The University of Southampton Print Centre was set up in the early 70s. An in-house plant like a university has its own peaks and troughs in terms of amount of work received, so the Southampton In-plant operation also has an external client base too. And they have to make a profit. They have to work with in an EU tendered framework agreement with 10 other external printers; this ensures the most cost effective solution for the university. Approximately 25% of their work is general commercial work for government agencies, colleges, schools and local business.

Brought in to expand the business, Ian Wilcox, the Print Centre Manager, brought with him 16 years in commercial print sales and management and a clear charter to expand the business from internal and external customers.

The Print Centre had a few digital machines and two litho printing presses but increasing levels of work meant an upgrade was needed. With the installation of a high volume digital color device capable of meeting the needs of their customers, a four color litho press with computer to plate and updated finishing equipment, the Print Centre could now overcome such challenges. This part of the business is expanding rapidly and Press-sense iWay was implemented to bring it all together. Press-sense iWay ability to bring all the output devices and customers together is a big advantage to the business.

Another challenge faced by the University was that all the jobs were manually booked in by phone or fax and then transferred into the MIS system and then would be generated into a job bag to do estimating and finally stuck into envelopes to be sent to the relevant departments for processing. Such a lengthy process created delays in production as well as the inability to increase the amount of jobs. iWay was the perfect solution to this problem. In addition to its ability to streamline the entry of jobs and production management, iWay also allows for the automation of files and order processing meaning that more complex jobs can get done.

Before making the investment, Mr. Wilcox undertook an extensive product comparison between Press-sense iWay and other, apparently competitive offerings, including solutions from web developers – which had very nice websites “but the backend was atrocious”. Many of these solutions were not open enough or robust enough and couldn’t handle the workflow. Many of them were just too convoluted.

What was found in Press-sense iWay was a product that would actually do the job out-of¬the-box. They were impressed by the integration possibilities and the solid functionality on the backend such as the automation of preflight and PDFs, excel estimating, and branding capabilities.

Press-sense iWay flexibility allowed for different approval cycles, different templates per department and different privileges. The great thing, according to Ian Wilcox, is that Press-sense iWay is flexible enough for them to determine the business flow per department.

The University of Southampton, Print Centre has decided to move into this new e-business system in stages. They started with more simple jobs such as stationery, business cards, and now, after three months, are working on advancing to the next level.

At present the Print Centre is taking advantage of the Transeo Media iWay Managed Service (ASP) and thoroughly enjoys this hosted solution although they do plan to eventually upgrade iWay into a stand- alone application.

The Feedback that they have been getting from their clients is great. Their users have found the system easy to use. According to Ian “Training time is about half an hour”. The templates have made ordering much simpler for customers due to iWay’s user-friendly interface.