From Manual to Automated: How Imposition Software Saves 80% of Prep Time with Julie Watson

Greg Young:
Printing United day two afternoon fireside chat. And I am joined by Julie CEO, Ultimate Tech. Julie, thank you for joining me.

Julie Watson:
Well, thank you for having me.

Greg Young:
Welcome to this fireside chat. You’d like to introduce yourself?

Julie Watson:
Yeah. Julie Watson, CEO of Ultimate Tech. So I’m second generation leadership at Ultimate Tech. We were founded in 1989, and we focus on imposition, nesting, and finishing automation software.

Greg Young:
Wow. So second generation. So you’re taking the charge and leading them. Yeah I think so. It’s brilliant. So, Julie, obviously we’re very early on in our partnership together. I think there’s a lot of mutual excitement between where we’re taking. So, how are we connected at the moment? And what’s your take on the partnership as far?

Julie Watson:
Well, you know, obviously your system helps customers create files online and submit their orders. Now, a lot of these orders are probably short run. Or, you know, digital, digitally printed, and you cannot prepare those files manually behind the scenes. So as you’re collecting these files online, you want to seamlessly automate the entire process to printing and finishing as many jobs out of the door as possible with as little manual touchpoints. And that’s really how our combination of solution enables customers to do, basically.

Greg Young:
Fantastic. So tell me a little bit more about your solution, because where I’ve been doing my research and understanding more about the technology. Obviously lots of different products within your, you know, range. Tell us a bit more about what ultimately it brings to the market.

Julie Watson:
Yes. Imposition of course, is something that’s really crucial to printing in general. So you will find some imposition a little bit everywhere scattered in different solutions. The difference or what we bring to the table is that for us, it’s our core business, is our core expertise. And we have, you know, 37 years of experience in this. And we developed a tool that’s very powerful, very scalable. It’s it’s, on a modern tech stack. It’s to futureproof production. And it’s really to help automate the tedious tasks of imposition and nesting and finishing and to so that the staff, you know, can focus on more valuable tasks. So let’s let’s automate that as much as possible. So it’s a flexible tool and it’s applicable to different segments. So you have commercial books mailings but you also have labels, wide format, digital packaging. So you can really centralize the workflow to a variety of equipment basically.

Greg Young:
Fantastic. And in terms of the finishing, what does that look like then? So are you. Is that getting machine data and pushing it back and forth into a workflow? How does that come about?

Julie Watson:
We’re really a data driven workflow. So it’s all about taking that data that’s, you know, starting the story at the customer order, probably in the Infigo system. And then to prepare the, press ready files, submit them to, to print, if you have cut files or embellishment files, we will route these as well. And then we will even do the JDF connectivity to remove the manual make ready on the finishing equipment. So by the time that job gets to finishing equipment, you can simply scan a barcode. The machine automatically sets up and starts finishing the job. Wow. So that’s removing a lot of complexity. Removing a lot of repetitive tasks so that customers can really focus on making sure that there’s quality and they can take on more responsibility in the facility. And actually, a lot of our customers are saying that the automation is helping them keep their staff happy and hire staff because they can they know that they’ll do valuable work and not the work that nobody else wants to do.

Greg Young:
So that’s really interesting. I was just going to ask you, as I just thought of that then, but hiring new staff, onboarding employees, I suppose that means that there’s less of a, an overhead now to get them trained in on all the process because it’s driven by tech. Right.

Julie Watson:
Exactly. So a little bit reskilling the process, the software becomes kind of, you know, the brains of the operations. And yes, it really helps you being able to adapt. Somebody on vacation. If somebody is sick, you know, it doesn’t mean that production stops and that’s what’s important. And plus, everybody around the world is that all the customers are telling us they cannot find staff. Yeah. So this is a critical problem. And I really do believe that technology and software like our solutions can, can help alleviate that.

Greg Young:
Fantastic. Okay. So obviously our our partnership is very much in its early days. What excites you the most about what we could potentially be doing together and what we’ve started to do together as well?

