Frustrating, Tedious, and Detail-Oriented Print MIS Work

Based on my informal, sporadic, and not-well-documented research, the most common thing printers complain about in the print industry is their Print MIS software. I can’t mention all the things printers say about their Print MIS solutions because this is a family-friendly publication. The sheer amount of emotion expressed about Print MIS systems always surprises me. Could this one software solution set really be this frustrating?

Recently, I started asking other businesses outside the print industry about their ERP/MIS solutions and, sure enough, there is a similar frustration level. So, business owners are frustrated with the solutions they should rely on to run their businesses. What’s that got to do with “tedious, detail-oriented work” (from my article title)?

A management system is simply a storage device for your business data. It then applies logic to that data to generate things like estimates, purchase orders, and packing slips. The data belongs to you. The values decided upon and entered into the system for calculations belong to you. The software’s job is to accurately perform the calculations and run the algorithms while securely storing the data. A fully implemented Print MIS solution contains more stuff “owned” by the printer than “owned” by the software vendor. Can you see where I’m going with this?

My new working theory about this whole topic of frustration with your Print MIS solution is that you haven’t taken ownership of your portion of the solution. Until you do, you will not be relieved of this high level of frustration. Buying a different Print MIS won’t solve it. Screaming at your current Print MIS vendor might feel like a good release, but it won’t solve it. Screaming at the people inside your company about why it doesn’t work the way you want it to won’t solve it. 

This is where the tedious, detail-oriented work comes in (from my article title). I should probably caveat the use of “tedious”; some people love this work because it appeals to their sense of order and accuracy. It is in the trenches where hard work produces what I call “decision fatigue” pretty quickly in most normal human beings. Do we really have to enter accurate press speeds for all our paper stocks? Can’t we simply guess? You can guess, you can fudge every part of this project. Remember, the software is just looking for a valid number. It doesn’t care what it means to your business. So, this is what happens. Humans guess, humans fudge, humans simply import the garbage data they had in the last Print MIS into the new Print MIS because then we can check that box off—DONE implementing new Print MIS—and get back to their full-time job.

Let’s walk through some of the most common complaints about Print MIS solutions and evaluate where the trouble resides.

I can’t get a trusted report out of my Print MIS.

This is the number one thing I hear from print business owners. We are living in a data-driven culture and they feel completely handicapped by the fact that they can’t trust the reports that are being generated by their Print MIS. 

Take a guess why this might be true. Do you think the software isn’t performing the calculations accurately? Or do you think the data in the system isn’t accurate or complete? The data is your responsibility. The software will perform the calculations on any valid data; it doesn’t know that a cost per sheet of $24 makes absolutely no sense. The report generation from a Print MIS can only report things in the Print MIS. If your purchasing person is buying paper via their favorite three-part NCR form and forgetting to put that purchase in the MIS because they have a backup in triplicate under their desk to reference—then that cost has no way of getting included in the report.

Reports are the most valuable thing a Print MIS delivers. If your data sucks (is inaccurate, incomplete, hiding under someone’s desk) then your reports are essentially worthless.  

I have to handicap every estimate because our Print MIS estimate is always wrong.

An estimate is essentially the result of an algorithm (a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations typically performed by a computer). The algorithm applies these rules to values you input for all your costs. If you are handicapping every single estimate, your data is inaccurate. 

Getting your data right, then testing it on a bunch of real jobs is hard work. It requires running real jobs, looking at the outcomes, making adjustments, and running them again. This iteration can be frustrating and very hard to predict how long it will take. Are you the kind of print owner that needs to have accuracy down to the penny? Assume more time is needed. Are you the kind of printer who has no slack in your team’s schedule to do anything but get jobs out the door? Assume a lot more time is needed.

I think you get my point: a Print MIS is only as good as the data that is put into it, the values it is using to perform calculations about your business. A Print MIS implementation resource from the software vendor can’t make decisions about your business’s costs or your business’s data (e.g. valid customers, payment methods, shipping options, etc.) This data belongs to your business; the people inside your business have to contribute this to the Print MIS implementation. In most Print MIS implementations, this either doesn’t get done at all or gets done very poorly. 

I have to end on a positive note. What happens when printers take real ownership of their Print MIS system? I’ve seen this happen in real life. These printers do crazy stuff like send automated reports to their customers on a regular basis directly from their Print MIS. Yes, they trust the data in their Print MIS solution so much they expose it to their customers directly. The owners at these printers know exactly what’s going on in their business at any time during the day (accurate WIP reports) and during the month (accurate revenue, costs, projections to date). The one other critical characteristic of these print businesses is a biggie: they are not afraid of scale. They have a foundation in place to grow because their Print MIS system runs their business; their people run the system. I’m 90% sure that quote should be attributed to Tim Flaman. When your system runs your business you can add people and bring them up to speed quickly. When your people run your business, all the intellectual property about your business is in peoples’ heads. Those really important people are really busy, difficult to replace, and very hard to scale because it’s taken them years of experience to do what they do.