What’s at the top of your Christmas wish list this year?
For my senior management team to hit the very ambitious 2015 budget I set them, they’re close, very close.
What trend do you think 2015 will be remembered for?
Clients finally ‘getting’ web-to-print and all the benefits frontend automation bring.
What do you think will represent the single biggest threat for printers in 2016 and why?
To continue doing what you’ve always done. Markets and demands are changing quicker than ever, we MUST give customers what they want not what we can produce.
What’s the one thing that the industry should do more of, or do better, in 2016?
Be more confident in the value of the product we produce and its place in the market.
What was your biggest disappointment in 2015?
Swindon losing to Preston in the League One play-off final, in fact not just losing but getting smashed 4-0!
What was your highlight of 2015?
There were two. Firstly how the new ESP management team has developed, it has been a great year and a lot of fun.
Secondly winning a new three year contract with one of the best UK brands against some seriously good competition. The project involves every part of the ESP Group and started by building a bespoke MarketSMART (ESP’s web2print product) solution to take data from many fields, copywriting and completely automating the artworking and job information for multiple versions of different jobs, fulfilment, packing and delivering of exact quantities on a daily basis. The project started delivering on 1 December and after a few late nights of software development delivered with very little drama.
What are your hopes for 2016?
More of the above please, we just love this sort of project and we’re not bad at them either. True automation.
What was the best piece of advice you have ever been given?
Always listen to advice; you don’t have to use it.
What was the most important thing that you learnt in 2015?
I still love what I do.
What if anything will you do differently in 2016?
Get the whole team at ESP even more involved in what we are doing and the direction we are going.
