Colne, Lancashire, UK – Smart Graphics, the specialist graphics provider, has signed an agreement for a full Tharstern MIS system that will save at least six months in estimating time alone each year.

Training starts at the end of June and the system is expected to go fully live in the autumn at Smart Graphics headquarters in Clydebank, Scotland.

Smart Graphics, which is on target for this year’s sales, specialises in public transport graphics, particularly on buses, as well as fleet work. All manufacturing is done at Smart Graphics headquarters with graphics delivered daily to fitting teams based across the UK.

“Our former system just didn’t work properly anymore,” said Paul Bellard, General Manager of Smart Graphics. “In order to grow our business, we needed software to capture essential data. We investigated many of the MIS systems on the market, some of which seemed over-complicated, but a big plus for the Tharstern MIS was that it seemed to have virtually everything we needed straight away. And the actual commitment Tharstern made was far more than I had experienced with other companies.

“The light-bulb moment for us when we started to drill down into how long each part of the sales and estimating process took. In the past, even the simplest of business quotes for customers would have taken around 30 minutes to produce, but this will now be done in a third of the time. Now we are looking at a minimum saving of six months across four people, which is phenomenal.”

He added: “The new Tharstern system has a wider benefit in that we are now actively looking to employ more sales people because we’ll be able to process so many more orders that much more quickly. And we’ve certainly got the print production capacity to grow substantially in the coming years.”