Thirteen percent of large to very large companies report saving more than 25 percent on the cost of print when an e-procurement solution is used. This is one of the findings of a research report by Gartner and George Mason University who studied print buyers’ interests in and experiences with e-procurement offerings for the Electronic Document Systems Foundation.

There is no doubt that every print buyer today uses the Internet in some way to buy print.

The promise of “print e-procurement” technology first surfaced during the dot.com era of the late 1990s. Exaggerated beyond its abilities and spurned by print service providers as a threat to their profitability, print e-procurement developers spent tremendous amounts of investor funds with modest results at the time. A few companies survived the ensuing shakeout, provided the foundation for the “web to print” (W2P) marketplace and have grown their customer base and revenues. Today, W2P offers print buyers and providers tools that may benefit both sides of the procurement equation.