Why Do You Need a Print MIS Administrator?

One of the most memorable experiences in the life of a print business is the process of implementing a Print MIS. Unfortunately, they’re not often fond memories. We’ve written a lot about how hard this is on a print business because it requires you to both run your business and transition your business to a new, trusted system of record. 

What about after the implementation? Do you hear printers talking about how great their Print MIS is after the implementation is over and they have a trusted system of record? Not so much. I never like to compare software to printing presses, but I’m going to make this the exception because I think it helps make a solid point.

When you purchase a new press, you are all over the manufacturer to get it up and running; start the ROI! Once its running, you have people operating it. You also have your team doing routine maintenance and keeping track of service calls. You are using the press and that means you have to take care of your investment so it continues to deliver value to your business.

Print MIS software needs care and feeding, too. This feeding isn’t quite like what a press operator does, but for our purposes, we’re going to compare the Print MIS Administrator to your lead press operator. Your Print MIS Administrator’s job is to maintain, upgrade, and continue to tweak the configuration of your Print MIS FOREVER. It never stops; we get a lot of resistance to this role because print business owners don’t see software as needing to be staffed like printing presses do. Your Print MIS requires regular care and feeding by someone who is making it their responsibility to learn how to optimize the software for your business.

What happens when you don’t have a Print MIS Administrator?

Many people across your organization configure the system, without any strategic direction or deep knowledge. You end up with 200 product types, many of them duplicates with no organization or naming convention (it slows your estimators down). You end up with 100 different Ship Via’s because you gave Admin access to configuring forms to too many people and they simply add another one rather than look for an existing one. You customer list starts to migrate into weird directions; people type things like ***DO NOT USE THIS ONE*** in the Company Name field and other garbage data that slows your operation down and makes you more likely to make mistakes. 

To continue, without a Print MIS Administrator you don’t know when software upgrades are coming, you don’t know what’s in them, and you fall behind the vendor’s product roadmap. You ask the vendor for customization for features they introduced  three releases ago. When it does come time to take an upgrade, you are so far behind that it takes an act of Congress to get you to the latest release and a lot of downtime. 

What happens when you have a really good Print MIS Administrator? (who has the initiative, competence, and time)

Your Print MIS never stops being tweaked, improved, and updated. This person is following the vendor’s product roadmap carefully. They have a plan for the upgrades—not to be on the bleeding edge, but to take the upgrade after the bleeding-edge printers have found all the bugs and patches have been applied. Your excellent Print MIS Admin goes to the annual user conference, has a personal relationship with the product manager, and participates in a peer group. 

Your Print MIS Administrator is very busy because your entire team knows that if you need something from the Print MIS, they have an internal resource who can either fulfill the request or can reach out to the vendor or a consultant. Your plans for new equipment include this individual because you’re planning for how costing will be calculated on new presses and new finishing equipment. Your management team and accounting department are constantly asking for additional custom reports which now can be done internally because your Print MIS Administrator has taught him- or herself how to use the report writer tool. 

You have plans for upgrades. Your team gets briefed on upcoming releases and collaborates on which ones will be implemented in your workflow. All of this is a lot of heavy lifting which cannot be left to chance. You have to give ownership. Of course, this person typically has other job duties but I cannot stress enough how much return on investment you can get if you pick the right person and you give them enough time to thrive. The ROI on your Print MIS is a grind. I’ve seen systems installed for 10 years and still haven’t climbed out of that ROI hole because the system wasn’t implemented properly, the business is basically working around the system, and there is nobody doing the care and feeding. 

If you can’t name an individual who is responsible for administering your Print MIS, change that right away. Please don’t put a group of people on it. Apple had a term that many attribute to their phenomenal success: DRI (directly responsible individual). I love this acronym because of the combination of three powerful words. Directly (very clear), responsible (this is more than who is going to do something, this is who is responsible for delivering the result), and, finally, individual (has to be one person so there is no wiggle room).