Monday morning, three emails and not one file name you can make sense of
One customer has sent you a download link that expires on Thursday, another has attached a file to the email called definitivo_2_ok, and the third writes that the logo has to change but the rest is the same as before, except that nobody knows which one before is
Meanwhile there are four quote requests to answer, and they are the same four as always with different numbers, business cards, flyers, a catalog, a run of labels
The work that takes your hours
It isn't the printing, you know how to do that and it pays you, it's the steps around it that nobody sees and nobody gives you credit for
- The repetitive quotes, always the same three or four types, with size, paper, run length and finish changing only slightly, and you prepare ten of them to win one
- The customer files that arrive by email, by WeTransfer, on a stick brought to the counter, and somebody has to download them before the link expires
- Renaming those files by the rule of the house, and putting them in the folder for the right job, which is a skill you pick up and never teach
- The job sheet to fill in with data that is already in the order, in the email and in the quote
- The delivery notes (DDT), the dispatch notes, the quantities delivered and the ones returned, the paperwork that travels with the parcel
- The big customer who has their own portal and wants the orders and the documents in there, their own way
Examples of what the system can do
These are examples of jobs the system is able to carry out, not jobs already delivered to some print shop, Muffin Suite started recently and I would rather be the one to tell you straight away
- The system reads the request that comes in by email, recognizes it as one of the repetitive types, takes the quantity and the size and prepares the quote in the print shop business software with the pricing rules you gave it, then leaves it to you to check and send
- It downloads the customers' attachments and links as soon as they arrive, renames the files by your rule, job, customer, version, and puts them in the job folder without waiting for somebody to remember
- It opens the order and fills in the job sheet with the data already written somewhere else, press, paper, yield, without retyping anything
- It takes the data from the PDF or the Excel file of the order and carries it into the business software line by line, checking that quantities and codes match
- It logs into the customer's portal with your credentials, downloads the new orders and uploads the documents that customer wants uploaded there
It works with the old software you have in the office too
The system does not ask your program for a technical integration, it opens the screens and works inside them the way a person would, so it is fine even if the business software is old, even if nobody updates it any more, even if it has no direct integration at all
You don't have to replace your software, you don't rebuild the folders, you don't send anyone off to learn a new program
What stays with you
The printing, the color, the press that has to be set, the advice to the customer who wants something that will not come out well on the paper they chose
The system does the mechanical steps, and when something does not add up it does not make it up, it stops and leaves you the case, a file that matches nothing, a quantity that does not tally, a request that looks like nothing it knows
How much autonomy to give it is up to you, at the start it is worth keeping it tight, with a confirmation before every step, then you widen it on what you have seen work
Why you come out ahead
The hours that go into unpaid quotes and into files to put in order today come back, and you don't hire anyone to key in data
I tell you the monthly fee before we start, that figure stays and you approve every addition yourself, if you want to do the sums there is the savings calculation, and if you want to see how we begin there is the page on how it works