by Cassandra Balentine
Part one of three
Looking at the print landscape, many print providers incorporate some type of print management information system (MIS), including both commercial and propriety or homegrown solutions. However, the smaller the organization the less likely they are to have an effective system.
“Most medium to large printing companies use some form of print MIS to help manage their operations, whether that’s a system they’ve developed in house or a more comprehensive solution from an MIS provider,” shares Keith McMurtrie, CEO, Tharstern.
However, Vikash Bardia, sales director, PrintPLANR, believes that in general the print industry is largely underpenetrated regarding medium to small/individual run print shops.
Of course this doesn’t mean that all smaller printers fit under this heading. For smaller companies the use of print MIS often varies dependent on how technologically minded they are. “We have customers are quite small that have developed very cool automated workflows that are far better than those we see at some of the larger companies. It’s not about size anymore, it’s about whether or not you have a technological vision and the gumption to achieve it,” offers McMutrie.
Bardia points out that with respect to large enterprises, there are opportunities as well. “There are enterprises that build a custom solution and find it cumbersome to scale it up with time; some use generic production software that could be more tailor-made for the print industry.”
He adds that approximately 60 percent of its new customers acquired year-on-year are print shops that haven’t used any software to manage their orders before, 35 percent migrate from an older MIS platform, while five percent migrate from their own custom solutions.
According to Matt Prusa, director of sales, Avanti and Print MIS, Software & Strategic Solutions, Ricoh U.S.A., trade industry surveys have indicated that one-third of the companies surveyed are looking to replace their current MIS system. “Most companies are underutilizing their current print MIS. For example, not all production workers who are using shop floor data collection to update job status—i.e. completed printing, input actual time, or input materials consumed. In addition, estimations compared to actuals are difficult to accurately understand overall costs and profitability—you can’t measure what you can’t track.”
He says it is also common for new lines of business, such as wide format, to be estimated and tracked outside the current MIS. One reason this occurs is because staff may not be trained to add certain work types, or their current system is not designed for accounting for new lines of business. “There can also be some resistance to change that slows adoption or stops customers from optimizing what they already have. Disparate, manual systems or processes are common, however getting people to embrace change can be difficult,” comments Prusa.
Considering the Cloud
When reevaluating business workflow, print providers have many cloud options to consider.
Common drivers for choosing cloud hosting include their company IT strategy; lack of internal IT resources; and preference to have the vendor handle maintenance and technology upgrades, which include updating to newest version each release and trying to reduce infrastructure and fixed/variable costs associated with them, offers Prusa.
He shares that Avanti Slingshot is a browser-based print MIS system that can be self- or cloud-hosted by Avanti. “About 30 percent of new Avanti customers choose cloud hosting by Avanti.”
Bardia feels that it all comes down to the cost and accessibility of the software. Easy access to upgrades is another advantage. He says you don’t have to employ in-house IT to manage software servers or to wait for on-site assistance for any issues or fixes, which can lead to extended downtime. “This can be handled remotely, and auto-detection of bugs also lets cloud-based systems detect and resolve even before clients notice them.”
“It’s really the smaller print companies that will most benefit from a cloud solution as it will remove the need to purchase hardware infrastructure to host the software, and also the need to have an IT team or person looking at the security side of things,” adds McMurtrie.
On-premise installations are also still supported and in demand. However, one can argue that many of the perceived disadvantages of the cloud are outdated.
Common reasons for self-hosting include security concerns, perception of cost savings by owning an IT infrastructure, and IT wanting to maintain control of infrastructure. “Many traditional tools are not designed to scale or high access environments make innovation and growth potentially difficult or costly to maintain,” says Prusa.
Overall it is expected that cloud-based systems will continue to increase in order to reduce IT costs and simplify print operations. Adam Witek, VP of operations, Print Reach, says print/mail shops that want to remain flexible and have their information at their fingertips, wherever they may be, will look to cloud-based systems to ensure pricing remains consistent and realize in this competitive market, time is everything and will result in more business.
David Graves, sales and marketing manager, Aleyant, believes most companies now accept and actually want a cloud-based solution. “Most companies do not want to invest in hardware and labor to keep these solutions running and updated in house.”
McMurtrie sees a definite mix of cloud and on-premise preference, pointing out that print is one industry that will find it difficult to move entirely to the cloud.
Aside from the fact that printers will always require physical premises for their equipment, McMutrie explains that print workflows are very process intensive and software such as sheet optimization and integration connections require a lot of computational power.
“Storage is cheap but computational power is expensive and so right now, until a smarter solution is found for this bandwidth challenge, software providers outside of MIS may not always be in a position to offer cloud solutions,” he offers. “That’s why we’re seeing a mix of companies looking for both on-premise and cloud MIS solutions—they still need their MIS to connect to on-premise solutions and access artwork, so there’s no burning need to move everything to the cloud. “Maybe we never get away from this and—at least in the medium term—until capability and technology improve. The best solution for these totally integrated systems would be a hybrid arrangement—part cloud and part on-premise.”
Jack J Lafler, VP sales/technical services, HiFlow, estimates that about 50 percent of print providers that HiFlow talks to are open to cloud-based solutions for MIS. “Many companies still have someone taking care of IT, so management feels comfortable in keeping their resources on premises. More advanced companies that want to lessen their IT expense are willing to move to the cloud.”
“The fact is, only a handful of print MIS can provide almost all the features necessary to run a print shop,” concludes Bardia. Most print shops that make a switch will use a minimum of two software tools; this is where API comes into play to automate data exchange and allow our software to be the central system.
McMurtrie agrees, adding that a cloud MIS solution will still need to integrate to on-premise systems, which makes things more complex and also somewhat restrictive when moving large documents about a workflow. “This isn’t a limitation as such, it’s just something that’s important to consider when choosing a cloud-based MIS,” he asserts.
Print providers should choose an MIS engineered to take advantage of the scalability of cloud service providers. So that as its usage grows, both in volume and computational processing, their performance can be maintained. “Just putting an application on a server in the cloud—as some MIS providers have done—is not enough. It has to be engineered in such a way that computational processing and the managing of transactions can be easily scaled. For example, you can import large numbers of orders into the MIS without impacting the rest of the users’ experience.”
Lafler points out that companies are much wiser to explore on premises and cloud systems at the same time and compare them. “A company should not make a decision on which system to purchase solely on the basis of it being in the cloud.”
Prusa also suggests print providers look to vendors who support either self-hosted or cloud-hosted options to allow flexibility at deployment and changes in their IT strategy.
Reevaluating MIS
While all print providers have some business workflow processes in place, industry research suggests there is a lot of opportunity for small to large organizations. Cloud and on-premise options are available to support all MIS preferences.
Mar2023, DPS Magazine
