Wilmington, MA - Advocate Printing and Publishing of Pictou, Nova Scotia, is streamlining their business processes through Prism's solutions that provide actionable and real-time business information for immediate and effective decision making. Advocate is installing Prism WIN management information system (MIS) and Prism QTMS production management system as part of Advocate's Advolution initiative focused on productivity and areas of future growth.  

"Without quality, immediate and accurate information, our ability to flexibly react to the marketplace is limited," states Sean Murray, CEO of Advocate Printing. "Prism and QTMS in concert with our lean and green initiatives will provide us with the information we need to remain a leader in our sector. The printing industry must limit and control waste, whether it is product waste, redundancy or excess inventory and we know QTMS will assist with the tracking and control of our raw materials and waste."

Prism WIN and QTMS collects and presents business-critical data to the management and production team at Advocate in a way that is immediately actionable.

"The printing industry has experienced a dynamic shift in consumer behavior," continues Murray. "Advocate has been well known for the quality of our services and the strategic relationships we form with our clients.  In order to meet the current and future needs of the marketplace we must be confident in our ability to efficiently and productively deliver for our clients.  We do not sell commodity printing and do not have a desire to. However, armed with quality real-time information and a culture of continuous improvement, I am confident that we will be able to maintain our market share growth delivering enhanced products to our clients."

"The challenge of any management system is presenting to system users the key items of information at the right time and in the right place," says Leland Morgan, General Manager of Prism. "Through the use of production dashboards and an automated business process workflow, the employees at Advocate concentrate on the exceptions in the business and the opportunities to exceed their customer's expectations. This is a departure from the typical MIS where information overload leads to management delays in servicing their clients."

Advocate is a diversified print communications company with newspapers, magazines, websites, design and photography studios, multiple printing operations, outdoor media, signage, distribution, investment and hospitality companies.  Continued growth has made Advocate the largest independent printer in Atlantic Canada.

The deployment of Prism WIN and QTMS at Advocate includes proactive production level dashboards and browser based tools that help employees manage their day to day activities, and automated wizards that remove labor-intensive and repetitive tasks resulting in consistent and standardized work practices. Advocate personnel are free to do what they do best – serve every customer in a personalized and unique manner.