Most HotViews readers will be unfamiliar with the name Williams Lea (WL). However the UK-based marketing and managed print services outsourcer has won the Government’s first centrally procured contract under Sir Francis Maude’s Government Procurement (GP) initiative, which aims to reduce the cost of buying goods and services across government. The GP initiative was launched following Sir Philip Green’s review last October, which uncovered “staggering” levels of waste across the public sector (see Sir Philip helps establish ‘buy-in’ to Government cuts).
Through the deal WL will now become the sole print and print management provider for all of central government. A single four-year contract with WL, worth a reported £150m to £250m, will replace 140 existing print services contracts, and the move is expected to save £21m over its four year duration. Pleasingly for Maude et al the deal was also signed off six months ahead of schedule.
London-based WL is not a new player on the block. It has been in the printing business since 1820, and has quietly amassed a global operation of 9,000 staff across Europe, the US and Asia Pacific. Today WL is wholly owned by German logistics giant Deutsche Post DHL, and is in expansion mode - earlier this month it made a major acquisition of global marketing execution and production company Tag with 1,000 full time, and 1,500 part time employees and FY10 revenue of c£100m.
In 2007, WL bought The Stationery Office (TSO) - previously HM Stationery Office before privatisation, which had responsibility for all government print work until its powers were removed and the operation sold off - and today TSO has clients such as OGC, Driving Standards Agency and Parliament. So we can assume WL had a pretty good understanding of the processes involved in printing and publishing across UK Government, putting it in good stead for this contract. The whole WL business makes cE1bn in revenue globally, however print and publishing can be a low margin game. Hence we assume the desire to expand into these higher margin marketing and production services. We're still trying to find out the UK revenues, but would estimate them to be around half of the global business.
WL’s visibility in the market will go up significantly as a result of this deal. WL said it won the contract in a “highly competitive” process, although how this will impact its ability to make money on the deal is unclear. It will however put WL firmly in the sights of document/print management and BPS giants such as HP and Xerox as well as Capita, which we expect would also have been competing for this contract. With the kinds of savings and timescales suggested here, centralising print and print management services could become an increasingly attractive area for cash strapped public sector organisations. If so, WL will certainly be one to keep an eye on.