Print Management Software & Estimating

Hello,

I am the GM of a medium size printing company. I have been estimating for almost 30 years. There have been a lot of changes over the years. Now I find that almost everything in prepress is automated. We have several people working the same number of hours every day. All month. This never changes. The expense of software updates and various overhead expensive can easily be averaged over a a quarter or even six month period to determine a monthly cost. I can help but wonder if because of this, a more cost effective way to estimate the prepress portion of a printing job can’t be formulated. Now, the norm is cost based estimating. Everything is figured into every job. I have hourly rates and list prices for preflighting, desktop work, color correction, ripping & trapping, proofing and plating. There is also overhead expenses that are incurred in prepress, that never make to an estimate. Like archiving, software management, software upgrades, system administration and so on. I am beginning to think that cost based estimating may not be the right way to estimate prepress anymore. I am beginning to think that maybe the total cost of prepress on a monthly basis could be calculated and divided into an additional hourly rate on the press and accounted for that way. I have also seen several print opportunities lost because we were too high on our estimate. I think this was because of all our various minimums and estimated costs in prepress. If we get the job or not get the job the monthly cost of prepress will not change. Is there anyone out there thinking, perhaps like I am beginning to. I would like very much to bounce these ideas around with others who may also be considering solutions along these lines ...

 

Here is the one that you may be interested:

http://czsolution.com/print-management/print-manager.htm