Q1 Paper Outlook — Market Taking Stock

Ziegler reports that Quad/Graphics has already progressed to live exchanges of purchase orders and delivery messages with its paper suppliers, with goods receipts in final testing. Some of the mills are sending electronic invoices and order confirmations in return, he adds.

From an IT standpoint, Ziegler says the preferred scenario would be for papiNet to be a new layer on top of existing business systems. "It opens up a whole new way of looking at the process," he claims. "For example, one of the members of the European papiNet organization is moving more toward a consignment model. The buyer's inventory level is tracked via a usage measure, and stock replenishment happens automatically when that level dips to a predetermined amount. Payment is determined off of actual consumption. They're changing the entire business model."