South African large format display specialist Tali Digital Branding had no problems with quality production, but costing was a mess until it adopted a dedicated MIS.

One of South Africa’s most modern digital signage producers is Tali Digital Branding Solutions. Based in Wynburg near Johannesburg, its clients include brands such as L’Oreal, Planet Fitness, Thuso Exhibitions and Gauteng Government. The company uses eco-solvent and dye sublimation printers and offers a wide range of services for production of indoor and outdoor signage, as well as banners, popups, posters and artist canvasses.

Orlando de Abreu, who set up the company in 2004, say that internal administration emerged as the biggest challenge. Tali originally used manual spreadsheets to calculate prices, with no visibility of production processes or integration of workflow between the staff. There was no automation, no global reporting capability and consequently Mr de Abreu had minimal control and visibility of his staff and their productivity.

‘We never really knew whether a job was worth doing or not – whether it was actually going to generate a profit – so the temptation was always to say yes,’ he says.

The answer was a Clarity Pro MIS, a software system developed specifically for large format production companies by UK developer Touch Systems. This now provides Tali with integrated suite of functions, including CRM (contacts, activities, marketing); quoting (with digital print rollfeed and sheetfeed calculation wizards); sales and purchase order processing; production; materials requirement planning scheduling; shop floor data collection; and goods handling.

According to Mr de Abreu this has increased the speed he can process jobs by 50%. He can produce complex quotations using the Digital Print Calc Wizards in Clarity and email them to the client whilst they are talking on the phone. He likes the user interface in particular: ‘it’s simple to get around and logical to use. It’s tailored exactly for digital print, clearly displaying and prompting all the options you would hope to see when quoting and producing a job. The best feature is the visibility of the job timeline – the ability to see when a job was approved, when it was processed. You can see a complete history of the job and what is going on with the job at any one time.’

‘It’s given us the ability to really see what jobs are costing us,’ he adds. ‘Gone are the finger in the wind days. Now we know when to say no to a job because the margin simply isn’t good enough. Repeat business is easy – Clarity stores all historic quotes and jobs, linking the artwork to them, driving accuracy and simplicity for repeats.’

The data collection and presentation allows him to understand the job process a lot better,’ he says. ‘It forces us to focus on the labour and materials we are using for the particular item we are producing for the client and analyse the costs and returns apportioned to them. We can make decisions on the best substrates and products top use on a job to ensure the highest quality – and without sacrificing margin.

Clarity Pro can generate reports for all the key metrics and performance indicators across the business. He knows what products and jobs generate the best returns, how long jobs take to complete.

‘The more you understand the cost of your business and what’s involved in it, then the more you can generate better margins and you can really understand what you can go in at when quoting a job,’ Mr de Abreu concludes. ‘As in any industry, there is a lot of price cutting, so with Clarity it gives me the confidence that when I see a job and I know my competition is doing it for “x” I just walk away. It’s not worth doing the job.’

What’s Clarity Professional?

Introduced in 2001, Touch Systems’ Clarity Professional software was written for large format printerst, unlike many MIS products that started life as offset packages. The company says it’s also suited to smaller format digital printers.

There are three versions available, all running on Windows: Professional, Lite Edition and a Free Edition. Clarity centralises all internal, customer-facing and supply chain functions making company information available to all users. Additional modules can be added as the business grows.

Touch Systems emphasises cost, simplicity and flexibility as key benefits. A major upgrade is due to be announced next month . This will be demonstrated at the Sign & Digital UK exhibition at the NEC, 27 – 29 March.

Contact: www.clarity-software.com