Summer holidays

Summer seems to be here at last. I'm back from my holiday in the France to find a heatwave in full progress - maybe we should have gone to Brighton instead!

We're talking to all the new customers who joined us at IPEX, and helping them get set up, and as usual we are learning more about our own software in the process: new ways of looking at it, and new approaches to using it.

I was interested in the huge interest from overseas customers we saw, and I am reinforced in my belief that printers all over the world seem to think the same way - almost like members of an enormous family.  We really enjoyed meeting you all.

Anyway we're over half way through the Spanish and Catalan versions now (thanks to Jaume and Ricard Casals) and we've just signed up our first African agency, under the capable hands of Ada Babajide in Lagos. I think we've got a bit of set-up work to do now.

On that rather international note, I'll sign off - I have an on-line training session to do to a new customer in U.A.E!


Richard Fergusson
The PrintSum Partnership

The final runup for IPEX

It's the final approach to IPEX now.  Got your tickets yet? (apply on line at http://www.ipex.org/ and they should be free).
We're having the usual in-house arguments about how to make best use of our stand space, what posters for the walls, where to stay, etc, etc.  But we'll be there - Stand F323 in Hall 9, and very much look forward to meeting you there. We'll be showing of a load of new stuff, too (some of which is still under wraps).  Our new version 5 is bedding in very well and really makes our competitors seem outdated now, so we're excited about demonstrating it to you and showing you just how different it is from the rest.

Talking about that difference last night, a friend said 'but you need to encapsulate WHY you are different in a single memorable phrase'.  I've been thinking about that, and it's surprisingly difficult.  I suppose one difference is that, despite the fact that we've been going for 20 years now, we are as enthusiastic as ever.  The original creators are still hands-on on a daily basis, and we do have a tendency to worry about about getting things right, even if it takes a bit longer.  And we are concerned and have passionate arguments about 'usability' versus 'instant appeal'.  How do you put that in a single memorable phrase? I really haven't a clue!

See you at IPEX!

Richard Fergusson
The PrintSum Partnership

A rose by any other name...

Well, my American cousins are in the final countdown to Thanksgiving, and we're about to enter beta testing phase for the USA edition.  I've been waiting for about 20 years for America to go metric, but I guess it will never happen.  As a Los Angeles printer told me back then "Yes, we're going metric .... but by inches!"

So finally we are getting our act into gear and I've been trying to put realistic U.S. prices and tasks into our non-metric distribution model.

One thing that did come out of our studies, though, is that the name Printpak seems to already have too many uses that side of the Atlantic. There's American Printpak, a packaging materials manufacturer in Wisconsin, Goldrich Printpak Inc, a packaging company in Toronto, Print Pak Inc, in Texas and Printpak Inc in Missouri. In fact there are a whole load of them. Looking further afield, there are Printpaks in South Africa, Nairobi, Australia - everywhere in fact! So... (and this is what I'm getting round to) we've taken the rather difficult decision to re-brand the non-UK versions of Printpak Version 4 as PrintSum.  In the UK, Printpak remains just Printpak.

So the Printpak Partnership which owns the product now becomes the PrintSum Partnership, and we even have a new logo:

Now that means there I'm going to have a bit of a problem with what to call this Blog. Does it become the Printsum blog?  Maybe, but I think that's a problem for the future - let's get the PrintSum website up and the first non-metric version 4 out of the door first.

Best wishes from

Richard Fergusson
The Printpak PrintSum Partnership

Job costing in a free print MIS?

Well, we always promised it to ourselves, and it really seems to be here. Next week (with luck) we'll be adding job costing to our free Community edition. Everybody says "why?" so I've been trying to work out why it's so important to us.

I think it's that that we've always said - for the last 20 years or so - that any print MIS without some method of comparing real against theoretical costs is about as useful as a chocolate teapot. Actually, thinking about it, its probably a damn sight more dangerous than the chocolate teapot could ever be, in that you might get a bit scalded when the chocolate melted, but the MIS could actually lose you your company.

