New Zealand's Prism Ltd has launched a new software product WIN V1903 in a beta version which will be available as a general release later this year.
The software was showcased at Prism's third annual users' conference held recently on Australia's Gold Coast along with its flagship product Prism Win which has been redeveloped under the Microsoft.NET environment.
The international software company that was founded in New Zealand and continues to be based in Auckland, showed off other aspects of its software, including its new CRM (Customer Relations Management) and accounts consoles
Prism used its conference to launch its new software because it sees its now-annual conferences as an opportunity to get the combined opinion of a number of its clients on its products and services.
Users are also enthusiastic, finding the conferences provide an opportunity to network with others running similar businesses.
David Francis, Prism support manager for Bluestar Print Group says for their companies the conference has been invaluable in picking up new ideas and thoughts on running various aspects of the business, although theirs is a more varied business environment than most other print companies.
Bluestar uses Prism software across the full range of its businesses from label, offset and web printing to logistics and marketing entities and has been a long term user of the brand.
"At the very least these conferences are an opportunity to get all our technical staff together once a year in one place where the focus is purely on Prism. We have 14 different companies using Prism and five staff from Melbourne, Auckland and Sydney attended.
"We came back with a number of fresh ideas and perspectives on how we can change our business processes. We all tend to get stuck in our own business methods yet we all have got similar problems and a conference like this in invaluable in seeing and discussing new ways of thinking about how to solve those problems."
He says Bluestar is one of the users who pushed the product to its limits and asks a lot of it.
"We're probably one of the longest running users of Prism at the conference. We've always liked using it because it's a locally grown product with a local office. You're not dealing with a large company overseas that doesn't know the market the product is used in. And you don't have the problem of contacting a company for help that operates in a completely different time zone."
Francis adds that they found the conference format this year to be particularly valuable with Prism following a chain module by module, presenting the product as a workflow method
"They presented a forum where people could contribute their own ideas and get to assess how well they were doing."
On the social side, he says they enjoyed guest speaker Steve Bradbury, gold medal winner for speed skating at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics who won by default when other competitors crashed leaving him to take first place.
Francis says his presentation under the heading of Last Man Standing was hilarious. "He's a bit of an Aussie larrikin."
Jenkins Group director of finance and IT Raymond Goubitz says the users' conference has always proved invaluable and they were particularly interested in the launch of Prism's CRM module which they have subsequently ordered.
"We were surprised when this was showcased, but it was a pleasant surprise and it will certainly help consolidate our records which are currently in several places," he says.
Jenkins Group is also a long term user of Prism software having used the original version before Prism Win and Goubitz says it is in a class of its own in terms of software specifically designed for the printing industry.
"It is very flexible and can be used across a range of industries. We use it for our non-printing import/export consumables business in the wholesaling inventory control arena."
Invaluable to the business is Prism's ecommerce software for its new Ripesense business.
"Around ninety-five per cent of our business with Ripesense is overseas - the US, UK and Europe, and our clients can order what they want over the internet 24 hours days. It is a big advantage for us."
Goubitz also likes Prism's users' conferences for the opportunity to discuss ideas.
"The conference provides a good environment to meet people who are not direct competitors and to discuss solutions to business problems. There are always ways to improve processes and in one discussion with a former colleague now working elsewhere, we were discussing one particular problem and came to a solution together."
He says the very nature of the conference drawing in such a specialist group within a particular industry was an advantage for people sometimes working in isolation.
