Foxtel in Cyberlynx print management deal - news commentary by Andy McCourt

Foxtel - the leading subscription TV service jointly owned by News Limited, Telstra and Publishing & Broadcasting Limited - has signed an agreement with procurement service provider (PSP), Cyberlynx, initially to supply corporate stationery and instruction manuals. Expansion of PSP services into other areas of print management, such as the FOXTEL magazine, is not impossible in the future, as are other non-print categories such as property and office services.

Cyberlynx was established in November 2000 and became a 50/50 joint venture between the Commonwealth Bank and Woolworths in October 2005. Its mission is to bring savings to industry by specialist procurement. Cyberlynx's general manager of business development, Alan Rousselot, claims average savings of 16% have been achieved across the board. “We have a printing specialist on the team and print procurement currently represents about 3% of our turnover, but we have ambitions to grow this considerably,” he said. The company estimates that it has saved its clients $250 million since inception.

Printers currently listed as Cyberlynx providers include: Admark, Allpress Principal Press, Allprint, BHB Printing, Blue Star, Camerons, Candida Stationery
Chippendale Printing, Dynamic Press, GT Graphics, J Saunders & Sons, Moore Business Systems, Penfolds Buscombe, Print Bound, Sands Print Group, Snap Printing, Spicers, West End Press and Zipform.

“For the printer, dealing with Cyberlynx provides a convenient channel for their production and lowers their cost of sales, enabling them to concentrate on efficiencies in production. They gain more speed in the production cycle and have better control and security in dealing with a single, well-resourced buyer,” said Rousselot.

Companies that have benefited from Cyberlynx's PSP services include Lion Nathan, Promina (formerly Royal & Sun Alliance), Harris Technology, Reuters, Unilever and now Foxtel.

National manager for Foxtel's procurement and supply chain, Sundaresh Rao, said that he was attracted to the Cyberlynx model because it allows Foxtel to tap into specialist expertise in a number of areas. “This arrangement also means that Foxtel has access to better pricing because Cyberlynx can take advantage of aggregated buying rates,” he said. “Cyberlynx has experts in the various categories meaning that we are not trying to reinvent the wheel or trying to duplicate this expertise within Foxtel,” commented Rao.

Alan Rousselot added; “The online access to costs, expenditure, savings and supplier data will help Foxtel maintain a tight rein on expenses and the clear measures to assess contractors and suppliers is a crucial part of the value chain we will deliver to Foxtel.”

My Call: The print management trend will grow even further. As reported here last week by Angus Paterson, print management wins such as Stream's $250 million Westpac deal, effectively remove the sales and marketing function from many printers business mix. Indeed, some very successful printers don't even have representatives calling on big end-user print buyers. Sydney's Rapid Digital with two Xerox iGen3s springs to mind. “We never advertise and we never will,” said ceo Ron Andersen at last year's grand opening. Other trade-only printers such as Hero Print (Printforce) see their product as a commodity and strip all costs out of their business that are not directly production related. Hero Print's business model enabled them to graduate from sheetfed to web recently with the installation of a plain-vanilla but efficient Komori 38sIII 4c web.

Let's face it; most printers are not the best at marketing themselves. The exceptions shine, such as Drago Zoric's D&D Global in Melbourne, but typically and sad to say, many printers are light-years behind modern print procurement practices, and that's where the print managers, brokers and PSPs step up to the crease. Cyberlynx is riding a powerful wave in all manner of B2B procurement.

So learn to love 'em and get on the supplier lists is my advice. If you think you can service the big print buyers personally and 'cut out the middle men' that's fine but the shine had better be on your shoes and not your suit and you need to talk the 'e-procurement talk' and walk the 'cost-down walk' to an increasingly sophisticated set of print buyers such as Foxtel's Sundaresh Rao.