Imprint commercial manager, Peter Horwood, explained the idea behind the integration: “Our brief was to help customer service teams save time on duplicating data entry when creating an enquiry.

“When we started work on it we fairly quickly worked out that we didn’t have a current interface that dealt with the building of what could potentially be multiple products. We were already developing the Dashboard system but inside that we then created a programme called Projects, built from the ground up, and in there you can start using product templates or job record cards, for all different types of products.” 

He added: “It means a customer service team can build up specific company and product information, from the outset of an enquiry, which they can access at any time they want to, and it will trigger a workflow.” 

Horwood said that through bi-directional status updates the system alerts whether the proofs have been approved, an action is required or the product is on hold, for example. 

“From that our Tasks system was created so tasks can be raised with level of priority and an alert and email will be triggered giving details of what’s required from the recipient. 

“It’s possible to view all tasks in the company from an interface. It’s giving real-time clarity and order to information that may otherwise have been locked away in people’s inboxes,” he explained.

Additionally, users can associate files to either a form, product or the overall project itself. All activity and events are logged, and access levels are configurable on a user-by-user basis.

Horwood said historically the Imprint system has worked from the estimating stage, but that fewer businesses are using estimating now so the Projects system interface really comes into effect then.

“It enables people to build an enquiry with the customer, create forms and build a bank of information for jobs and products that may not go anywhere yet, but you still want to keep all that information. It can also clone products and templates quickly so it reduces touchpoints, stops double-entry, prevents errors being introduced and allows variations to be made very quickly.”

Horwood said Imprint would continue to work on evolving and improving the system as it looks to roll the integration out to other customers. It will also focus on developing its offering in packaging, having had a lot of success in the sector in the last two to three years.