PDQ now connects via a JDF bridge to several MIS packages, including Tharstern and EFI Logic. Operations director Philip Roe said: "In our cloud-based PDQ, the buyer begins by choosing a specification which creates an XML file. This can then be delivered to the printers desktop PDQ and converted into JDF, so files flow seamlessly from the buyer, right into the the heart of printer's MIS itself."

He added that the software's production route-based estimates offered printers an answer to the "double-whammy" of demands for faster quote turnaround times and falling conversion rates from quotes to jobs.

"PDQ vastly increases the number of quotes processed," said Roe. "If you keep the same conversion rate you will win more work. However as prices fall, conversion rates fall and if, for example, conversion rates were to halve, you need to double the number of quotes you do just to stand still. That's a fact of the market. PDQ offers the way out."