Quick Printing is the resource for the Commercial printing, visual and graphic arts industries. Since 1977, Quick Printing has focused on improving efficiency and increasing sales and profits in the print shop. Industry experts share their ideas and
Issue link: https://quickprinting.epubxp.com/i/455911
16 Quick Printing | February 2015 MyPRINTResource.com As the number of print jobs increases, reducing touch points is key to the most effcient software— as is vision three to fve years out. By Jeffrey Steele A s print shops grow increasingly dependent on software solutions, many print service provid- ers (PSPs) are encountering a vexing problem: the myriad software programs in place not only result in bottlenecks as workfows from one software solution to another, but require information to be inputted multiple times, leading to many more touch points and greatly increased potential for error. The answer for many shops is workfow software. Installing the right workfow software can result in greater effcencies, elimination of workfow pain points, happier customers and employees, and greater profts. Getting that done involves not only the right choice of software. It also requires an understand- ing of how and who best to implement the workfow systems, and a willingness to look ahead at what your shop's needs will be three to fve years in the future. Determining Need If your shop has a staff of fve or more people, has no problem with print capacity but does suffer from a big issue keeping up with 'admin,' automation is defnitely in order. So says Michael Jahn, PressWise implemen- tation specialist for SmartSoft, maker of PressWise workfow software. "By admin, we mean entering customer details, run- ning quotes, emailing the quotes, following up with proof approvals, tracking down job statuses, dealing with shipping-related items like printing labels, email- ing tracking numbers, and invoicing," he said. "You must add workfow tools that can simplify or automate these tasks for you, freeing your staff up for more rev- enue-producing activities." According to Bryan Hughes, workfow product mar- keting manager, workfow at Fujiflm North America's Graphic Systems Division, "everybody has to have" workfow software. "If a printer, you have to have some kind of workfow software to govern the creation of plates and proofs," he noted. Beyond that, many shops' workfow software solutions are entrenched systems they may not be eager to discard. PSPs must look at the shop's future, Working Toward Better Workfow determine where it is going, and decide what can be done to help the customer by adding new and updat- ed software. "Where more and more customers are feeling the pain is not so much in the fle processing area," Hughes said. "Problems people have today involve the tendency to do more jobs but smaller print runs. That means I have to take in and prepare more jobs than I did be- fore. The conundrum these printers face is that stage before prepress. "It's creating, prefighting, and imposing the job, moving the job through the estimating and ordering phase that precedes the prepress phase." In addition, he argued, a great number of jobs are what might be called crossovers. They may have an offset component, a variable-data piece, and a wide-format element. The workfow tools chosen should be able to take in more information from the shop's business system, or its customer service side. "It should be capable of providing more value, so you can move more jobs through that system out to digital, out to wide-format. and off to offset," he added. When EFI meets with customers, it walks with them "through a business analysis of how its business is operating," reported Gerald Walsh, director of market "It's creating, prefighting, and imposing the job, moving the job through the estimating and ordering phase that precedes the prepress phase."