The point is that you can do all the theoretical calculations in the world but the only real way you can find out if you're getting enough to survive on is to cost a few jobs to see how accurate your estimates are.

In practice you don't even have to cost every job. One company I know costs a random ten percent sample. They simply mark every job sheet which has a job number ending in zero with a yellow highlighter. As those job sheets go through the shop floor everyone knows that you have to fill in your times and stock usage, and at the end they get collected and entered. Then you can start to analyze task by task whether you are getting it right or not.

It's analyzing the figures that is so important. For instance it's all very well knowing your cutter costs may be out by ten percent, but you need to find out whether there was one job that skewed the sample, or whether you are consistently out and need to revise the way you estimate cutting.

So that's why we place so much importance on job costing, and why we're bundling it in the free community edition. I reckon that's a world first!

Best wishes from Printpak

Richard Fergusson

Version 4.2 and the vendor-client relationship

Well, 4.2 is finally out there. A few teething glitches but settling down. I'm currently trying to get my head round American units. They're the same as the UK used up until around 30(?) years ago. i.e. inches and pounds weight. I remember in L.A. around 15 years ago talking to a printer about the USA going metric - after all weren't they trying out A4 paper in the White House? He said 'sure - but it's its an imperial A4 (11.69" x 8.27")'. He then added the immortal line "Yes we're slowly going metric - by inches!".

And now for all you hard-pressed printers out there - I thought you might appreciate this clip somebody sent me. It may not actually help your negotiations with print buyers, but it might bring a wry smile to your face. Been there? Often? Comment and let me know if you have ever experienced business like this.




kind regards
Richard Fergusson

Printpak 4.2 is coming out this weekend

After months and months of ‘are we nearly there?’, we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. The much-awaited version Printpak 4.2 should be coming out this weekend. The goodies contained in the package are so many that I’m not even going to attempt to enumerate them, but they include job costing and cost absorption (both included even in the free community edition), stock control and full purchase order processing, together with a load of fixes and enhancements. The main menu has been overhauled too, to reduce the clutter.

The reason for including job costing in even the free version is that we think that these days it’s getting increasingly vital to identify which jobs to walk away from. To provide accurate costs for a few jobs is vital so you can see whether your quoting is accurate. The problem is that the administrative load of entering the actual cost of each job is too much for many busy printers.

One of our users in Wales came up with an interesting solution to this – he said “why don’t you just cost one in ten jobs?” He went on to explain “You just need to mark with a yellow highlighter all jobsheets with the job number ending in zero. Then you tell the people on the shop floor that if their jobsheet is highlighted, they have to write on it their ‘actuals’ (i.e. the actual time taken, and actual stock used).” The downside of this is that any highlighted jobsheet will tend to take longer to work its way through production as people will try to avoid picking it up! In this way it’s possible to get a completely accurate costing of an exact ten percent sample, which is good enough!

Reverse Selling

Here’s another idea I came across for making print sales in difficult times. What about companies who have tried their own DIY marketing? You might want to call on companies who have sent you any form of junk mail or conducted any form of bad marketing.

I heard a story from a print salesman who many years ago used to do this when starting off in business. His first sale from junk mail was a cavity wall insulation company who sent him a really awful mailshot. He noted down some ideas and comments on the leaflet and posted it back to them.

Five days later he got a call from the company, and after a chat about it, he “guaranteed” to at least double their response (not hard, seeing how bad their existing efforts were). The outcome was that they commissioned him to produce their next promotion, and the resultant response rate increased from under half a percent to around three - not hard, given that their original effort was pretty dire.

So why not try phoning the companies who send you junk mail? Ask to speak to the "marketing manager" (who is usually an unqualified staff member). Tell them you have a professional interest in their promotion and asked “how did it go?” You’ll initially always get a guarded response, but when you offer a (tactful) professional opinion on the mailing you’ll get their interest and sometimes their future work. But be careful you only give away enough ideas to gain credibility and interest.

Keep on trucking!

Richard Fergusson