On the buses – Smart Graphics specialises in fleet work
Specialist transport graphics provider Smart Graphics has signed up for a full Tharstern MIS implementation that is expected to save six months’ worth of estimating time each year.
‘Our former system just didn’t work properly any more,’ said Paul Bellard, general manager of the Clydebank-based company, which specialises in the public transport sector, particularly buses, and fleet work. Production is centralised in Scotland and graphics are delivered daily to fitting teams across the UK.
‘In order to grow our business, we needed software to capture essential data. A big plus for the Tharstern MIS was that it seemed to have virtually everything we needed straight away. And the actual commitment Tharstern made was far more than I had experienced with other companies,’ commented Mr Bellard.
‘The light-bulb moment for us [was] when we started to drill down into how long each part of the sales and estimating process took. In the past, even the simplest of business quotes for customers would have taken around 30 minutes to produce, but this will now be done in a third of the time. Now we are looking at a minimum saving of six months across four people, which is phenomenal.’
Mr Bellard added: ‘The new Tharstern system has a wider benefit in that we are now actively looking to employ more salespeople because we’ll be able to process so many more orders that much more quickly. And we’ve certainly got the print production capacity to grow substantially in the coming years.’
Training on the software begins in June and the system is expected to go fully live in the autumn.
