E-Bisprint has made this year’s BRW Most Innovative Companies list, beating the likes of Coke and Deloitte, reaching eighteenth spot out of the 50 strong list from some 350 entrants. It was the only company from the print industry on the list, the packaging sector provided Orora Group, which made spot 36, and Pact Group in the number 45 slot. E-Bisprint describes itself as a managed services provider. The NSW outfit has undergone a transition from purely print management group to managed services provider, offering marketing services, apparel, warehousing and logistics – as well as print – to major corporate clients. Earlier this year it set up an online quoting arena that allows printers that match a job’s criteria to compete for the work – the system aims to source competitive prices, with robust reporting for vendors to use to see how they might win more jobs. The end-to-end procurement system was developed inhouse at E-Bisprint over nine months, and forms the basis of the company’s BRW win. There are two versions, Zool and MyZool, and each allows quoting for the whole range of the company’s managed services, not just print.
Paul Freeman, managing director of E-Bisprint
Geoff Flynn, creative director with E-Bisprint, says the win has created excitement in the Tuggerah office and validates a transformation strategy that has seen the company diversify over the past two years. He says, “It is great to be able to tell our clients that we have been recognised within the industry and Australia-wide. We are not just a small company doing day-to-day work, we are innovative in the way we think, and we are excited to tell everyone about it.” Some 350 companies entered the race for the top 50, each scored on innovations they made in the past year as well as an employee survey measuring how innovation reaches throughout the organisation. With around 50 staff E-Bisprint held its own against larger players, coming just two places behind banker Westpac, but six spots ahead of Coca-Cola Amatil, and ranking higher than app developer Appster, CareerOne, Rams and Deloitte. With the Zool portal E-Bisprint looks after the selection process to make sure the right provider with the right price wins the job. With MyZool printers able to produce the work are presented to the customer with their prices, and the customer can choose their supplier based on factors that matter to them most, such as quality and location. Flynn says, “We want to let people know how we can help them save money through this system; how they can better manage and track their orders. For print, apparel and promotional products it is great to have that reporting functionality.” Rather than opening up job requests to its entire network, printers are categorised according to the kind of services they offer and are only invited to quotes for jobs they are able to produce. Flynn says, “We are comparing horses for courses rather than open slather. There is a huge range of categories our suppliers can be assigned to. They may specialise in labels, continuous forms, digital print, packaging, screen printing, web manufacturing, or four colour non-web, for example. “Then there are subcategories for more specific kinds of print, so in labels they might offer A4 labels, digital labels, foils, industrial labels, roll sheet labels, thermal labels, wine labels – we understand that certain printers have a niche market, so we can place them in those categories and recognise their strengths.” Flynn says the company is growing largely on the back of its IT services, which provide customers with the information they need to better manage their print and other products in the works. He says, “Online has created a big change for the industry, everyone can see that it is opening up more competitive options. Print management and managed services are becoming stronger in the market. Where printing companies are declining over time, we have found that we are going in the opposite direction and have grown. “We are well-equipped with a huge resource of printers that we use, and we continually manage that. Those vendor relationships have kept us competitive and in tune with what is happening in the market, helping us to stay close to the industry.”
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