Dash to the Cloud

Added by Sharon Mordey on January, 4, 2013

Article courtesy of Australian Printer, published 16 Dec 2012 written by Wayne Robinson.

Optimus celebrates its 30th birthday this year and continues to be at the forefront of innovation in management information systems, with MIS and web-to-print integration at the forefront of its development through its digital dash and Cloud solutions.

Nicola Bisset, Optimus group managing director comments, “We had a number of new product launches at both Fespa Barcelona in February and drupa in May.  This demonstrated once again our extensive research has been thorough in identifying what our customers and the market in general requires. Optimus strives to deliver long term benefits and this means we need much greater understanding of our customer’s business processes. Regular updates are supplied to customers and we have recognised that our customers benefit from a consistent, consultative approach with Optimus becoming a valued business partner not just a software provider.”

The launch of the award winning Optimus dash at Ipex 2010 was as a result of the frustration in the market from mixed, digital and specialist print houses who were finding that most MIS systems were firmly rooted in just litho processes. As a result of the offering of Optimus dash, it was awarded the EDP 2011 award for Best Specialist Application Product.

Optimus is aware that most companies now offer numerous manufacturing processes to enable them to deliver a wide variety of printed matter and services. Increasingly value added services need to be managed as part of a specific project or campaign. Where Optimus dash has proved to be very attractive is managing processes which have nothing to do with print, alongside the printed product.

Optimus is an advocate of lean manufacturing and takes this ethos into their product design, so, automation, less keystrokes thereby reduced administration and reduced costs are the key to Optimus dash.

One early adopter of Optimus dash stated, “As a full service provider, MIS companies who could just manage traditional litho did not work for us. We needed not just litho but also large and small format digital, screen print, variable data, design services and outsourcing of non printed items. Optimus with its unique process driven approach can handle this without compromise as we were able to provide our own unique business logic into the configuration of Optimus dash.”

Another Optimus dash customer who has calculated the return on investment in the first seven months of the system going live has seen the following return on investment: saving nine man days a month in reduced administration, job and accounts processing time, increased sales revenue attributed to additional sales time of 7 – 10 hours per week, increased cash flow – invoices submitted daily rather than after month end, and reduced stock surplus – stock turn is better and wastage on ink is reduced as are same day courier and delivery costs for materials.

W2P Cloud

Optimus Cloud, according to Nicola Bisset, ‘Marks a landmark step in the evolution of MIS and Web2Print services for our industry’.   She says, “We want to change the rules of web-to-print, and we believe this is the next generation of complete on-line trading for print providers and their customers.”

Optimus believe whilst traditional stand alone web-to-print tools have shown customers much easier ways of ordering products and accessing services online, the lack of truly integrated joined up thinking with MIS in handling those online transactions has for some print providers eroded all of their hard fought profits at the first hurdle.

In talking with one web to print user, the feedback Optimus received was, “We wanted to drive sales, reduce our costs and maximise the profit in each transaction, and on one level this looked to have happened.

“Orders were coming in thick and fast and we were delighted; however the vast amount of double entry, the complete separation of our web-to-print system from our stock and accounting systems caused us a complete administrative nightmare and unexpectedly took our hard fought margin.”

Bisset says, “Put simply, with Optimus Cloud all those problems are removed as the web-to-print technology source is now a logical extension of the Optimus MIS infrastructure; so with no more guess work, handling errors or double entry, profits can be easily restored and increased without throwing people at the problem.”

Cloud offers more than web to print - users will be able to obtain instant quotes, upload files, have access to historical data and status information about planned tasks and orders, as well as order static and personalised product in one intuitive interface. Once an order is placed all tasks, requisitions, checks and balances are automated for the print production process in the Optimus MIS to start straight away.  In addition all of Cloud is modular, so you only pay for what you use.

According to Bisset “Optimus Cloud in combination with Optimus MIS provides an opportunity to change the perception of MIS and web to print once and for all, Its not just a production tool or glorified calculator, its a genuine all round sales tool which if used right can prove to be extremely profitable.”

She says, “With Optimus Cloud there is complete integration into Optimus dash MIS so that any orders or finished goods (stock) orders automatically appear in Optimus dash ready to start production. Equally Optimus Cloud gives additional functionality of Fast Quotes - a customer can prepare a quote by simply choosing the product and answering simple questions - a price will automatically appear on screen with an option to email themselves with the quote. In turn the quote automatically appears in Optimus dash. Customer View is also available allowing a customer to view where their jobs are in production, look at historical job list, quote list and invoices.”