It’s not just about a price list!
Paper, printer cartridges, pens, folders, staples—little things that add up quickly over a large law firm to become a sizeable expense.
How do law firms cope with these unavoidable costs? They turn to their office supplies provider to negotiate favorable terms that yield big savings. At Mattern, we regularly help firms negotiate these contracts and can share seven (7) top areas of focus below. How many of these are in place at your firm?
- Identify frequently-purchased items
Narrow down your list of common purchases to one to three Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) each. Once you’ve identified your list of frequently-purchased items, verify they make up 80% of your total spend. - Negotiate a price list of contracted items and what discount you will receive on non-contract items.
When items are purchased without a contract price, you are paying more. Make sure you have detailed discounts outlined for non-contract areas. - Negotiate volume discounts
for these frequently-purchased items. - Standardize on toner
Keeping a quantity of different toners in-house for many types of printers can be costly and take a large amount of storage space. By standardizing on only a few types of printers, your required stock of toner goes down and volume discounts go up. - Monitor spend by attorney
As the saying goes, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. By dividing total spend by total number of attorneys, you can pretty easily tell which offices are not in compliance in addition to banking on that number in your budget when adding more attorneys. - Monitor contract versus non-contract spend
If your spend for non-contract items is over the 20% threshold, you’re not managing your spend properly. This will reveal if there are items that need to be added to your contract. If not, the issue could be resolved with…(the next item!) - Monitor end-user / contract compliance
Make sure those contracted items are coming in around 80% and your staff is complying with your office supplies policy. Monitoring this balance can ensure your firm is saving money.
What seems obvious at first glance, is often overlooked in the complex negotiation and vendor management process. If your firm has an office supplies contract in place, you might be able to recover 30% or more in cost savings with some adjustments in pricing, improved terms and strategies.
If you’re interested in exploring how your law firm could save 30% or more too, drop us a line and we’ll set up a call to explain.
Mattern- Your Trusted Partner in High Value Service Contracts
Law firms trust Mattern for several key reasons: we’re vendor agnostic, which means we objectively find the best solution, and we have over 20 years of deep industry expertise helping over 450 firms achieve savings approaching 50% more than they were able to get on their own. We’re experts at knowing the questions to ask, the terms to look for, and the language to be included in a contract to give our clients the most flexibility and savings possible in an ever-changing environment. Learn how our proven strategy can benefit your firm.
