Avanti Computer Systems, based out of Toronto, Ontario and serving the entire North American market, has over 20 years of experience in producing business management software for both commercial printers and in–plant print applications. The company was founded 23 years ago by Richard Wallin, an MIT–educated Ph.D who invented their original product. Stephen McWilliam, Patrick Bolan, and Peter Funnell purchased the company about three years ago and have since added both new modules and new customers to the organization’s strong base. I discussed Avanti—where they’ve been, where they are, and where they’re going—with Stephen and Patrick, and also gained some insight into system integration and what that means for small– to medium–sized printers in the North American market.
GAM: What led the three of you [Steve, Pat, and Peter] to purchase Avanti?
Avanti: We examined 20 different software companies when looking for one to purchase, and Avanti was by far the best. Avanti combines a broad customer base—including the UN, Harvard University and the World Bank on the in–plant side and R.R. Donnelly and Metroland on the commercial print side—a rock–solid and stable product, competent and long–serving staff, and strong relationships with partners including Xerox and Microsoft.
We also saw that the marketplace was heading towards digital—either fully digital shops or hybrid shops—and we offer both a digital and a litho estimating product as part of our fully integrated module lineup.
GAM: What are some of your proudest accomplishments since your purchase of the company?
Avanti: We’ve doubled the size of the company in the past two and a half years, mostly by expanding on the commercial print side, with a few new large in–plant customers as well. And we’ve also added eDashboards, JDF integration, Business Alerts, and a CRM module to our existing lineup of estimating, order entry, inventory, job costing, and purchasing software.
All our modules are fully integrated, and full integration is a must for true efficiency in today’s print marketplace.
GAM: How has your history and your current structure positioned you to grow?
Avanti: We have strong leanings toward web–to–print and eCommerce. On the web–to–print side, we cover a range of products and include online estimating software—we are one of the few companies in the industry with a fully integrated web–to–print product that uses the same database as your MIS. When you make a change in the pricing of a given file, everyone else in the company sees it instantly.
GAM: It seems intuitive to be fully integrated when you describe it that way, yet a lot of printers are not yet there.
Avanti: Absolutely. We pride ourselves on offering fully integrated, end–to–end solutions.
GAM: And speaking of end–to–end solutions, let’s get to the issue many printers are addressing. JDF. Depending on who you talk to, it’s the best thing since Gutenberg or the impossible dream.
Avanti: Well, the problem with JDF is that everyone’s talking about it, but not everyone’s doing it. There’s a big difference between “JDF–enabled” and JDF integration. We are actually doing JDF integration at many of our commercial and in–plant clients, and we’re doing it with a JDF framework that we built from the ground up—with about a year’s worth of development effort. It’s sophisticated, but in the end, when the customer is using it, it’s really straightforward. We have JDF integrations available for all the top vendors based on the framework that we’ve built. It would be great if all the vendors used the same model for integrating information, but they don’t. JDF for MAN Roland is different than JDF for Heidelberg.
GAM: Okay, that’s great if you have a huge budget for that type of thing, but what do you say to the small– or medium–sized printer who wants to better integrate his or her systems, or who wants to get into JDF, but isn’t sure how to proceed?
Avanti: That’s why we’ve built a framework, so we can build press, prepress, and finishing integration for any company that needs it, no matter their size or individual needs.
Smaller printers can integrate our pre–defined JDF integrations right off the shelf.
GAM: That sounds good, but what about getting it up and running? How does the small guy, who doesn’t have a dedicated IT department, implement such a change?
Avanti: Let me give you an example. Spectrum Printing in Florida has about 60 employees. We sold them our MIS software with JDF integrations into Agfa and Komori, and included in the price of the software is the installation of and training with JDF. Each integration took about 3 training days—we will analyze your given situation and determine how much time we recommend to get the software installed and get employees trained. But when we’re talking time, we’re talking days, not weeks or months—so you can realize the benefits of JDF quite quickly.
GAM: So it is possible for smaller printers to be getting into JDF without derailing the business for weeks or months. When do you see JDF becoming a prerequisite for doing business?
