HUSSEIN GHOR HAS A simple prescription for survival in tough times – automate everything.

Printwell, his company, tries to live up to this, but can find itself thwarted when the software he wants to use doesn’t quite deliver.

When Ghor started the company 24 years ago it was a back bedroom operation, expanding quickly into more conventional premises. Eight years ago it moved to premises on the Wandle Industrial Estate between Mitcham and Hackbridge on the edge of London. The company that moved was a straightforward commercial litho printer. Today Printwell is anything but straightforward. For example there’s the mannequin in the meeting room dressed in a security guard’s uniform. It’s not a deterrent to would-be criminals, but a display of the items that Printwell can provide to franchise holders of that security business. Downstairs there are boxes of promotional goods, cleaning materials and other non-print items, which will also be sent to franchisees, though of different companies. If Printwell can supply print, the same set-up can supply other consumables to allow the entrepreneur to get on with running his business venture.

Also downstairs are the presses, a five-colour Speedmaster 74, a brace of two-colour GTOs and Xerox mono and colour machines. But these are less important than what they do and the evidence of that is stored in racks ready for packing and delivery. This is a company aligned with the requirements of franchise-style business. And central to the strategy is a web to print offering through which the franchise holders can order the print (or other supplies) they require, while the head office maintains control over the materials offered and so the brand image and quality.

The software chosen to offer this is ROI’s Xralle, chosen because of supposed close links to a Shuttleworth MIS. The MIS was a replacement for a home-grown system which Printwell had been running for five years before realising that it needed something more powerful, which it had the resources to develop. While its own web to print system worked, there was no MIS in place, and therefore no back end system to drive benefits for the business. That began to change when the MIS was delivered at the end of 2006. “The major reason we wanted this was because of the integration between website and MIS, which we couldn’t do ourselves,” says Ghor. “And by the time we found out that Shuttleworth couldn’t do everything that we wanted, we had already invested a year and a half in it.”

Since then Printwell has pushed the MIS supplier to come up with the required interfaces, with some success, because as Ghor points out, “they could see that what we were trying to do would be of use to everybody”.

What Printwell was trying to do simply was automate as much of the purchasing and production process as possible. The web to print software enables Printwell to skin internet sites so that to all intents and purposes these were websites that came from head office. Handling print requirements, which is a low priority for the individual entrepreneur who buys a franchise to manage, becomes a service offered by the head office as part of the backbone of services to help its franchisees, who need not know that the site is being operated by Printwell.

The software offers stock items of print as well as templated materials that can be personalised to suit the outlet, while retaining the corporate style of the overall business. One wine shipper allows restaurants to build individual wine lists from the range of bottles stocked, rather than prescribe a selection according to restaurant type. The names and descriptions are assembled in Pageflex to create what will be a list tailored to each restaurant.

Orders placed on the system are, as with any web to print application, accurate, and any proofing has been done by the client. The file the printer receives is a file ready to print. For Printwell it is easier to have the client submit a new order than to stop a job, correct it and then print it. However, while the web to print application can allow the franchisee to create the artwork he wants, the order is not necessarily ready to pass into the standard print MIS.

At first the different softwares did not talk to each other and Ghor’s ambitions to automate everything seemed doomed. “MIS is very much production-led. It generates management reports on what has happened, while Xralle is very much customer-focused,” he says. “Xralle is never going to become a Shuttleworth any more than Shuttleworth can become an Xralle. The trouble is that there are two teams of developers, neither of which understand print. Their software guys are very good, but have a software not a print background.

“As a printer we’d be lost without Shuttleworth, but as a business we’d be lost without Xralle.”

This is where Printwell is fortunate in having Robin D’eca to run its IT developments. He can understand what the customers need and understands the print business and the requirements of the customer base. Having a software background is useful too in being able to communicate with software engineers.

The solution for Printwell turns out to be a Sales Order Processing module, which delivers the incoming order, placed on the Xralle, into the Shuttleworth MIS where it can raise a job bag. The order is directed first at the warehouse to check whether it can be fulfilled from stock. Only then is any printing required. The SOP system now handles 95% of all online orders, replacing the previous system where the order from the web to print software had to be printed out and re-keyed into the MIS. The savings in time – and paper – have been enormous. If the order can be fulfilled from stock, it will be; if not, the print job is raised. When delivery times are known, this is sent by email to the customer. In some cases Printwell will coordinate with the regular trucks being sent to the franchisees from a central warehouse and will deliver print, packaged and addressed to the warehouse in time for the delivery run. It reinforces the connections between the central franchise business and the print supply service as well as cutting back on unnecessary journeys, something close to the environmental stance that Printwell takes.

Email notification has been found to be the best means of communication as customers are unlikely to phone to check where their job is, and experience shows that neither will they bother going to the website to track the order.

The benefits to the customer of the integration that Printwell has put in place are slight, “but as a printer we are seeing huge benefits because there is now a link between the MIS and web sites”, Ghor continues.

In practical terms this can mean that, should the printer receive 3,000 orders a day, every one will pass directly into the system and will not need to be printed out, creating a huge saving in human interaction. When the customer needs to call and ask about progress, wasted time quickly builds up. “To deal with a query will take 20-30 minutes a time. If we had to deal with five queries a day, that would be two and a half hours not spent on productive matters,” he explains.

The trick is to make the website as simple to use as possible. For D’eca, success in web to print is all about the client experience of using the website. If it is easy – and the latest version takes a step in this direction by retaining artwork details along with the order information in a ‘history’ queue, rather than requiring the user to store each job as a ‘favourite’ – then the website will be used. It then becomes a task for the printer of fulfilling the order. Says D’eca: “People cite cost as the primary motivator involved – it’s not. People would rather spend an extra £1 and be assured that there are no hassles and that the job turns up correctly.” It’s about making life for the franchisee, and for his head office, as straightforward as possible.

The approach is working. Printwell is adding to the franchise groups it works for and adding to the range of products it covers. This has extended to non-print items, hence the security guard uniforms and the issue of different size shirts, trousers and hats to contend with.

Choosing to specialise in this customer segment is proving a sound decision. The franchise business here is about 10 years behind the US, where the model allows the US spirit of self-dependency to come through, says Ghor. The technology is equally playing to the franchise model, says D’eca. “It’s allowing the companies to offer their franchisees more services, using the website styled in the business brand to communicate and offer support from head office.

“What we want to do next is create some form of social networking through the websites so that the franchisees can talk to each other and offer help and advice to each other. If this means that one outlet can discuss the success he has had through a marketing venture, it will become a win-win for the franchisee, for the company and for us, because we will be providing printed material to an operator who previously might not have undertaken the promotion. People don’t always spend on marketing because they see it as a cost; but if they see that the £100 spent on printed materials will bring in £1,000 of revenue, there’s a big chance they will make that decision. We want it to become a kind of Facebook for franchises.”

This approach is also working. Around 25% of Printwell’s £4 million turnover comes through the web, and this is increasing. It is making the company a useful hybrid between the old style print-only companies and the print management operations which have no production base. It’s a model that has taken Ghor from his back bedroom to a business with 48 people and with scope for further expansion.