Prepress
Software integration Vit2Print – Hiflex for online calendar printshop.
Tuesday 04. May 2010 - "After 6 years of providing basic web2print services via Hiflex e-Business, we integrated the Vit2Print software in order to offer our customers enhanced web2print services" - Martin Oldenhoff, Customer Services at Brendow PrintMedien.
Established in 1849 as an essential business division for an industrial manufacturer, Brendow PrintMedien gathered a lot of experience in the printing and publishing industry. Today print buyers are reluctant to rely on the companys experience, broad product range (commercial print, calendar, forms, direct marketing) and powerful IT services.
Brendows flagship is calendar production – from decorative wall calendars, pocket and desk calendars over appointment diaries to wall planners. Since their start, Brendow always looks for IT solutions in order to cut costs meanwhile providing valuable services to their customers. It is no coincidence that Brendow PrintMedien was one of the first to start with web2print.
“Six years ago we were a so-called early adopter for web2print technology. We selected the Hiflex e-Business solution. This was a good starting point. However, the PDFLib-based engine of the Hiflex e-business software only allowed text modifications and we needed genuine IT programming skills to prepare the templates. Because of the changes in the “Web2Print market” and the customers demands, we had to add functionalities to our technology. Thus we started to look for a software suite with enhanced and integrable modules. At the end of our research, Vit2Print turned out to be the most open software of those who could fulfill our customers requirements. Furthermore the development of our calendarshop needed to represent the users business processes and we had to integrate a second tool to meet these requirements. Because of the investment in Hiflex e-Business, we selected Hiflex Webshop – an excellent Drupal-CMS-based e-commerce website. The open character of the deployed software was an absolute requirement for our projects. By developing tailor-made solutions for our customers, were able to add value to our and their businesses” states Eckhard Luhr, IT Manager at Brendow PrintMedien.
The integration resulted in online calendarshop: www.brendow24.de. The website was launched in November 2009. The new functionality brought along with the integration of Vit2Print allows all Brendow customers to create and order calendars online. They can modify existing calendars (change calendarium, change footer and header pictures and texts) or upload own designs.
The end of the year is typically the period with most calendar orders. During that short period the website generated additional orders of online created calendars. “The results of our start-up period are quite satisfying”, testifies Mr Oldenhoff.
After the focus on the calendarshop, Brendow wants to expand into other commercial print services. For this reason, they plan to set-up a portal for ordering commercial prints (e.g. business cards, brochures, leaflets, …). The portal however will also include enhanced print management services such as correction services.
“With our future plans we will need to establish the connection with Hiflex MIS. With the experience we had with the NSS developers and the open structure of both Vit2Print and Hiflex we expect this to be a manageable challenge” says Eckhard Luhr.