Stephens used the expertise he built up over the past decade working with Xeikon presses to develop DigiQuote, which he believes plugs a gap in the market.

He left Openshaw, where he was digital sales support manager, to set up his own firm TimeHarvest to develop and market the software.

The big opportunity for me, and where this product fits is companies that are primarily in digital print and who dont have MIS, Stephens said.

The software includes fingerprints for most digital presses, which contain the information needed to accurately estimate digital print, including what Stephens called all the things that are difficult to fit into a conventional MIS. These include speed, hourly rates and click charges. It also has a wide range of different product types and sizes suited to digital print.

One of the difficulties with estimating for digital presses, especially the Xeikon, is format, for example an 8pp A3 landscape job, said Stephens.

DigiQuote is designed for commercial print. Stephens plans to launch products for digital packaging and label printers at a later date.

As well as digital presses the software also handles DI and small format offset presses.

DigiQuote is available for Mac OS 9, Mac OS X and Windows and costs 995.

Several printers are currently testing the software with a range of different digital and DI presses.

Story by Barney Cox