ColorDynamics

ColorDynamics Gains the Flexibility They Need With printIQ

Key Stats

  • 567% increase in quotes with no additional estimating staff
  • 178% increase in production of orders with no additional production coordinators
  • Overall substantial reduction in manual steps

Challenge

Winning Sappi’s North America Printer of the Year means that you are being recognized for your excellence in print communications. Based in Texas, ColorDynamics has won the award several times since its inception. The full-service print communications powerhouse provides custom printed and visual communication products to clients across North America, serving clients within industries ranging from direct mail to healthcare.
With the wide breadth of industries they serve and products they print, they soon realized that their current well-known MIS no longer was a fit for their organization. They were now on the hunt for a system that was as flexible as they were. In addition, the new system needed a user experience that allowed new employees to understand it quickly.

Solution

On the search for an MIS that was flexible, ColorDynamics partnered with printIQ over three years ago. The cloud-based system allows 24-7 access from anywhere on any device, automation, costing, problem-solving solutions, and more. The production staff is able to manage the floor while customers quote, order, and track all from within the same application.
Quickly, printIQ brought in their build team. Oftentimes, the people who build the software or install it, don’t understand the print industry. But, to David Dey’s, Vice President of Manufacturing at ColorDynamics, surprise, the team was comprised of “print specialists that developed and implement the printIQ software.” The build team understood the industry and the challenges, making the transition to the new system much easier.

Business Impact

With the number of products and categories ColorDynamics is dealing with, flexibility was key with this new system. Now, they had a system that could specialize in the various formats, rather than focusing on one general segment like other traditional systems. David Dey found that “as a printer that is the gamut from web offset, sheetfed, wide format, digital, to special components, printIQ gave us the flexibility to build a system that worked around all our different segments. And we found out after building it, we had even more flexibility than we realized in the beginning.” Not only is ColorDynamics able to achieve the flexibility they want with their new MIS system, but they are also able to build expertise into the printIQ system that allows less knowledgeable staff to work like print experts.
In print, many companies are dealing with labor shortages and onboarding new employees. Thankfully, the printIQ user experience is not like the clunkier, more traditional MIS systems. They found that it is very similar to sites they interact with on a daily basis like social media and Amazon; therefore, making it a much easier learning curve. An added benefit that helps employees learn the new system is that as an administrator, they are able to set up how a user interacts with printIQ. ColorDynamics is able to create a structure where even the least knowledgeable could be led to a successful finish without them being experts in printing.

The result: ColorDynamics saw the number of orders being produced jump from 2700 to 7500 with no additional production coordinators.

Another way printIQ has made life easier at ColorDynamics is through simplified quoting – a product completely unique to printIQ. People are given the power to do quotes themselves. Dey added, “It’s a very, very effective tool to get pricing quick to the marketplace, to increase the staff in the system that can effectively create quotes and provide pricing, and if you’re a company that has a tremendous amount of stress on a core group of custom estimators, you’ll find that it takes a lot of stress off the custom estimating group.”

 In fact, they saw nearly a 567% increase in quotes with no additional estimating staff thanks to printIQ’s quoting system.

The power of printIQ

“As a head of operations, I value consistency in the information nomenclature and structure. The PrintIQ system is very flexible but also keeps structure for managers and production staff. I see less mistakes in production due to issues like information omissions or inconsistency in the manner it is presented to the production floor.”
David Dey, Vice President of Manufacturing
ColorDynamics

TAKE THE FIRST STEP TO SUCCESS

Smart production is just the beginning. Built with flexibility and simplicity at the core, printIQ is created for the modern print shop to grow, scale, and succeed.