Bruno Henry: Taming the Document Supply Chain
Posted on Mon, Sep 27, 2010 @ 05:27 PM
Welcome to the World of DRP – Document Resource Planning
By Bruno Henry, Chief Operating Officer, Sefas Innovation
Sefas is welcoming visitors to Graph Expo 2010 with the news of an important new version of its comprehensive Open Print software and a new and highly significant approach to what we call the document supply chain.
Everyone has known for years that there is a tremendously powerful communication tool available to us, if we can ever get the idea of transpromo to realize its full potential. But it’s been a long time coming.
We have seen steady progress, with improvements in quality and speed and the introduction of color in certain specialized applications. Results have been good and the business case for further investment has been demonstrated by a string of case studies that show an impressive ROI.
Nobody would claim that we have learned all there is to know about exploiting the opportunities offered by transpromo, but improvements in color inkjet technologies and in composition, post-composition, and production management software are extending our capabilities almost month by month.
For all this progress, though, Sefas believes there has been something missing so far. Even as the elements and technologies have fallen into place, we have realized that no other supplier has been in a position to offer a fully comprehensive, soup-to-nuts view of the whole process, from the raw data to the finished document that goes out to the consumer.
Capturing this holistic perspective and linking it directly to the ability to manage the stages of the process as they have never been managed before was the necessary next step in our industry’s evolution. That is why it has been the focus of our development work at Sefas for several years. It is the vision that underpins our Open Print software suite, and it brings with it huge and very tangible benefits for our customers – hard benefits that can be measured directly in time saved, productivity gained and dollars earned.
With the unveiling of Open Print Version 7 at Graph Expo, Sefas is launching the first product that truly integrates the acquisition, processing and distribution of data into a new and robust model with a single, unified architecture.
For us, this vision centers on the concept of the Document Supply Chain, an idea that draws direct parallels with other industries like retailing and manufacturing.
If you look at the flow of goods through a retail distribution system, for example, it’s very obvious that a holistic view is essential. The entire supply chain needs to be seen as one sustained and continuous process, with many stages and many dependencies and interdependencies, all integrated to achieve a single purpose.
Our aim has been to create a software suite that makes visibility and control of this document supply chain possible. For the sake of flexibility and affordability, we have built Open Print as a set of modules that can be purchased individually. But the greatest payoffs come when the customer is able to exploit the way our software knits all the elements together and joins the links of the supply chain to create a single, automated work stream.
In the old days, in a paper-dominated universe, the center of the world always seemed to be the inserters. Now it’s the data that’s central. And the key point of the process has moved back up the supply chain, from the inserter to the printer, and right back to the composition stage.
Where it used to be the clunky, noisy machines that determined the success of your communication, it’s the data now – and how you control and manipulate it. Just being able to handle intelligent pre-sorting of your information back at the data level, rather than at the printer or the inserter, opens the door to really substantial and recurrent savings on postal costs.
Sefas and its vendor partners recognize that taking the holistic view of the document supply chain is a totally practical approach. It brings cash and productivity benefits in many clearly identifiable areas, such as eliminating reprogramming, integrating print flows, reducing staff workloads, minimizing compliance problems, and cutting mailing costs. We have already seen documented examples of companies that have adopted this approach and recovered their entire investment in six to nine months, way ahead of the scheduled payback period.
This is an exciting time to be involved in this industry. The landscape is changing fast, driven by changes in the business environment as well as advances in technology. For Sefas, the time has come to take center stage and spell out the advantages of an approach and a product set that can give our customers a clear commercial edge.
For the first time, it makes sense to think in terms of a DRP – a document resource planning system – on a par with the ERP systems that have transformed so many aspects of corporate management and control. For the first time in the print industry, total end-to-end visibility and total control of resources, processes and functions are available to production managers, wherever they happen to be, via a simple, intuitive browser interface. For the first time, the real payoffs of the transpromo revolution are within our grasp.
It is my objective to dialogue with you on a regular basis thorough my blog and articles about this DRP principle as an entirely new approach to the solution. So let me mw know how you feel about this DRP approach.