Warren Brew, head of commercial at Eclipse Colour Print and Nick Denning, chief financial officer at Precision Colour Printing both argued that JMF and JDF support in some areas still needed work, such as JDF resubmit.

The discussion revealed that in choosing an MIS system, an open and transparent relationship with the vendor is paramount for such a complex system.

EFI Radius' David Taylor pointed out that unlike manufacturing for products such as cars, which produce essentially the same product, print work changes with each job, so the management software is necessarily more complex.

Brew and Denning had consolidated the various aspects of their MIS to one vendor, giving them a stronger voice in the development of future functionality, and they both highlighted the need for vendors to be visibly funding the development of the software.

More than 120 people tuned in to the live event and posed the panel questions on everything from MIS for small companies to how sales people in the field operate with handheld devices.

The panel argued ultimately that MIS had moved on a long way from being an estimating tool and has become an essential tool for understanding how your business operates and the profitability or lack thereof of the work going through, although many printers were still using dated systems.

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The webcast is available for replay on printweek.com.

Download EFI's white paper on ERP for packaging.