Quality Images may be a small shop, but by constantly improving efficiencies and offering new services with the latest technology, it garners business from large customers. In the last three years the Jacksonville, Florida, digital printer added new capabilities such as offering a 1:1 marketing solution. But the big move was in implementing a business flow automation workflow system called Press-sense iWay. As a result, the company provides state-of-theart services to large clients such as a $14 billion homebuilder, Pulte Homes, and CIT, a finance company. In fact, Quality Images has experienced dramatic growth.

“Prior to implementing this online web-to-print system, we were a consistent $1.75 to $2 million company,” says Chris Brunner, Vice President. “Now we’ve grown to $3 million in the last 2.5 years. We’re looking at a 35 percent increase. The system is a substantial reason why. It has allowed us to cut back on overhead and, at the same time, maintain customer relationships and loyalty because of the service we provide.” Quality Images realized the importance of leading-edge technology early on and evolved from a service bureau 16 years ago to a digital printer with one of the first Xeikon presses in America.

Quality Images decided to implement a web-based print-on-demand workflow system when one of the leading healthcare providers for home healthcare with 300 franchises requested such a service. Each franchise worked with between 15 to 35 sales reps and the company wanted them to have the ability to order their own business cards, stationery, and other short-run printing, such as customized brochures and flyers. To respond to this request, Quality Images spent four months building a beta site where the 300 franchises could log on and order materials from a list of 600 items. “The customer loved it, ”says Brunner, who’s been with the company for 11 years. “We’re now an essential vendor because of what we’ve saved them.”

From this successful application, Quality Images realized that it should offer this type of service to its other customers, yet it wasn’t feasible to take four months and many programmers to build a customized site for each company. At Print 2005, Brunner learned about Press-sense iWay, a system that automates the workflow from job ordering to proofing to printing and delivery. “Within 3 months we had iWay installed and I had 10 customers set up in about a week,” enthuses Brunner.

Today about 30% of the company’s jobs flow through iWay. With the iWay tool, customers can order simple jobs such as business cards or complex, variable data jobs online 24/7 from the location of their choice. On average, customers are ordering jobs ranging from 50 to 5000 pieces. The iWay solution creates a streamlined workflow by significantly cutting the number of interactions. When a file, such as a PDF, arrives at the printer, the file is then automatically routed to one of the printing devices: a Xeikon 50D, a Xeikon 500D, or a Xerox 2045. Or, it can send the job to a digital plating system, which will then be printed on one of the offset presses: a Karat 74 or one of the three Heidelberg DI devices.

One customer, Pulte Homes, a leading home building company, cut many steps out of its printing process. Previously, if a Pulte employee needed business cards, for example, the job could require up to seven transactions between the customer, agency, and printer. Now, the customer orders the job online and places the order.

Streamlining the workflow from the customer’s site through to printing and delivery strengthens customer relationships. “Our best friends are office people who used to be responsible for handling these fax or phone orders,” he continues. “Now they’re directly in the system. It’s been a great asset for them. Speed has really made an impact on them being a partner instead of just a customer. They’re really tied into us. At the same time, they feel independent on what they can do on their own time.” In addition, the system creates a convenience for customers by allowing them to directly place all of their orders online, even if Quality Images is outsourcing some of the print.

“We have customers that we have templates [for] that we don’t even print,” says Brunner. “That’s been another added value because it allows them to keep the ordering under one roof, one location. We can provide the outsourcing automatically. For example, one customer produces ads for magazines and newspapers, and they give us a PDF. We make the template variable so they can edit it, but when the order comes in to us, we outsource it to their vendor. It saved their art department a lot of work.”