Colne, Lancashire, UK – Following careful evaluation, creative printer Geoff Neal Group has swapped its own management information system for the latest solution from Tharstern, the specialist software company for print, packaging and labelling industries.

Geoff Neal Group, of Feltham, Middlesex, is a £13m turnover operation with 87 employees. It has a proud history of company-wide investment that included a Heidelberg Anicolor in 2013, a Heidelberg 106XL in 2014 and a Heidelberg 106XL in 2016. It has also significantly invested in its bindery. The operation’s over-arching ethos is to create a more effective production workflow. The Tharstern MIS was chosen to continue that.

Managing Director Sam Neal said: “We have had five versions of our own MIS and it was time to start looking at the next re-write. We evaluated what we wanted to do using the knowledge held through the people in the business to write a business case for a new MIS which included looking at external providers.”

“We wanted to achieve various gains across the business. We wanted to remove some duplications from our systems, achieve more control over the business, introduce faster financial reporting and to be able to look deeper at all processes to give us back some production time. The main aim was to give everyone time back.

“We are running as best as we can with the system we have but with the Tharstern MIS will be able to run even more efficiently. We know we can complete the everyday jobs more quickly and efficiently to give us the time to spend on more creative jobs. We want to have the time to work more collaboratively with clients and develop better ideas.”

He expands: “The Tharstern MIS will enable us to be more consistent with pricing and so able to look for better value. It will also provide us with hard data rather than partly relying on experience. I don’t think we are making bad decisions, I just think that we make could be basing them on even better data. It is very important for us to keep a close eye on things.

As for choosing Tharstern he says: “At every iteration we looked at external suppliers but we decided it was time to work with Tharstern. They are the market leader, everyone in the business knows what they are doing and it is a very well organised supplier.

He concluded: “We are very happy with it. I think we will be in a pretty good place on the back of it. It will take six to nine months to go through the process properly, everyone is on board with it so I know we will make the gains.”

Lee Ward, Tharstern’s Global Sales Director, said: “Printing companies increasingly need to access real-time valuable data within their MIS and then use this business intelligence to help them make more informed decisions. Geoff Neal is a good example of a company that can see the benefits from using their own system, but needing to make further advancements with MIS. We’re delighted they’ve chosen Tharstern to provide a bespoke system to help their business grow further and improve efficiencies.”