Quick Printing

JUL 2014

Quick Printing is the only business resource serving the quick and small commercial printing niche in North America. Quick Printing is the authoritative source for business information, emerging technologies, shop profiles and management insight.

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18 Q U I C K P R I N T I N G / J u l y 2 0 1 4 w w w. M y P R I N T R e s o u r c e . c o m idly as possible, not necessarily waiting for your employee to return their call. If we can enable the client to self-serve, then the salespeople can ensure that the time they spend with the client is relationship-rich and not transactional." Whether it be quotes that bear some resemblance to their final invoice, easy tracking of jobs, or other benefits, a good MIS solu- tion can foster "much better communication, better longterm relationships with clients," said EFI's Walsh. "Clients can depend on the information they are getting." Online, real-time tracking not only locates where in the plant the job is, but some customers would like it to go even further. "They would also love full integration with UPS and FedEx and other light trucking services they have," said Brown. Data-Driven Decisions For MIS advocates, tasks like estimating and job tracking are just the bare bones implementation of an MIS—kind of like buying the full version of Photoshop and doing nothing more than resizing images. Ultimately, data gleaned and provided by the MIS should be used to run the entire business. "The MIS is supposed to be this rich data repository and they're not using it as such, to track KPIs [key performance indicators]," said Matt. High-powered MIS users "use the data from the MIS to make all their business decisions," she added. "Data-driven decisions are better than guesses." "When you've implemented an MIS correctly, it's giving you the data to understand your business better," Matt added. "On a tactical level, they can get a job through the system, but on a strategic level, they can spot trends through the data that's coming out of the system. Can they see which departments is running at the lowest margin? Can they see where the bottle- necks are? "It should be the central nervous system of the whole opera- tion." Suggesting that a printing company install an MIS solution in the first place has always met with some resistance, which can stem from a resistance to change in general ("this is how we've always done it"), but in large part comes from the very real fact that implementing an MIS can be a long, unwieldy, time- consuming process that can disrupt the normal functioning of a company that can ill afford such disruptions. "If you don't have an MIS or have an old MIS, you just don't have the time to get a new system," said Matt. "It's a real chal- lenge, and they're all busy. Buying is easy, but getting it installed is hard." It's not just a printing industry phenomenon either. "Any business can struggle with implementing major process chang- es," said Wold. There is no doubt that a well-implemented MIS can reap rewards down the road—but it requires a lot of upfront work and configuration. "All of that upfront work so pays off," said Mugford, "but it's really hard to get that upfront time." This is why vendors and consultants alike have routinely seen companies underutilize—sometimes dramatically so— their MIS. "The software keeps moving, the business keeps moving, and so therefore your implementation and your utilization of the software have to keep moving," said Matt. Still, it's easy to understand why companies don't use their MIS to its full potential. "As a user of so many software prod- ucts myself, I am amazed every day about the next thing I learn about a product I own," said Brown. But his customers "were very happy. It did everything they needed and they were profit- able. We never tried to judge anybody on the way they used the program. If they're successful and profitable in this industry, then they're the winners." We Are the Champions Matt and Mugford have found that often it takes a champion within the company to spearhead the MIS initiative, and Wold found the need for even more ubiquitous evangelists. "We try to get one champion per department," he said. "There is a certain amount of cohesion across departments that can help reinforce the owner's efforts to change things. We evangelized the cham- pion thing, and now evangelize a champion per department, and we've found that to be a little more effective." Although "fewest possible touches" may be the MIS mantra, the fact is that the MIS does itself touch every individual in every department in the company. Just like with other large-scale initiatives, baby steps are often the best way to approach MIS implementation. Start out with a few basic tasks, and keep adding functions as the need arises. "You don't want to build yourself so many different reports and then never use them," said Matt. "When a person walks in in the morning, what information do they need to get their day off a good start, and what information do they need at the end of the day? It's easy to build complexity in, it's so hard to take it out." "People come back to us having used the product for at least a decade doing only estimating and quoting and that's it," said Brown, "but in the past year, they've moved to doing job ticket- ing with it and they're using other functions." If all goes well, the staff will start asking for more and more information. "If you get to that point where people are driving you to add more data," said Matt, "that's when you know you have it." ◗◗ For more information, visit MyPRINTResource.com/10004781 QP_16-18_0714_MIS.indd 18 6/16/14 4:39 PM

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