Windsor Print adopts web to print

WINDSOR PRINT IN TONBRIDGE IS A 21-strong business that has been working with some customers for more than 25 years, and it would like to keep working with them for at least another quarter of a century or so. The managing director is Paul Lywood, who, with Darren Field and Stuart Murphy, was one of a triumvirate involved with a management buyout four years ago. He has every intention of retaining the existing customer base. “I aim to be around for a long time and the way to survive is to do what the customers need, which means service and value for money,” he explains.

“We are about long-term relationships, which demands consistent service and quality. Windsor is very much a service-led business,” he says. That means that the company has changed, managing to anticipate developing demands from its customers. The press hall has a brace of Speedmaster 74s, both linked to an Image Control unit. But there are also two Xerox DC5000s, Brisque prepress and a Lotem platesetter.

The company runs both presses with Heidelberg Image Control to give measurable colour on its litho sheet work. Late last year it began working with Paul Sherfield at The Missing Horse consultancy on a project to implement monitor proofing for the customer involved and as a proofing system at press side. More work needs to be done to piece this all together, but it is clearly the direction the business is headed.

What is apposite is that Windsor is using technology to give the customer a better experience. If ‘print by numbers’ colour is the left hand of this strategy, the right hand is to use web to print technology.

“I started looking at web to print three years ago. I was almost drawn to the Xerox solution but felt that it wasn’t user friendly. I always felt there was an opportunity, but that the system had to be easy to use. Bytes approached us about becoming a beta user for their Infigo system. They are similar to us in being a relatively small, service-led organisation, and we could talk to developers about changes we wanted. As a test, I let my mother and my eight-year-old have a try and both managed to order business cards, which provided the confidence we needed.”

A key consideration was that web to print should not get in the way of providing a first-rate service to customers. It hasn’t, instead helping both sides save time and money. “People ordering a business card do not want to get involved in a 15-minute conversation or a 45-minute process of emails going back and forth with proofs, because all the fonts are already embedded, templates ensure the integrity of the design and the customer accepts a PDF proof of the job.

“The benefit for the customer is that it cuts the time taken to specify a job, and there’s benefit for us in the way it slips into our workflow.”

One of the customers is a publisher that, after the Budget each year, produces a business tax guide, which is sold as a branded package to different accountancy practices to hand to their clients. For the first time this year, as Alistair Darling sat down, Windsor was waiting for the final pages before printing the precise number of books needed according to orders placed through the website. In all, 14 versions of the same content were available, because the system that has been used until now cannot cope with anything more sophisticated.

Web to print changes that, and next year there will be more options for the accountancy firms to choose from, including, Lywood believes, versions that can be further personalised with the publisher’s customer’s customer’s name.

He has thoughts about allowing even larger organisations to control all their print requirements through the web to print portal, bringing order to a process filled with small-value jobs on the one hand and warehouses full of material that will be out of date before it is used on the other. It is a tool that allows Windsor Print to deliver an improved service and to enhance what it is already doing.

Lywood says: “There are still times when you want to sit down with someone and discuss the options on a job. That is my role as managing director, when I can bring 17 years’ experience into play to find out what it is they need.”