Julie Watson:
Well, it’s all about connectivity. It’s all about systems that are open to connect to each other and that work well together. And I think that’s really important, for, for vendors such as ourselves, to do that work so that the customers, you know, it becomes more and more plug and play for our customers. It’s easy for them to, to get started and, and decomplexify the process a little bit. You know, a lot of customers are still thinking about software can be complicated. They have to learn it, you know, an important learning curve, but it’s actually not the case anymore. And just a couple hours of online training, they can get set up with our solution. And yours is, you know, now that we integrate plug and play. Yeah. So so it’s not as daunting as it seems. Yeah. So my recommendation to customers would be just get started, you know, and companies like yourselves and ourselves, we’re there to support the customer to train to support. So you know there’s no problem.

Greg Young:
Yeah. Go. So, what are the biggest, some of the biggest challenges and all of the biggest challenges, some of the biggest challenges you guys have been seeing this year?

Julie Watson:
Well, definitely. Customers are are, you know, struggling with some rising costs in different areas, different regions for different reasons. Staffing is a big problem also, and just looking to automate, looking to do more with, with their existing equipment, getting as many jobs through the shop floor as fast as possible. Those are some of the things that customers are working on.

Greg Young:
And I suppose if you’re a PSP and you’ve got equipment, you know, sometimes more than ten years old, you know, 15 years old. And but it still does a job. It’s it’s a workhorse. But can you help bring that back to life through the software?

Julie Watson:
Absolutely. One of the things, though, is that a lot of equipment manufacturers have really started to understand that you have to open up the equipment so that you can connect into it. You know, before, a lot of devices are proprietary solutions. You couldn’t really get into them. But now you can get to the data. Now you can interface directly with these devices. So absolutely you can. And if it’s not the case for certain finishing equipment, we will actually create cut files that can be put on a USB stick and plugged into the cutter as well. So there’s always a way to make it work. The next step from that is to not to not just have USB sticks anymore, but to have everything connected in a centralized system. So yeah, try to get more out of them.

Greg Young:
I understand you’re venturing a bit more. And you mentioned earlier labels and wide format. What’s that looking like? What is the product, is that a specific product for that market or is it the same product that is flexible enough?

Julie Watson:
All right. It’s the same product, but it’s modular. So you could have the our product only for wide format or only for labels. Or you can have it for everything. So and you can start in that segment with the limited feature functionality. So it’s easy to learn, easy to onboard. However, what we see, especially in the label space and the wide format, is there’s a lot of work done manually. I don’t know how many customers we met here saying that they’re creating some kind of layout in in InDesign, but their staff doesn’t have time to do anything else. So yes, that’s true. We’re here to alleviate this. Let’s automate. I mean, the ROI will be same day. I mean, if we can save 80% of a person’s time, the prices of software does not compete with that, whatsoever. So the ROI is quick. It’s, in my opinion, a no brainer. Yeah. I really think that, you know, a lot of these customers, if they want to generate more profit at the end of the year, automation is key. I mean, no more preparing files manually, please. And especially if those files are coming from, you know, a web to system, it has to be automated. And today, there’s no reason why these jobs can’t be automated. We have the technology, the power, whether it’s nesting, you know, step in, repeat books, booklet, everything can be automated.

Greg Young:
Do you think part of that are people scared to make that adapt, adaption and change, or is it, is it financially driven? I just think actually we’ve done it this way forever and we’ve we understand the cost of that. And maybe software costs are going to rise. What do you say?

Julie Watson:
You know, I think it’s a combination of factors. I think definitely we’ve always done it that way. Has always existed a lot in our industry. But you know, now we have no choice to change. So you’re looking for a solution. I also think there’s a lack of awareness knowing that the solution exists. So by coming to these trade shows, you can see all the technology that can help your business. And then yes it’s change management. Right. So introducing new technology, learning how to use it, getting the team to use it. But we can facilitate that

Greg Young:
When people hear the word automation, it’s bounced around every single trade show that you, I and the rest of the teams go to. What do you think the biggest misconception is?

