MIS Top Of Shopping List For New Management

An MIS system was high on the shopping list for the new management team at London printer Loupe Solutions, when it completed an MBO in March.

An MIS system was high on the shopping list for the new management team at London printer Loupe Solutions, when it completed an MBO in March.

Having spent more than a year looking at what was available from leading management information system (MIS) suppliers, the directors had already decided that Optimus 2020 would enable the greatest productivity to be achieved throughout the factory.

Loupe's managing director, Richard Howell, said: "We took over a range of multi-colour Heidelberg sheet-fed presses, along with high speed digital print facilities, so we have very high quality printing equipment.

However, we inherited a paper-based administration system and knew that this was one of the first areas we had to bring up to date.

To run an efficient print operation in today's highly competitive market you have to implement an effective MIS system.

There are plenty on the market, but they are not all the same and you have to do your homework to find the one that will do the job you need.

In the case of Optimus 2020, we believe we have the best MIS system available, which will help us make business decisions based on accurate and up-to-date information." He continued: "One of the things we like about Optimus 2020 is that it is the only MIS system to have its roots in the printing industry, having been initially written by a printer to improve its own production efficiency.

Several of the directors at Loupe Solutions have had experience of Optimus MIS systems over the years and we feel the company has always maintained its in-depth knowledge of printers and their requirements.

You can see this in the way Optimus has pushed forward the boundaries of JDF within the MIS environment." The Optimus 2020 system at Loupe Solutions is currently being installed and is expected to go in to full production on August 1.

The order includes Optimus 2020 estimating, stock control, shopfloor data collection and invoicing modules.

Optimus is tailoring the package to incorporate the new high speed colour and mono Xerox equipment being installed at the business and has fitted terminals next to these machines as well as the litho presses.

"It's important for us to incorporate our digital output facilities within the MIS environment in order to ensure we are using it efficiently.

We've also recently installed a new Creo CTP system and will link this in to the MIS network.

Optimus has proved to be very good at integrating its Optimus 2020 package and this includes linking it with our existing SAGE accounting software," added Howell.

Loupe Solutions intends to implement the Goldmine customer relationship management (CRM) package from Optimus later in the year.

That can be used to generate sales leads and identify which are a company's best customers and where effort is being wasted, said Optichrome.

Goldmine is said to automate several sales tasks and provides quick remote access to critical prospect and customer information.

Data could include anything from proof details to relevant personal information about a customer and that can be accessed via a laptop away from the main office.

"Throughout all our dealings Optimus has been very helpful and professional.

The after-sales care and training have been excellent and we like the option to send staff at any date in the future to the company's facility at its Woking headquarters for further training," said Richard Howell.

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