Say What? A quick word with Oliver Renshaw

This has been the biggest ever investment in print, showing confidence from the management that we can deliver the service that’s needed on campus. After Covid decimated print volumes we needed to ask ‘How can we make print sexy again?’.

We stopped the walk up service and everyone now uses online portals. Amazon style buying is working really well for us. The portals are built on Digital Storefront and deliver XML data and a PDF through Switch to the workflow which manages colour, allocates the job to a machine, generates barcodes to download settings for finishing, creates the imposition and batches jobs for greatest efficiency. Jobs are identified by customer type and colour, a different colour for example for students, academic staff, outside work etc.

The difference is like night and day compared to five years ago. A lot of the admin is also automated so we don’t have to work 24/7. We do not want to be working hard if we can work smarter.

When we decided to invest we wanted suppliers to help us with the innovation needed to drive the print unit forward. We have big plans for the Blade for example. It’s nice to be able to give customers something bit special.