Litho Print, a midsize commercial printer in Dayton, Ohio, prints projects ranging from private label credit forms and brochures to direct mail pieces and point-of-sale collateral. As its business grew, it was finding it more difficult to manage sales and customer orders.

“We had been using Excel spreadsheets for our job quoting, which was a somewhat manual process – prone to errors. And mistakes can cost you jobs,” said Litho Print President Darrell Templeton. “We were looking for a software package that would close the loop by directly relating the quotation for a set of customer specifications to the purchasing or raw materials and to the actual production ticket used on the shop floor.”

The company decided to implement Prinance from Heidelberg Systems. According to Heidelberg, Prinance provides complete shop management, including customer quotations, database management, order confirmation, shop floor production tickets, inventory control, shipping forms and job invoicing.

With Prinance, “Your quote becomes the specification for what you produce on the shop floor,” Templeton said. “As you make changes to a job, Prinance captures them and makes the appropriate adjustments, so it protects both Litho Print and our valued customers. It is a tremendous time saver.”

Litho Print purchased Prinance during Graph Expo/Converting Expo 2003 in September and began operating it in December. Templeton said he expects the new system to help increase profitability, particularly as Litho Print looks to drive its revenue to $3 million in 2004 from $2.3 million in 2003. The company currently uses Prinance for customer database management, estimating jobs, quoting, order confirmation and job ticketing and will eventually use the system to track shipping information, invoicing and inventory control, he said.

Remote service

An added plus is Prinance’s Remote Service feature, Templeton said. When a service issue arises, Heidelberg’s Remote Service feature lets Heidelberg dial into the system and diagnose the problem remotely. Then, Litho Print can simply follow the Heidelberg technician’s instructions to fix the problem, obviating the time and cost associated with a technician site visit.

Templeton said that problems that once took three hours to resolve can now be rectified in 10 minutes. “Heidelberg’s support has been outstanding,” Templeton said. “With Remote Service, I don’t have to spend my time fixing problems and can focus on my business.”