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BETTER BUSINESS

“It was a lot for people to deal with, coming 12 months. Quotation turna-
so it was about sitting with those who round is faster, errors are fewer and
needed extra help and training and teams can run more than 800 live
helping people to see the bigger pic- jobs simultaneously and meet dead-
ture moving forward,” she adds. lines consistently; all of this with no
This was the case on the client side
too, says Taylforth, so she and her increase in headcount.
team worked alongside them from They can react faster to peaks and
the start to explain the company’s plan capacity more accurately mak-
aims and how the changes were ing the best use of new hardware
going to affect them. investments and getting higher
“Again it’s about helping them to throughput.
see the bigger picture and how they Across the workforce there is
would benefit from it,” she states. greater efficiency and confidence in
To help manage all this on a day-to- the workflow data too with fewer
day basis, rather than Taylforth con- fire-fighting scenarios on the factory
tinually having to work with external floor. And, says Taylforth, this is
providers, the business has created a
new software and systems manager really just the beginning.
role who oversees IT projects and “It’s running smoothly but I’m
keeps on top of automation and AI never happy because there’s always
development. things we can be improving,” she
states.
The result “The work within our studio is
The scope and quality of the IT sys- going to continue because we want to
tems overhaul enabled the business automate some of our nesting within
to support major hardware spends production. There’s so much more
including, most recently, a £1.3m we can automate even from an
strategic investment that saw
FaberExposize install the UK’s first admin side. So the next two to five
5m-wide Agfa Jeti Condor with fur- years we will continue to invest in
ther finishing upgrades slated for the that.
beginning of March. “There are also things we can con-
smoother change management, and long-term value from the system.” “This has all meant we are now tinue to improve to make planning
The detailed and structured nature of planning a PrintIQ MIS implemen- working with our major clients to better for production as well, both in
tation involves workflow mapping, data migration, configuration of estimat- automate end-to-end so we are con- software and also hardware. We have
ing and production workflow, he explains, while staff training and nected into their systems and their thousands of banners that we have to
organisational change management are key to successful platform deploy- orders go directly into production,” cut, eyelet and weld manually so we
ment. says Taylforth. want automation hardware to
All of this was overseen by PrintIQ’s project manager and build lead, Chris “The office teams don’t touch it;
Pack, who worked closely with FaberExposize to ensure a smooth, efficient it’s on the production floor straight improve efficiency there.
and controlled transition. away and because we run 24hrs it can “Our teams feedback on a daily
Tayforth says the working partnership throughout implementation and land at 10pm and be ready to sew and basis so if they think something
adoption of the new system was vital and that Pack’s deep understanding of finish by the morning. needs tweaking, we can do that. The
wide-format work was fundamental to its success. “Our client services team no system is very adaptable and that’s
She describes it as a whole business change, even down to a new phone longer have to manually input orders exactly what we wanted.”
system, and that getting every member of the team on board was essential. and now have more time to deal Inspection focus was planning and
There was pushback from different departments initially, where employees more personally with the smaller cli- executing a multi-year, multi-faceted
felt the changes weren’t necessary or where a lot of new learning was ents and build relationships with business overhaul. The company is
involved, but this was navigated successfully by involving staff from the them instead of just churning out specialists in high-quality dye-subli-
beginning, especially in production where tablets took the place of paper job quotes and processing orders,” she
bags. explains. mation and UV wide-format flatbed
“It was hard initially but they onboarded it quickly because they were all And the proof is in the numbers. and roll-to-roll printing for products
involved with building certain parts of it from the beginning – getting the The company reports that turnover including flags, banners and signage
information into the system and providing timings for it. They realised quite grew by £1m last year with the busi- for events, retail, exhibitions and out-
quickly the impact it was having,” says Taylforth. ness forecasting 20% growth over the door advertising.

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