Tharstern is taking its MIS into the cloud beginning with a version for label printers. The UK’s largest MIS provider has some 7,000 sites worldwide, but is heavily under represented in labels printing. Despite recently celebrating a 20th anniversary with OPM (Labels and Packaging) there are just a dozen label printers on the customer roll call.
With label printing proving to be a dynamic sector though transition to digital printing, the consolidation in groups across multiple sites and the increase of online ordering and digital workflows, it presents an opportunity for the MIS developer. Nor would a new system pose a risk to existing users.
“We’ve been working with a few of our label customers and they have been invaluable in helping us understand the nuances of the sector,” says a spokesperson. “Instead of adding this additional functionality into the current product, we saw an opportunity to start building a new cloud based platform for the future generation of Tharstern MIS across all sectors,” says Tharstern CEO Keith McMurtrie.
There is appeal too to commercial printers diversifying into label printing. He confirms: “We’re also seeing label companies diversifying into other areas too. Our vision for this product was to create something that allows our customers to quote for and administer any type of printed product, because that’s where we see the industry heading.”
The cloud version is built on a core that is developed to be sector neutral and so adaptable to different sectors. It is not a rewrite of the existing MIS, but the result of an entirely separate development team that has been at work for three years while Tharstern’s normal team continues to work on enhancements to the current product.
Details will be revealed during an online presentation next week (27 July) with the promise that it will be very different to the existing MIS. Says McMurtrie: “We don’t want to say too much at this stage, but we believe the connectivity and technology behind Tharstern Cloud are unparalleled, and there are some exciting features that are beyond the typical scope of an MIS solution. I’m very excited to reveal all at the launch event.”
There is a timetable to release versions suited to large format, packaging and also commercial print. “In the coming months we’ll be evolving the MIS so that over time, it supports all types of print,” he says.
The company has been using online presentations as Tharstern TV over the last 18 months and, while Covid allowing, the company would have preferred an in person event, this would also have been live streamed to “make it accessible to everyone, no matter what time zone they were in”.
