The system, which cost £200,000 to develop, bridges the gap between customer facing tools such as web-to-print and e-procurement platforms and the company’s internal administration, production and despatch systems, slashing the cost of order processing, tracking and scheduling.

"Oneflow is a back-end tool to process even the most tricky job down to a run length of one," said Precision Printing managing director Gary Peeling. "It brings a production line mentality to print."

Developing the system enabled the Barking, east-London-based firm to secure a £1.5m per year contract, in a sector that it estimates is growing 50% year-on-year.

"It’s the first growth market in printing that I’ve known for a long time," said Peeling.

Initially developed for a photo products client, the firm is rolling it out for marketing collateral, to enable quick print responses to clients’ online activity, for example following up an online or email enquiry with a personalised brochure printed and despatched immediately.

"This will encourage greater use of print by enabling small volumes to be produced cost-effectively in large quantities," said Peeling.

Having rolled the system out to its digital division the firm is developing it to handle its litho work.

The system is based around XML and JDF data formats, with the software able to sort jobs by priority and to batch similar items to reduce the need to reset equipment for different products. Barcodes are used to identify jobs in production, and it is possible to consolidate different items from the same job for despatch to improve customer service and reduce delivery costs.