A Day in the Life of a Sourcing Manager

One of the not-so-secret ingredients that allows Production Solutions to provide our clients with stellar customer service, expert recommendations and cost savings is our Resource Team, which includes our Sourcing Managers. That’s a deceptively simple title for a broad and varied set of responsibilities, so what does a typical day look like for PS’s Sourcing Managers? We asked them, and it turns out there may not be a “typical day” in this role. Here’s what they had to say:

Alice Taylor, Senior Sourcing Manager

Beyond Budgeting

As Sourcing Managers, we wear many hats. A core responsibility for us is budgeting – for both current and prospective clients. This is often done as part of RFPs (Requests for Proposals). We work with Business Development, Account Directors and clients to help with planning and budgeting everything from multiyear direct mail programs, to researching test package formats and cost savings ideas. Being in tune with what is happening in the marketplace is critical to overall success – pricing, scheduling and service.
We price out many different types of printing and mailing. As a group, the Sourcing Managers analyze the pricing we have received so we can see any trends developing. This helps us to ensure that we are providing the best solutions for our clients’ mail programs. We work very closely with our suppliers and rely on them to identify areas for savings, help with potential concerns and to find the best fit for our clients’ direct mail packages.

Knowledge is Power

While creating accurate specs and pricing direct mail packages and premiums keeps Sourcing Managers busy, that is just the tip of the iceberg. We offer a quarterly Production 101 seminar for our clients (register for the next session here). This seminar is a great introduction or refresher for what goes into producing a direct mail campaign. We walk through the steps of how printing, paper, personalization and mailshop come to life for a direct mail campaign. This seminar will also give a high-level overview of the USPS and postage. Need something special just for your company? We can even tailor this presentation to meet your specific needs. Additionally, we create and offer other educational seminars based on needs with both external and internal clients – such as All About Envelopes and All About Forms. Sourcing Managers are an extension of the PS Resource Team, and we really want to be just that – a resource for educating and learning about the ins and outs of direct mail.

Shannon Sittler, Senior Sourcing Manager

Future focus

One lovely Thursday morning, I started my day reviewing and completing a budget grid for a new client we’ve just onboarded who was looking for help to build out their budget through the end of 2024. During this time, I reviewed pricing, reached out to suppliers with questions and put together my final recommendations for the Production team. Just before lunchtime, I met with the Production team to review the pricing grid and present my findings so they could inform and confidently advise the client!

Postal Promo Pros

The rest of the afternoon was filled with what I like to call “queue hopping.” Another big responsibility of the Sourcing Managers is creating Informed Delivery campaigns and processing USPS Promotion Enrollment and Pre-Approval requests. These requests come from our Account Managers and populate our two main queues that we monitor throughout the day.
With the 2024 Informed Delivery Promotion registration now open, I enrolled about ten clients by processing AM requests to log into their USPS BCG accounts and complete their enrollment. Our team handles these enrollments for nearly all participating clients.

Helping Hands

I wrapped up my day virtually meeting with a supplier to discuss the onboarding timeline for a new acknowledgment program and client we’ve just taken on. While Sourcing Managers typically hand off to the Production team when work is ready to go live, for more complex programs or clients, we always make ourselves available to support our internal Production Solutions team however we can. We are a part of “Resource” after all!

CC Corpuz, Senior Sourcing Manager

Mail Volume Reporting

I create a mail volume report each month, comparing overall current mail volume vs prior year. And working with another colleague, I create an additional report with month-by-month detail comparing current vs prior years. Our goal is to see if there are any stories to tell to help understand overall and specific client volumes. It’s a work in progress and we’re constantly reviewing the data for trends and insights that may be helpful for PS and our clients.

Commingle Delivery Reports

Every other day, we receive commingle delivery reports and enter dates into a spreadsheet to keep track of in-home dates for each commingle pool. This information ensures PS is on top of in-home dates and potentially alert the commingler of any delivery anomalies and be proactive in reporting to production.

Answering questions from our Production team

Throughout the day, we may receive questions from production and one of us will respond with the answer or do some research to help get the answer. This is a great opportunity for all of us to become SMEs on whatever subject is addressed.

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