Computerized Print Management Systems Offer Modern Solutions To Age-Old Problems

By John Giles
How much will this job cost? Did an estimate go out? Did we include everything on the order? When can it be delivered? Where is the job? Did we make money on the job? How much is it costing us to do business?

Every day, printing company owners are inundated with these questions. They try to answer the questions during those free moments between doing everything else that is required to run a business. Some owners do all the invoicing and estimating. They want to handle everything themselves so things don’t get "messed up." Is it any wonder that some owners spend 16-hour days in the shop dealing with paperwork? An owner gets pulled in a thousand different directions. The owner must be a walking encyclopedia about everything that is happening in the shop. When does an owner’s head just blow up?

Printing management software allows many of the owner tasks to be automated. It assures consistent pricing. It captures information about the customers and their work. It provides management information so owners can make qualified decisions rather than best-guess judgments. Management software helps assure everyone is using the same procedures. Basically, a printing management system forces shop employees to standardize job functions in a manner consistent with the owner’s policy.

Printing management applications for quick and small commercial printers have been around since the mid-1980s, but now they are just starting to achieve a deeper penetration into the printing market. The larger quick printers were the first to adopt this software. You would be hard-pressed to find a shop listed in Quick Printing’s Top 100 that doesn’t credit a small portion of its success to a printing management system. Computerizing their operations allowed them to replicate and grow faster than those trying to use a manual system based on the knowledge of one person.

Something for Everyone
Today’s printing management systems are affordable for even the smallest printing company. For many shops, the elimination of simple mathematical errors in pricing and invoicing might pay for a system in its first year.

Most systems support Windows and Mac platforms, but most tend to be oriented toward Windows. You don’t even have to have the newest and faster computers to have a productive system. Most systems will run on older PCs and Macs, so most of a printer’s investment will be in software, not new hardware. Setup for most software is easy, in terms of installation. The difficulties come with the decisions that have to be made by management. It takes time to enter paper prices and budget hourly rates. It also takes time to check the prices. Some printers are shocked when they compare their current selling prices to the prices recommended by a management system. They often find that they have been lying to themselves about their profit margins and underpricing their services. Using a printing management system gives you the cold, hard facts about what your costs really are and how much you have to charge to make a profit.