Based in Newton Abbot, Devon, Harrier LLC is the largest photo processing company in the UK and is probably best known under its brand name Truprint. 

Formed more than 50 years ago, Harrier was originally an analogue mail order company specialising in processing photographs from film. The invention of digital cameras has meant that over the last 10 years most orders are now placed online or via in store kiosks. In addition to operating under the Truprint brand, Harrier also services other well-known retailers such as SnapFish, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, M&S, Boots & Funky Pigeon.

The company has a turnover of £25 million a year and also boasts some impressive figures, as on a busy day its eight HP Indigo presses are handling over 40,000 orders. Whilst 40% of this business still comes from the traditional style silver halide photos, the industry has changed from simply ordering photographs to printing images on all manner of other items such as mugs, t-shirts, calendars etc.

The Challenge

The invention of the Smart Phone means that people now carry a camera with them wherever they go, so more people are taking more pictures than ever before.

Along with the benefits of being in such a growth industry, there also come challenges, and the biggest challenge that Harrier was facing was that the business was very seasonal. September would see an increase in holiday photographs being processed and leading up to Christmas there would be a surge in orders for calendars, photo books & gifts. During peak periods Harrier can often be eight times busier than usual, and so the staff of 170 people would often double during these times.

However, during the quieter times Harrier was finding that the staff and printers were not being used to their full capacity, and so the challenge was to spread the work over the whole year in order to balance workload, fully utilise resources, and mitigate any risk. 

Harrier rose to this challenge by introducing commercial printing to its portfolio. Its current web-to-print solution had been developed in house and was specific for photo processing, but it was aware that this was a critical element of its success. The system was managed in two separate areas: Transactional (orders, tracking etc.); and Workflow (rendering, processing etc.) and so Harrier wanted to replicate something similar for the new commercial printing side of the business.

It was important to ensure that the solution implemented had a process that all staff could follow, as when extra staff are brought in during busy periods they were often inexperienced and needed to be able to get up to speed very quickly.

Julian Marsh, Commercial Business Development and Photo Products Consultant at Harrier, set about finding an MIS provider that could offer it the integration it was looking for, together with the ability to provide a future-proofed solution that was scalable enough to cope with the growth it was looking to achieve.

Julian already had experience with Tharstern in a previous role, and other key staff in the business were impressed by the database structure and user interface of PRIMO. Other factors that made the decision to use Tharstern easy was the fact the Development Manager completely understood the need for seamless integration and had previous experience with integrating with Kodak Prinergy on the front end.

Implementation of the solution was very easy and after just two weeks of intense work it was up and running.

Successful Integration

Investment in great solutions is only beneficial if they all work together. Tharstern has vast experience in the area of integration with other vendor solutions and was able to ensure the complete process from start to finish ran seamlessly.

The Results

The one word Julian Marsh uses to describe the PRIMO solution is Transformative. Not only does it open up new business opportunities and make the business more scalable, it also does the work of more than 100 people. Mr Marsh states that when an MIS is implemented correctly and fully integrated within the company, it can actually start to replicate the knowledge and experience of the top people in the business – effectively scaling up the senior management team.

In practical terms, quoting for 10 jobs manually could take over an hour, but with Tharstern it is possible to do more than 50 quotes in less than an hour (previously a full day’s work) and also it is very easy to train other people to do the same work, so the possibilities for growth are endless.

In addition to speeding up the quotes, it also offers a more consistent way of costing work. Due to the preset formulas, everyone quoting on jobs will get the same result and customers do not try to pick a particular sales person in order to get a cheaper price – they all get the same generic prices, which leads to greater customer satisfaction. Also, the fact that Harrier can cut down on manual administration costs means that it can be more competitive and more efficient than its competitors, so the MIS solution is a key part of the profit model at Harrier.

The Future

Year on year, Harrier has seen triple growth figures in the commercial print department, and it now represents 15% of the overall business. Harrier is excited about the future; it expects to see further growth and is not fazed by big numbers as it is confident that it has the infrastructure and technology to support large scale growth.

Tharstern has become so much a part of the Harrier business that it does not even think about it anymore; it is just there, something that everyone takes for granted. 

Mr Marsh comments: ‘Could I imagine life without Tharstern?  Yes, but it’s not a place I would ever want to be! Losing our MIS would be like an individual losing a SmartPhone; we’ve come to rely on it completely and would be lost without it. We love Tharstern, we love our MIS!’