“The traditional commercial print shop is now doing labels and packaging, with some wide format thrown into the mix for good measure. It is bespoke manufacturing, and it is tailor made for printIQ,” according to Mick Rowan, Director of Product Development and Marketing at IQ.
“We have seen the landscape change dramatically over the past five years,” adds Anthony Lew, CEO at IQ. “Printers today are moving into hybrid production and they need a system that enables them to move into that space without the headaches. Everyone’s workflow is different, and so is the approach of the IQ team. We enable customers to create a workflow that supports their business.
“We achieve this by equipping them with a toolbox full of gadgets and plugins that ultimately allow them to create their own workflow. We give them the tools. We hold their hands, and when they do not know how, we show them what they can actually achieve,” says Lew.
With printIQ jobs can be quoted, and paid for, online in real time without delay, they can be easily tracked online, by customers, throughout the entire lifecycle of the job. Staff in various departments can update production status as the job progresses through their area of the factory, without the need to talk to anyone about it. The job bag exists in a digital space, so any information change is updated live – it will not be outdated. The job’s status is updated via tablets, terminals, barcode scanners, or the printIQ App, as it moves throughout the factory, and is instantly updated on the online Job Track module.
When production is complete the job will appear on the dispatch board ready for dispatch. If it has not yet been invoiced it will also show on the Finance board for individual invoice, or to be combined with other invoices for the same customer.
The printIQ Core includes a full inventory system, including refresh level notification, online purchasing, and direct integration with a number of cloud-based accounting packages (and a CSV export for those older packages), with invoices being simultaneously pushed into the accounting software. Notifications are automatically sent to the client upon dispatch and the delivery can be tracked through the delivery connote.
“Increasingly when we are talking with business owners about the problems they are facing,” adds Adrian Fleming, Global Director of Sales at IQ, saying, “one of the biggest trends that we see is that the systems that are bought and implemented in isolation often require workarounds and double handling to make them play well with others. The outcome for the business is that the hidden costs often outweigh the benefits.”
“Having multiple sources of truth, within any data driven environment,” continues Fleming, “can, and will, lead to miscommunication and misinformation permeating the organisation. If, for example, your inventory system cannot talk to your production system, then the complete picture of things like, materials on hand, or factory capabilities will be inaccurate. Equally, if your customer contact information is not connected to your quoting system then determining the right people to receive information will become a mess.
“Over time these pieces of data, if not stored in an integrated environment, will become fragmented and inaccurate in all of your systems.”
“A move into the printIQ universe,” adds Rowan, “allows you to transform your plant into a well-oiled machine. You can say goodbye to the islands of automation linked by spreadsheets, sticky notes, whiteboards, and phone calls. Your workflow becomes the reliable single source of truth about every job accepted for production.”
Since IQ first brought its printIQ management workflow software to the market in 2008, its focus has been on maintaining an in-depth knowledge of the printing industry. It is a unique situation to see an IT company predominantly staffed by former prepress operators, schedulers, estimators and production managers. Lew strongly believes that the printIQ software is better for this.
Lew continues “Sixty per cent of our customers are converting from other systems. They complain that nothing ever changes with their system, that it has been the same product for years.
“At IQ, we continually invest in product development, so we are able to adapt and change. Thirty percent of our revenue goes on R+D. It is a costly thing to do, but we create and develop an overall system. When it comes down to it, we can never fully understand what a customer has built up over the years. What we do understand is that if we empower the customer to use our tools effectively, the chances of delivering a successful integration project skyrockets.”
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