This, however, is web to print that is controlled by the printer, who offers a selection of relatively straightforward jobs, from business cards to books, that small businesses can order online. Some printers have created private online portals for the benefit of some key clients, thus automating the processing of regular jobs, possibly tied in with a stock control element where print orders can be triggered when numbers fall below certain levels thus automating a purchase decision based on contractual agreements. This is in control of the print business offering the service.
On the other hand procurement technology, used by large companies, is generally reckoned to be too broad to cope with some of the subtleties of print and so needs to integrate with an online ordering tool, such as Vpress. This has the same sort of functionality as a portal managed by a print business and serving a number of customers, but is now in the hands of the client with delivery to a number of printers either according to their capabilities or more frequently price on the day.
This has been the print management model for many years, aligned with a promise of cost saving and greater control over print spend. And print management has either written the software to do this from the ground up, or built a system combining elements from other applications to result in technology that gives the user what is needed by way of lower costs and greater control and provides the printer with a ready to run file, for which the print management business extracts a fee equivalent to the value that the client perceives and the printer does not receive.
Such systems tend to be bespoke or at least customised to the needs of each business and use at best semi-proprietary technology. It is part of the secret sauce that ties a corporate customer into the print management business for the long term. For that reason few make that technology available to potential competitors.
Complis has no such qualms. It is a UK business headed by Lee Eyre that has built a software that is being used for print management across small independent print management businesses through to FMCG goods companies with hundreds of brands and 200 staff in print procurement. Eyre started on this road as ecommerce manager for Astron in 2001 just as the dotcom bubble was bursting. After two years he took that experience to DSR, building a tool called Axis. He then left to develop Complis as a print procurement and campaign management tool and continues to be its lead architect. It has been created with Leeds company Mosaic Print Management in mind, but with a user base far beyond this agency.
“It is an end to end solution that manages print buying and supply chain and automates estimating, web to print activity, digital asset management, email campaigns all from one solution. There is no need to link to third party software and consequently no need to transfer data between applications,” he says.
There are users in the financial and legal sector, it is in use by companies in healthcare where brands need to ensure the integrity of their brands across different skus and different countries. It is a tall ask. It needs too to manage collaborations, artwork checking and sign off, as well as the list of potential print providers, filtered to that they meet the criteria needed for any particular job.
Where, for example, a job requires the printer to hold a certain certification, this becomes a criterion for selection and non qualifying printers would not be invited to submit a quote or to participate in a reverse auction should that be chosen.
It is about introducing automation to the greatest extent possible. Once the software selects the ideal printer, that printer will receive a digital job file along with data to log the job into an MIS, create the job and raise the invoice when needed.
Some printers will have taken the integration to the point that there is a direct link into the MIS for submission of the job without manual intervention. According to internally set rules which are part of the API, the job can pass along the most appropriate production route, again without the active intervention of a production manager. With the API in place the job can be fully automated until the point of putting sheets into a business card cutter say. A stock replenishment function will alert the scheduler to the need to run a top up order to keep stock numbers at the right level.
Any new job can be sent to the most suitable suppliers. Eyre says: “We will create the RFQ and use artificial intelligence to identify the best suppliers for that job. They will receive an email and be invited to submit a price.”
For some low value, high volume work that is repetitive in nature, the order placement, preflighted file submitted and the job can be actioned with no human intervention.
The Complis software is a 100% in-house development says Eyre. A small team completes projects which can be suggested from customer feedback and requests. These can be hard to come by. Eyre says that once the software has been installed and the new users are up and running it can be difficult to understand their progress. Though rather than wait to hear when there is a problem or something that is not understood, the Complis team will be in touch to monitor progress.
“We are constantly trying to talk to customers to understand their requirements, what elements of the system they are using and which elements are not being used. we want them to get more from it.” After all they are paying for it. The business model is that Complis supplies a full system, located in the cloud where everyone is on the same version and with the same features. There is no need to unlock new modules as demand changes or grows.
It makes life easier for the developers in terms of support and for customers that do not have to wait for new features as their needs change. As with the in house developed print management applications it’s all about keeping customers for the long term. Not all systems are the same however. There are API links to external business tools, say Sage, Ariba, Salesforce or similar which not all customers will need, but which exist for those that do. “It’s about making our software the only package they need,” says Eyre.
So far this is working out. There is a broad spread of clients automating their print procurement process thanks to Complis. “We push the benefits of integration, how it makes procurement smarter and cheaper. The client gains better visibility over their spend and their data with greater intelligence.”
Holding everything in one system enables swift upgrades and greater accessibility. Elements and artwork are unlikely to become mislaid or lost. “We don’t look at the artwork, but we can search for it to see, for example, how many products and which products are using that image. Or if the law changes so that everypiece of artwork needs to be updated, all instances where the text has been used, can be identified and changed at once, You can only do that if all data is in one place. It enables a complete update for be carried out in five minutes. That is a huge advantage to working in one system.
“And the more data that we have the more efficient we can be.”
Now Complis is preparing to come out into the daylight, with a stronger marketing push. This had been planned for 2020, but was put on ice during the lockdowns. Now those plans are being revived. “We are trying to get our name out a bit more,” says Eyre.
If anything the timing is now better. Companies have both lost staff as a result of the pandemic and have come to rely even more on automated technology, Complis included.
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