Today's world is stressful. Whether it is work, home, Covid, the economy, or the news, it feels like it is hard for everyone to keep up. Every print company I have talked to in the last few months is busier than they have been since the onset of the global pandemic. As everyone navigates returning to full speed in person, cracks are showing, stress is evident.

What helps to reduce stress at a print company? Good data. Whether it is your Customer Service team, your operations team, your leadership team and of course your finance team, good data helps to equip people with facts. It lets people make decisions based on fact rather than emotion. It takes the "Production screws up all of the time" dramatic encounters to "Production had a 3.7% error rate last month" conversations. Data lets you move forward strategically and plan proactively.

Here are some recommendations I always give to Print Companies about what data their Print MIS system should be delivering on demand:


Customer Service

• Job Lookup query - your CS team should be able to take a call from a customer and enter that customer's phone number or name and while on the phone, give an update of exactly where that job is at and the current status
• Jobs due to ship today - helps minimize late jobs by proactively allowing the CS team to monitor which jobs are still in the building due to ship today
• Late Jobs - a list of all jobs that aren't out of the building yet and their current status (where they are and who is working on them). This allows the CS team to work with production on expediting these jobs

Sales Management

• Win/loss report - a listing of won and lost estimates by date range
• Lost report - a list of all lost estimates where customers opted to not to complete the job with you. Gives details as to why you lost estimates. 
• Revenue billed and revenue pending this month - lists all billing and pending billing in real time

Operations Management

• Productivity by department - a percentage based report by department that shows productivity percentage against target
• Jobs due to ship today - just like the CS team, op's leaders need to be monitoring this report in real time
• On time report - percentage of late jobs in the last 30 days as compared to on time goal
• Error report - shows percentage of errors and detailed breakdown (i.e. why the error happened, who caught it and resolution)

Finance and Leadership

• Month-over-month income statement and budget reports - let's your team see in real time peaks and valleys of the fiscal year
• Summarized Key Performance Indicator (KPI) data - rolls up data from operations and sales to give a snap shot of how teams are doing versus expectation
• Summarized Profit report by Customer by Product/division - let's you see how your company is performing by product line. You might think you are making a killing in areas you are actually performing less than average

Meaningful data at all levels greatly minimizes stress for your teams. It collectively lets people work proactively and target areas that need to be improved on. It allows for richer conversations in meetings when you stick to the facts. Good date EVEN if the results are bad keeps you focused and gives you a path to improve.