Micropress has developed a bespoke dashboard tool to enable customers to track the progress of their jobs from submission to delivery.
The system had been tested by a handful of customers for several months before being made available to all customers of the Suffolk printer last month. “All customers are given a dashboard where they can upload artwork, approve proofs, view the status of their jobs in production and track a delivery 24 hours a day. In addition, customers can access a lot of information on their account,” says director Rob Cross.
Micropress has a Fujifilm XMF workflow and XMF Remote for clients to upload and approve artwork, but once PDFs are released for platemaking there has been no provision for customers to delve deeper and monitor their jobs. And it seems this is what they want to do.
Cross says: “The system was born from the idea that we are seeing a new era of print buyers coming through who want real time access to the status of their jobs 24/7 as they want to get a POD for a delivery at 9 o’clock at night, for example.”
Rather than compromise on the functionality with technology from existing suppliers, Micropress has employed its own developer to build the package. Currently customers can check the stage of production that their job has reached, from prepress to finishing and dispatch. There is no need to call an account manager to check progress. The account manager system remains in place, with each gaining time to handle more valuable tasks.
“Many of our customers have several jobs in with us at any one time, our vision is for a print buyer to get into work and pull up the Micropress dashboard with all their jobs in progress telling them the vital information they need to know that day,” says Cross.
The client will inform Micropress that a job is ready to be placed. It is booked in and made available for file upload via the portal. Approvals are automatically relayed to the MIS which adjusts scheduling if necessary. The client sees that the status of a job has been changed to “in production”. Once ready for delivery, the dashboard will show the shipping number and information about the relevant carrier.
There is potential for more granular information to be supplied, but the company is not sure that there is demand for this level of detail. “They want to know that the job is booked in, that the artwork has been received and so on,” says Jon Jordan, account director. “Though we are already working on V2 and V3.”
The technology currently works through a desktop rather than a smartphone as most buyers will be tied to a desktop or laptop computer.
Cross hopes the customer dashboard becomes a key differentiator for the business. He says: “If we continue to offer good pricing, service and quality then we hope the further addition of the dashboard will attract more customers. While some of the online printers may offer something similar we are not aware of any other print company in our area offering anything like this solution.”
