"It's beyond MIS," said European sales manager Ken Whild. "It's ERP (enterprise resource planning) for print."

Whild added that while the product had initially been dismissed as impossible by other suppliers, those same companies had swarmed the firm's stand at Ipex to see what the tool could do.

At the heart of the product is a concept called The Village, which maps all the people, processes, departments and kit available in a print firm and presents them as an organogram in a GUI.

Its estimating module allows users to compare production costs for a range of processes at different run lengths in real time, including comparing digital versus offset.

It is initially aimed at printers with 60-plus staff with sales in the range of 6m-12m, but may in time be extended to cover smaller firms.

Press-sense has also had interest from print management companies.

The tool's automation of assembling the data needed to create invoices could boost most printers' profits significantly.

"Two percent of printers' costs are assembly data for invoices. We can invoice automatically," said Omnium director of product management Idan Youval.