RedTie leads the advance of web to print

This year is on target to be the year when web purchasing of print moves into the mainstream. Magazine publishers have long enjoyed the benefits from the swifter workflows that having a direct internet connection to the print provider gives; print management companies depend on internet workflows to drive production efficiencies and websites are the place to go to find business cards, greetings cards and other easy to specify types of print. Now a breed of software suppliers is providing the software tools for the ordinary printer to offer a ‘print management’ service, using a web interface to connect to specifiers for ordering and specifying standard items of print, for reprints, for approvals and for increasingly sophisticated work.

The numbers of printers adopting this type of workflow is small but growing rapidly. The software on offer started with simple store fronts created by skinning a shrink wrapped software application. This depends however on the printer being willing to market and develop the site and many lose impetus once they have signed up a customer to specify office stationery. Some have developed much more sophisticated applications to allow customers to manage complete campaigns, to personalise branded material and to gather information about what is ordered and when. These types of solution appeal most to companies with a number of outlets, hotels, pub chains, health and fitness clubs, high street retailers and so on. The advantage for the customer is that brand integrity is retained as the manager of each outlet selects from predesigned templates with approved images, logos and fonts. For the printer the arrangement takes him into a deeper relationship with the client through what is heading towards a print management service. The problem has been that it is a major commitment for a printer to massage the software, create the links to his MIS and workflows in order to set this up. Not many have done it.

Now there is a new breed of software supplier that is delivering the sophistication without the need for the printer to employ software experts. These are companies offering web to print on a Software as a Service basis. Here the developer manages the application and the servers which host the software. The printer can load up the artwork and can personalize the website so that appears under his URL or can make it appear in his customer’s colours and in a separate URL. All the background programming, updates and so on are taken care of by the developer leaving the printer to get on with sales and marketing.

Leading this movement is UK developer RedTie which has notched more than 100 sites and is expanding into Australia, South Africa, North America and India. Non English languages will follow.

The software was developed by a small digital printer in order to automate the capture of customer details and information and has grown into two versions: RedTie Template (RTT), to enable the easy ordering of standard items of print that everyone knows and understands, the business card, training manuals, direct mail and so on and RedTie Quotation (RTQ), which caters for more the more experienced print buyer. While RedTie has been talent spotted by HP Indigo and is used by many Indigo users as a result, it is not simply a tool for digital printers. “It’s about embracing a new technology to support all kinds of print media,” says Marian Stefani, RedTie’s managing director. “We are production agnostic – it’s about giving printers a new way to transact with their customers.”