Judy Hansen of JS McCarthy Printers on using EFI's MIS Systems

Judy Hansen, Director of IT at JS McCarthy discusses using EFI solutions and shares how they use the tools and the impact they've had on their internal workflow and data collection. They've since added other tools and Judy discusses their impact as well.

Cary Sherburne: Hi, I’m Cary Sherburne, Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink.com. And I’m here with Judi Hansen, who is the Director of Information Technology for J.S. McCarthy, in beautiful Maine. Welcome.

Judi Hansen: Thank you.

Cary Sherburne: So, I met – you’ve been in EFI customer for quite a long time, and back to the Hagen days.

Judi Hansel: Yes.

Cary Sherburne: And I’m wondering if you could just give us a little idea of what the EFI Solutions have done for your business in terms of improving productivity, profitability, etcetera?

Judi Hansen: We were – we had an MIS system years ago called the Caron system, and actually it was the system that Udi Arieli had run at that time.

Cary Sherburne: Okay.

Judi Hansen: So we actually were a Caron customer, had Caron scheduling, and when EFI acquired his company we upgraded to the Hagen System. And right from the beginning, we just started adding the apps. We bought it with estimating and we rolled out estimating, job management and data collection first. That went really well within the first year, it really made a difference on how – on workflow, how quickly we could really respond to quotes and you know customers today, they’re not going to wait two days for an estimate, they want it in two hours. And that these tools help us to respond to that. And also, data collection on back, we had manual com sheets and so, data collection made a big difference.

We immediately followed right up with the accounting package, we since have gone and bought Print Site Internal, Print Site Fulfillment, we’ve got into fulfillment business and that was a tool that helped us hook it right up to Monarch. Print Full Scheduling, we were one of the earlier adopters of Print Full Scheduling and that tool is probably one of the best tools we’re put in and I know Udi feels very strongly about that. And…

Cary Sherburne: No stickies on white boards, huh?

Judi Hansen: No, no more – we actually had a white board on the wall, we moved all the tags, we took it down one day and let Print Flow took it or take it.

Cary Sherburne: That’s great.

Judi Hansen: But, you know, Print Flow has really made a difference in our company, allowed us to optimize our capabilities and be more profitable. So each of the tools that have come along that have worked with – and Hagen’s, now called the Monarch System, and each of those tools that we have put in each help us become more profitable. And I think, you know, the whole concept of less touches, easier to do the steps, that’s the direction we are continuing to move in.

Cary Sherburne: Now, so, as over – as you’ve made this sort of transition and really transformation of your business, what does that say in terms of the employees? I mean, you’re the Director of Information technology, what do you have to do in terms of changing the employee base to a more IT focus?

Judi Hansen: Well, you know, we’re very fortunate. We have a lot of long-term employees. And they have come along with us on this journey of becoming more technical and maybe you’re not as techy as me or every want to be. That’s mostly what I find. But I think that they have really embraced the technology. I think helping them in their own life with the, you know, the addition of technology of the laptops and the iPads and the iPhones, they’re starting to use this in your personal life. So, we found most of them really have embraced it and you know, that’s one of the things at J.S. McCarthy, they’ve really stayed in the leading edge of technology.

Cary Sherburne: So you haven’t had to go out and hire a whole bunch of new people. You brought your people along with you. That’s terrific.

Judi Hansen: Yeah. We took our existing people and trained them and brought them up to speed on the technology they needed.

Cary Sherburne: That’s terrific.

Judi Hansen: And if they – if a new person does come to us and is missing that background, we provide that for them.

Cary Sherburne: That’s terrific.

Judi Hansen: Yeah.

Cary Sherburne: Well great, it sounds like a wonderful business and it sounds like a good partnership you’ve got with EFI.

Judi Hansen: Yes.