Prinect Print Shop Analytics is the first app in the new Heidelberg Plus “digital ecosystem” and customer portal, which includes the Heidelberg eShop and Heidelberg Assistant production data. 

Head of software solutions Christopher Berti said Heidelberg had interviewed more than 200 customers around the world when developing the new app, “and used all that input to prioritise the required functionality”.

“We have developed a tool for steering a print shop with data for any device, and for any issue in real time.”

The app has been developed in collaboration with customer Pinguin Druck, which operates from two sites in Berlin. The firm’s input resulted in features such as customers being able to configure it to show wasted sheets as a monetary value, rather than simply as a figure for the number of sheets. 

Prinect Print Shop Analytics works for sheetfed devices now, with pre-press and post-press to be added in the future. 

Pinguin Druck CEO Alexander Mende commented: “Our focus is always on the last 24 hours and not a single print job, because the market is too competitive. We need to measure every second of the 24 hours, and every second counts.”

He said the app meant he and his management team could have real-time notifications, and could also customise it with different configurations for various people in the team. 

“We had to overcome periods where the management received one-sided success reports that were technically correct but did not display the whole picture. It’s important to have the whole picture and not only a part of it,” Mende explained. 

Berti said that Heidelberg Plus was in a customer test phase that would ramp up between now and the middle of next year, with worldwide release at that point.

He said that sheetfed presses were the initial focus due to being customers’ biggest investments, with further developments to add pre-press and post-press equipment to the app to begin next year.

Heidelberg chief executive Rainer Hundsdörfer said he was pleased with the response to the hybrid Innovation Week, which combined customer visits at its Print Media Center in Wiesloch with online sessions. He said the printing industry was recovering from the effects of the pandemic. 

“The willingness to invest in new products has fortunately increased noticeably in almost all regions of the world,” he said.

“We did our homework during the pandemic. We adapted our structures and focused on what we can do best: offering forward-looking technologies and products and also developing new attractive business areas such as electromobility.

“The task now is to make a gradual change from a restructuring story to a growth story – and a profitable one at that.”

He said Heidelberg was confident about the current business year, “but also increasingly optimistic for the following years”.