F
or Print Buyers
Buyers of print are not always sure what to ask for.
This is not meant in any derogatory sense. It is easy to know that you want a 'magazine' pricing up, but to describe it technically is often quite difficult - even for someone who knows what they are doing.
PDQ online takes care of this by presenting a buyer with a library of picture-products that are fully specified (behind the scenes), but are fully customisable to the buyers needs at run time.
It may be that a buyer wishes to obtain the best market price for a magazine. To achieve this, all they would need to do is follow these three simple instructions:
- Choose a product from a categorised list.
- Edit the specification if necessary (typically the quantity and pagination)
- Obtain price comparison results from all of your suppliers in just a few seconds.
How it works
At the heart of PDQ lays a powerful mathematical algorithm that is capable of producing hundreds of impositions and sampling thousands of production methods in just a few seconds. This extraordinary capability allows it to process virtually any printing job specification and find the most cost-effective manufacturing solution in the blink of an eye. Using this deft technology, when a buyer requests a price from their supply chain, the request is sent to the PDQ Web Services where it is processed. Processing is simply the algorithm running against each unique (printers) data set up - real time and motion stuff, like the calculation of hundreds of impositions, running speeds and make ready times. Each database takes about 0.25 seconds to process. If you have 20 suppliers then, your response time will be in the region of approximately 5 seconds.
It is this technology that has underpinned our advances into the online print estimating market space and shall continue to do so, but has also spawned what we are calling the Virtual Printer.
The Virtual Printer possesses nearly all of the machinery that can be used for calculating a printing job and, as a result, it understands all of the production methods possible in order to produce the most cost-effective manufacturing solution for any given specification. It includes digital A3 and wide format plus litho B3, B2 and B1, both straight print and perfect.
A. No. The Virtual Printer is powered by PDQ. In its desktop application form, PDQ is used by printers themselves to determine the most cost effective method of production using an algorithm that cost-tests thousands of impositions and production solutions in just a few seconds. The software is JDF compatible and links to several MIS systems, including Tharstern and EFI Logic.
Q. What type of jobs can the Virtual Printer quote?
A. The Virtual Printer can quote for all regular digital and litho sheet fed work, plus cut-star and web work. It can also quote for wide format digital, variable data digital and many other complex printing and finishing processes.
Q. Some of my requirements are very specific?
A. The Virtual Printer is very flexible and accommodating, but as with all cutting-edge software products, it will continue to improve in response to our customers’ feedback and our own research and development. We operate a policy of continuous product development and improvement.
Q. How does the Virtual Printer work?
A. The Virtual Printer works by using a broad sample of average hourly cost rates taken from over 200 real printing companies and average running speeds for most modern printing and finishing equipment.
Q. How do the VP prices compare to the market?
A. The Virtual Printer has been tested against a large sample of real quotes sourced from our printing customers and our business partners. It consistently demonstrates a capability to predict the market prices against these live quotes. The Virtual Printer price is also shown in the mix of pricing results obtained from your real printing suppliers, as a guide how effectively may be buying.
Q. How do the VP prices stay in line with the market?
A. Each quarter Haybrooke consults with its customers and business partners to discuss any perceived shift in market prices. The system also sends out anonymous RFQ’s to the wider industry to monitor the price submissions for standard job specifications and types. These prices are used to ‘calibrate’ the Virtual Printer. Its pricing points and settings are adjusted where necessary to help it to continue to reflect the most current market pricing levels in its output prices.
Q. Does it provide me with any other information?
A. Yes. The Virtual Printer provides you with information relating to the ideal method of manufacture of the job. Plus, an estimated carbon dioxide emissions / footprint based upon a sophisticated CO2 calculation algorithm. The cost to make each job ‘carbon neutral’ is also calculated based upon Nat West Bank’s current carbon offset tariff of £13 per tonne of CO2 emissions. This equates approximately to £10 per £1,000 job value.
Contact sales@haybrooke.com or telephone 0116 2711000
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."