TBDP has great expectations

Bunn Kasemsup, TBDP's managing director, said the company has targeted a five-per cent share of the Bt1.2-billion market this year.

TBDP was established late last year with Bt34-million registered capital and became fully operational this year. Its main services are digital data printing of payslips, invoices and statements, mailing bills, letters, and reports.

The economic crisis 10 years ago was one of the major factors that drove many companies to turn to outsourcing to maximise their efficiency and cut costs to allow them to concentrate on their core business, said Lim Cho Tat, DataPost's managing director.

Over the last three years, the market has grown by 30 per cent to Bt1.2 billion, with 120 million pages printed every month, Bunn said.

Major businesses that use outsourcing services include banks and other financial institutions, which account for 50 per cent of the total number of corporate customers, followed by government and state enterprise, leasing firms and telecommunication companies.

In setting up the joint company, the two partners agreed that if any of their corporate clients wanted to use outsourcing services they would refer them to TBDP. The company currently has 20 clients, one of which is a regional client that was transferred from DataPost and some other clients were shared with Thai British Security Printing, Bunn said.

All the printing, enveloping and mailing processes are conducted at Thai British Security Printing's plant at the Bangpoo Industrial Estate while the Singaporean partner is gradually transferring its colour printing technology and known-how to the joint company.

Both partners see a bright future for the business as most Asians still prefer to receive printed bills or legal documents. In addition, many major clients still haven't completely outsourced their printing and mailing operations. They still do many related tasks on their own, which is an opportunity for TBDP to offer its services.

Meanwhile, much of the outsourcing industry in the West has stagnated as companies now prefer to send important notes to customers via short messages on mobile phones or e-mail. 

This has prompted service providers to produce more promotional printing either through direct mail, featuring advertisements or customer relationship programmes (CRM) that are added to the end of bills and payslips. Lim said this was a win-win solution, in which service providers could sustain their businesses while corporate clients could publish their ads or CRM programmes at low cost. He also forecast that the trend would soon take off in Asia.