Avanti: The time is now, or shortly in the future. The automotive and aerospace industries are decades into computer integrated manufacturing, into integrating their business management software with their other equipment. The printing industry needs to be integrated too. JDF is about driving down costs and creating greater efficiencies, as well as allowing employees to do the jobs they were meant to do, rather than having to deal with breakpoints and inefficiencies in the printing process.
Here’s another example. A printer with 20 staff members who is fully JDF–integrated might do three million dollars worth of business per year. The same printer who is not fully JDF–integrated might require 23 staff to do the same amount of business. Now three staff members may not seem like a lot, but that can be the difference between a healthy bottom line and a company struggling to stay in business. JDF drives costs out of the manufacturing process through automation.
GAM: Okay, so I see how JDF is something that we all could use—but what about customer relations management (CRM)? What would you say to concerns that it may not be necessary, or that it may dehumanize the customer interaction process?
Avanti: CRM is a customer communications centre, not a mechanical process. There’s still the one–to–one interaction. What CRM does is simply take information from across the firm and puts it into the hands of the customer service representative so that he or she can make better decisions.
The nice thing about our CRM module is that you can look at information by individual job, rather than by company or contract. A customer is usually phoning about a specific job, and if your CRM product is only able to access contracts or companies, you don’t have the information you need at your fingertips.
And our CRM module is, of course, fully integrated—which allows it to deliver on the CRM ideal of a consistent, real–time view of everything to do with the customer, available to everyone in the organization at any time from anywhere. CRM isn’t just contact management, it’s relationship management.
GAM: Alright, it’s relationship management, but why should relationship management software be a compelling focus for printing shops?
Avanti: In one word, I would say centralization. Sales data is no longer the exclusive domain of customer service representatives and sales reps—with CRM, everyone at the company has access to the same client data on a central server. That wa
y, if the sales rep leaves, or his laptop gets stolen, or her data is compromised, you as a company still have a fighting chance to maintain your client relationships.
GAM: I’d like to finish by talking about integration. It’s a word we hear a lot, it’s a word you’ve used a lot as we’ve discussed your product. How do you see the concept as central to printing success?
Avanti: If you step back and look at a lot of midsize shops, you see a lot of “islands of automation.” You might have your estimates in Excel, your quotes in Word, then a work order and job tracking program, a separate invoicing system…
GAM: I see what you’re saying, for sure.
Avanti: You need to install an end–to–end solution to link those islands of automation.
GAM: Sort of like an archipelago, rather than several discrete and unconnected islands.
Avanti: Exactly. That’s what integration is, in this context—taking a look at the whole process, figuring out where your breakpoints [any point in the workflow where one must re–enter data] are, and then automating those break points and creating an end–to–end workflow that integrates all processes, from the initial client contact to the product going out the door. It saves both time and money. We recommend that printers break the whole project of integration into two or three smaller phases. First get the core system up and running, and then from there build out with CRM, web–to–print, JDF, etc.
Most people are eager to learn. It’s our experience that if your managers are buying in—and they usually do, once they get the cost savings estimates—it’s easy to get the other employees on board.
GAM: Could you give an example of the cost savings of greater integration?
Avanti: Each breakpoint costs money. If you have a shop with about 400 orders per month, and 5 or 6 breakpoints (which is a conservative estimate) in their workflow, implementing end–to–end solutions gives you about $190 000 in yearly savings. So that’s a ROI in under a year, and then you’re going to keep saving that money year after year.
Integration in the print workflow is about automating the unbillable—it makes management happy because they’re saving money, and it makes employees happy because they don’t have to do the same repetitive data entry tasks over and over again—they’re freed up to do the job they signed up for.
GAM: Thanks for talking to us today. I’m sure many of the concepts we discussed are really going to resonate with our readers. In closing, how would you summarize your corporate mission? What steps are you taking to move forward and how will those steps help printers to better integrate their workflow?
Avanti: We are looking forward to additional acquisitions in order to expand our technological and customer base. These will fit in well with our mission statement, which is to help our customers streamline their workflow and increase their revenue by implementing Print MIS software and web–to–print products. We’re not looking just to train a customer, we’re looking to understand their business workflow and help them streamline their processes.
Catherine welcomes comments at
catherine@graphicartsmag.com.