultimately gets seen by the customer. Standard Register's Managed Services encompass a wide array of solutions. Whether customers want to focus on a single part of their print supply chain or an enterprise-wide plan for migrating documents to an electronic platform, Standard Register provides the "scorecarding" and systems to monitor, report and measure spend and vendor performance, while capturing historical data for trend analysis and forecasting. "With 80 percent of all business documents still paper-based, there's a huge opportunity for improving productivity, accuracy and workflow while reducing overall print spend," Rediker asserts. "Our Managed Services offer a systematic approach to reducing these costs across the enterprise. As a result, our customers print less, spend less, risk less and worry less."