Julie Watson:
The biggest misconception about automation is that it’s only for, you know, larger companies, and it’s only because you have a large team internally to take care of the automation. But in fact, automation is for a company of any size, and it’s actually to help you remove some work. Yeah, and not create work. So you don’t need this big development team to have automation. You know, you can have some key solution that integrates with each other. Yeah. Like ours. Get started, get trained and actually save time so that but I think it’s a little bit of a misconception. What do you think.

Greg Young:
It’s, like like we’ve seen a real cultural thing with automation. So in certain regional markets there is more of a determination and drive to deliver it. On one of the earlier, fireside chats, I spoke about one of our customers here in America, not a big shop, but, the owner had a vision and a determination. He was like, we are going to make this happen because we’re a small shop, and we’ve got to make it happen. Yeah. And I think it is that mindset shift with going, actually, automation is going to help us in different regional markets. We actually say, no, we want to do a manual check. We want someone going in and downloading files, mainly because we want them to verify it. And it’s almost like a lack of trust of what the artwork or the output is going to be. And it’s a but again, it goes back to what you said earlier. It’s the we’ve always done it like that. It’s the fear of letting it go. So we we see it both ways around, we’ve just I suppose our joint and all of our, our partners joint, end game here is to build confidence. Automation is the right journey thing. We’ve got to go on. And as I said, it’s not just for the big guys. It’s like probably actually even more important for the smaller guys because they’re not going to be able to have the same reach of employing all the talented people. Let’s actually…how can we process improve all of these other things with there’s an initiative I do with HP and we look at, a touch point challenge, let you draw a line down the middle of a sheet of paper, and from the order inception, all the way to finished goods and the customers, how do we do every single touchpoint? And then we go back and we overlay. And for you guys, we start scribbling out with the red pen to see which ones we’ve actually removed from it. And I’ve seen it go from having 30 touch points down to seven. And it’s like, trust the technology, trust the process, and you’re going to reap the rewards of that. Yeah. Oh, it’s it’s a difficult one. We’ve got to continue to share that message. So our company your company and others have another version. So exactly.

Greg Young:
Are there any specific KPIs or metrics that you would, drive towards a customer to say, look, you need to be looking at these things in the early stages so you can start to validate the purchase or the implementation. You mentioned earlier the ROI of replacing a person, and you can almost immediately. Is there any other metrics that you look at?

Julie Watson:
I mean, definitely, I think, people the time that people spend doing things is, is an enormous cost. At the end of the day, you don’t always see it isn’t always apparent, but it is really there. But of course, you know, saving waste, saving on substrates, saving on time, faster turnaround times, shipping more jobs in a day. That means you know more sales at the end of the year. So all of these things factor into the ROI. Our customers say our software is really helping get as many jobs out the door as possible. It’s helping them have like same day printing, SLA, etc., etc.. So all these are benefits they can get more work and do it more profitably.

Greg Young:
And I’m assuming based on that, like they see this quickly, right. As you said, set ups, couple training, education, couple of hours. Yeah I I’m almost go time the next day. Right.

Julie Watson:
Exactly. So the software piece is definitely not the biggest part of the investment. Yeah. When you start talking about finishing automation, we can only automate as much as what the device is capable of. So obviously investing in in smart, capable, dynamic finishing equipment is also important. But that’s also a little bit of an investment. Yeah. However, when you tie this into the workflow, you can, you know, have massive benefits, through this.

Greg Young:
So for example, just starting the automation journey, what’s your, what’s your number one bit of advice that you would give them to start today.

Julie Watson:
Yeah. You know they say the best time to automate was ten years ago. And the next best time is today. So don’t wait. Don’t wait. We cannot wait anymore. Right. So get it done.

Greg Young:
Thank you so much, Julie. Pleasure speaking with you. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of the show. Thank you. Thanks a lot.