Is Collaboration the Answer?

How can a print provider become a service singularity provider? Cash is tight, technology continues to evolve, and end-users are unsure as to what they need and want? What are you to do?

Collaborate!

Have you ever looked up and down your external supply chain, not to see what is there—you should know that—but to look at those “supply chain partners” as profit partners? If you take a new and different view of them as more than just suppliers as part of your profit advocacy program, you’ll start to understand that many of those within your supply chain can, and will, offer more than you might have expected.

Many can provide information, trends, vertical opportunities, solutions, horizontal expansion, operating advice, marketing support and much, much more. Looking is the first step and, when looking, you must have a plan. That plan needs to be based on some objective or goal, or both. The more you define your search and needs, the greater details you can provide to your supply chain partners for more positive results.

Think of what you need? Advice? Information? Operational support? New business support? Human resources? Trends? Or, perhaps just plain dialog and good ol’ engagement. By embracing this needed change in attitude, you also open yourself up to what advertisers pay a fortune to achieve: dialog and engagement with a targeted group of people who actually, yes actually, want to hear from you.

Your needs may turn into some sort of sale or expansion of business for your supply chain partners, so they, like you, need to be ready to provide what was once a cornerstone principle of advertising—AIDA or Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action.

Do YOU have a client chain support network installed? A network that is NOT sales-driven, but one that is an information portal for your customers’ usage?