Howard Smith Paper Group has announced that it has become the sponsor of Vision in Print (ViP’s) Snapshot programme for the next two years. Snapshot provides printers with a rapid operational diagnostic assessment of their company’s potential for improvement. Howard Smith Paper Group will meet half the fee of any Snapshot thereby removing most if not all of any financial constraint from printers discovering how they can reduce costs and work towards best practice.

The Howard Smith Snapshot is ViP's diagnostic tool, designed specifically to help printers identify what can be done to improve productivity. The Snapshot report provides objective feedback and tangible evidence of how a business compares with best practice in this and other industries. Improvement areas are identified to deliver cost reductions quickly, enabling a more profitable base for future best practice to develop throughout the business.

By announcing its sponsorship of Snapshot, Howard Smith Paper Group is complementing and extending its Customer Value Proposition (CVP) programme.

There are several service elements to the Customer Value Proposition which can be summarised under; Cost in Use, Environmental and E-commerce headings. The key to unlocking the full potential comes from Collaboration – this is where Howard Smith Paper Group works closely with its customers in pursuit of value from the services that are aligned to each customer’s real needs.

Howard Smith Paper Group Managing Director, Malcolm Lane-Ley, states, “Howard Smith Paper Group is a very different kind of paper supplier, we actively look for ways to lower the cost in use of our products. This is achieved through a range of unique value based services and high performance papers which together culminate in us helping our customers to deliver greater impact at a lower cost in use and in doing so realise real competitive advantages.

Supporting Vision in Print is clearly aligned to our own strategy and by directly contributing to the Snapshot costs enables us to again directly provide the UK print industry the opportunity to seek out further competitive advantage.”

The two are clearly a perfect fit, as ViP’s mission statement states that it “Provides an industry-specific and cost-effective service to help printers and packaging manufacturers to proactively improve their own productivity and competitiveness.”

This goal is achieved with industry support and through a close relationship with the printing industry’s trade bodies, suppliers and purchaser of print services.

This perfectly complements Howard Smith Paper Group’s Customer Value Proposition, which is designed to help customer’s financial performance in a measurable and tailored way.
Vision in Print's (ViP’s) Sponsors are committed to supporting ViP's drive to improve the productivity and performance of the UK printing industry. ViP's Chairman, Andrew Pindar (Chair of the Pindar Group), commented that, "Howard Smith Paper Group's generous sponsorship of our Snapshot programme is an essential step towards ensuring that UK printers will continue to make progress towards achieving competitive levels of productivity. This task is even more vital than ever in these challenging times."