The Birmingham-based printer and mailing house has not used an MIS before, instead running different systems for its CRM, invoicing, tracking and more. With Tharstern confirmed as its supplier, the system is expected to be in place by June.

Sales director Adam Stafford said the system's ability to synchronise and communicate across the company’s entire output would have a positive effect for customers.

“Our systems were fairly disparate, and this decision was made to try and tie the whole process together,” he said. “This puts everything in one place and gives us greater visibility.

“We will be able to log into Tharstern 24 hours a day to see how jobs are coming along and it will enable us to capture costs more accurately, reducing the need to produce reports, spreadsheets and extracts manually from our system.

“We'll be able to accurately forecast job timeframes for our customers and hopefully give them more accurate prices. It is our hope that they will enjoy savings on our work.”

The MIS will run across Bakergoodchild’s fleet of digital output devices, as well as its mailing machinery. The company's it line-up includes a C9100, a C7100 and two 8120s from Ricoh; a C6000L, two C1060Ls and two C6100Ls from Konica Minolta; and two Xerox Nuvera 314s.

Stafford said Bakergoodchild was also looking to upgrade its enclosing capabilities for envelopes and add to its digital press portfolio.

He said: “We have a wish list of things we would like to add or update that exceeds our budget, but investing has helped us to grow and, even as mailing and possibly print have shrunk as industries, we have continued to succeed.”

Currently turning over £9m, Bakergoodchild is “on track” to get to £11m in 2018-19, with a target of doubling that by 2021. The firm employs 58 members of staff.