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?