The 22 employee, £1.6m turnover company specialises in sheet-fed litho and digital print and primarily works with design companies.

Managing director Ian Dodds said the company was installing the MIS over the course of November as part of a drive to reduce administration costs per job.

"We send out between 50 and 80 estimates a day. But, with the arrival of digital printing, the average cost per job has fallen so we needed to adjust to that," he said.

For the last twenty years Billingham Press has used three separate systems to manage production, pricing and accounts. Dodds said the new MIS gives the company more time to pursue market objectives rather than getting caught up in "the minutiae of admin".    

The MIS has an estimating wizard with a drag-and-drop function. This allows staff to choose the specifications that are relevant to the customer’s order from a list then drop them into a tray.

The system then calculates the customer’s requirements automatically and creates an estimate. This is then sent to the customer as well as Billingham Press’ factory and studio.

As well as saving the company time on administration, Dodds said the MIS makes it easier to manage jobs by allowing staff to trace the stage they are at and the department that is dealing with them.

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