Printing Plate Molding Equipment Market Procurement Intelligence Report

The market for Printing Machinery and Equipment and its sub-segments such as Printing Plate Molding Equipment are at an interesting intersection. Availability of mobile print solutions where a buyer's employees can use any mobile device to send a document for printing from a remote location has transformed the procurement decisions within overall print management category.

Many large and mid-sized companies, especially from legal, financial, healthcare and real estate sectors are still heavily reliant on paper. Off late, there is a growing concern on security of documents - whether printed or stored digitally on a connected printing device. To address this concern, suppliers are coming forward with solutions that offer print and document security and monitoring services.

Rapid digitization of workspace and work processes has significantly reduced the use of paper in corporate world and therefore, industry has seen a consistent decline of print volumes. Still, the term \"paperless office\" will take years to become a common phenomenon. Print is here to stay and will co-exist with the digital document solutions in a \"paper-light\" corporate world.

Trends like these and many others discussed in this report are necessitating a relook at the way Printing Plate Molding Equipment is procured and the procurement cost saving opportunities that exist.

Sometimes, procurement functions are unable to timely alter their practices while responding to market conditions. Industry experts acknowledge that periodically reviewing procurement best practices and adopting learnings from across procurement categories can help procurement teams respond to market needs in a more agile way. This report combines our experience of other categories with Printing Plate Molding Equipment procurement insights and hand picks best practices that can work for category managers delving in this market.

For example, Buyers should assess factors such as their overall printing requirements, quality of prints required, and need to repeat orders. Such information can be used to take a decision on choosing between a domestic service provider or an offshore service provider based in a low-cost country. Buyers can also choose to attain a balance between offshoring and domestic engagement to optimize their cost-saving opportunities.

Buyers must clearly define clauses pertaining to the ownership of subcontracted services that are not part of their service providers' portfolios. This is necessary to ensure service consistency and control over sensitive data that are shared with sub-contracted firms.

Buyers should engage with regional service providers of digital print as this will reduce the procurement lead time. Shipment of goods from regional service providers takes lesser shipment time compared with shipment from global print service providers.

Printing Plate Molding Equipment procurement managers also need to proactively identify and mitigate potential risks that can arise in the supply chain or contracts for Printing Plate Molding Equipment procurement. Some examples include: