Williams Lea has landed the contract to manage Reader's Digest's "more than $1bn" worldwide print budget in a business process outsourcing (BPO) deal of a scale "never seen before".
The exclusive partnership puts the 10,000-staff print manager at the helm of outsourced print procurement and marketing for the world's largest publisher across 19 countries in Europe, Middle East, Asia and America.
Six of the 19 sites, including the UK, went live on 18 October, with Reader's Digest Association (RDA) moving 54 of its 100 print buyers over to Williams Lea.
According to RDA UK operations director Lynn Diplock, the publisher decided to put its procurement out to tender for the first time because "we realised as a business we weren't leveraging supply as well as we could do. We can add our spend capabilities into what Williams Lea already has. It comes down to economies of scale."
Diplock told printweek.com it was "business as usual", with no redundancies and the bulk of suppliers remaining in place.
"We'll look at our supply base on an annual basis," she added.
The print manager's "expertise" helped it outpace "several" other hopefuls following the worldwide procurement review at RDA, which hopes to cut £63m ($130m) in costs over the first three years of the contract.
Williams Lea chief executive Tim Griffiths said: "We are delighted that RDA has chosen Williams Lea as a partner to engage in this critical element of its business process.
"From our perspective, being awarded this contract reaffirms the considerable cost and operational benefits that a global organisation can achieve by managing its promotional printing within a truly integrated process."
Full implementation is planned for March 2008.
See this week's PrintWeek for more.
The exclusive partnership puts the 10,000-staff print manager at the helm of outsourced print procurement and marketing for the world's largest publisher across 19 countries in Europe, Middle East, Asia and America.
Six of the 19 sites, including the UK, went live on 18 October, with Reader's Digest Association (RDA) moving 54 of its 100 print buyers over to Williams Lea.
According to RDA UK operations director Lynn Diplock, the publisher decided to put its procurement out to tender for the first time because "we realised as a business we weren't leveraging supply as well as we could do. We can add our spend capabilities into what Williams Lea already has. It comes down to economies of scale."
Diplock told printweek.com it was "business as usual", with no redundancies and the bulk of suppliers remaining in place.
"We'll look at our supply base on an annual basis," she added.
The print manager's "expertise" helped it outpace "several" other hopefuls following the worldwide procurement review at RDA, which hopes to cut £63m ($130m) in costs over the first three years of the contract.
Williams Lea chief executive Tim Griffiths said: "We are delighted that RDA has chosen Williams Lea as a partner to engage in this critical element of its business process.
"From our perspective, being awarded this contract reaffirms the considerable cost and operational benefits that a global organisation can achieve by managing its promotional printing within a truly integrated process."
Full implementation is planned for March 2008.
See this week's PrintWeek for more.
Source: printweek
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