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Follow on Google News | GPO Bid Services - Know What You Are Getting!e-LYNXX Senior Vice Predident Deborah Snider explains the differences between full-service GPO bid services and limited GPO bid services.
First, a comment about GPO, and why printers should even be interested in doing work for the federal government: In a word, profits. Doing work for GPO is profitable, and GPO pays within 21 days of billing. This Washington, D. C., based clearing house for the vast majority of printing for the executive, legislative and judicial branches awards more than $425 million annually to private sector printers of all sizes and capabilities. Printers that choose to develop GPO as a secondary market increase their profitability from an average 2.5% on 70% production utilization to 14% or more on closer to 100% production utilization. They do this typically by running GPO work when they have gaps in their productions schedules, usually those times when there is no commercial work planned. GPO jobs are most often in the $3,000 range, but there are large projects that can be for millions of dollars. "All can be woven into your primary client work to create an active, yet flexible, secondary market schedule," Snider said."But first, you need to know what jobs GPO wants printed." GPO operates more than a dozen buying offices around the country. Each GPO buying office posts some of its work for public review. These postings may be available for only a short time when bid openings (not necessarily production schedules) are short. Printers and others are invited to review each of the postings; this is done by visiting each office. Copies of any posting are available at a cost per copy. GPO also may list larger projects, like the printing of census materials, in major government publications. Printers and others can subscribe to this media and review these project postings as they are published. A third option is to visit the GPO website (www.GPO.gov) "The only comprehensive way to ensure that you are getting every GPO bid opportunity is to buy a copy of each and every available bid solicitation and vigilantly monitor the bids," Snider explained. GPO sells this option as the GPO Bid Subscription Program. Through this program, jobs opened for bids can be delivered to the subscriber via fax, e-mail, other transmission method and by the subscriber actually picking up bid postings in each and every GPO buying office. Buyers of the GPO Bid Subscription Program must pay for all of the costs of the program including the requirement to have adequate phone lines for the receiving of numerous simultaneous faxes as well as pay for the every-day pick-up and delivery from each office. Only one bid service, Government Print Management, subscribes to the GPO Bid Subscription Program and provides this along with other support services to its clients. "Be careful of imposters who would like for you to think that what they offer is comprehensive," A full-service GPO bid service will help a printer become a GPO print supplier. Before beginning with GPO, every private sector printer has to be qualified to compete for work in one or more of five levels: • Level 1 – best quality, highest quality, tightest tolerances (examples: art books, medical journals and meat grading charts) Onsite inspection is required for this level. • Level 2 – better quality, prestige quality, library quality (examples: yearbooks, recruiting materials and illustrated professional papers) • Level 3 – good quality, above average quality (examples: annual reports, general process color work, court decisions, budget reports, catalogs and textbooks) • Level 4 – basic quality, informational quality, utility quality (examples: telephone directories, indexes, project reports and technical manuals without process color and with only occasional halftones) • Level 5 – functional quality, lowest usable quality (examples: Interoffice forms, line-only information handouts) "If you qualify for Level 1 work, you also can bid on jobs in the other four levels. If you qualify for Level 2 work, you also can bid on levels 3, 4 and 5… and so on," Snider noted. The next step is to analyze the job opened for bids to determine how it would fit into the printer's production schedule. If it does, pricing correctly is critical to winning GPO work and then making a profit. It is best to draw upon historical GPO jobs data and the advice and analytical skills of seasoned GPO print professionals when determining what should be bid. Like GPO work itself, the pre-bid phase must be precise and can be complex. Every specification must be addressed. A full-service GPO bid service assists clients with job specification analysis, pricing, planning and representation. "Before any of this can happen, however, you have to know about the opportunity," About e-LYNXX Corporation e-LYNXX Corporation developed the patented technology integral to e-commerce. Endorsed by Educational & Institutional Cooperative Purchasing (E&I) and Printing Industries of America (PIA), e-LYNXX drives results through its three divisions. ● Patented Procurement Method licenses the Automated Vendor Selection Technology (AVS) used in e-commerce and procurement systems. ● American Print Management provides systems, services and the patented AVS Technology to reduce substantially the procured costs of direct mail, marketing materials, labels, packaging and other procured print. ● Government Print Management offers effective U.S. GPO bid services and strategies. www.e- # # # e-LYNXX works with print buyers to reduce their cost for procured print by 25% to 50% and with printers to win government awarded print jobs and improve their annual profitability from a national average of less than 3% to more than 10%. End
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