Conformedia’s extensive knowledge of the print industry combined with IT expertise helps to increase productivity at Ryedale Print
producing IT
Ryedale Group is one of the UK’s largest producers of printed plastic cards. With a head office in Kirkbymoorside North Yorkshire and branch in Nottinghamshire, the mainstay of the business is the production of horticultural marketing materials such as plant labels and care cards, tags for hanging baskets, POS and packaging. Horticultural customers rely on Ryedale Group to produce high quality printed materials on time, every time.
Like many printing businesses, Ryedale Group relies on a mix of PCs and Mac; PCs for administrative work and Macs in the design studio and prepress departments.
The group has an experienced internal IT department who take care of all PC platforms within the business however specialist support was required for the large number of Macs. Any hold ups in the prepress department has a major knock-on effect for the print process and therefore dependable and secure IT systems are essential to maintain the smooth running of this area, where downtime is unacceptable.
The team at Conformedia are specialists in IT support for printing businesses. With a heritage rooted firmly in print, the team understands the unique requirements of print and publishing customers and therefore offers specialist IT expertise combined with in-depth knowledge of printing operations.
The business relies on the team at Conformedia to provide IT support for 18 Macs located across the two sites. They ensure that the prepress team has robust IT support, allowing work to progresses smoothly through to production. Any problems are dealt with swiftly.
Owing to the nature of Ryedale Group’s business they have a large amount of data that needs to be backed up. Conformedia takes care of the backup process, managing and monitoring daily to ensure that all backups operate smoothly, allowing Ryedale Group to concentrate on their business with the confidence that their data is always available for recovery in the event of any data loss.
Nick Sims, IT Analyst at Ryedale Group explains, “Some years ago we had a problem with data recovery which could have been a total disaster for the business. Fortunately, we had a robust system in place and Conformedia’s quick response had us back up and running within a day. The team came and worked on site until the directory had been rebuilt and data restored. Having this kind of support and expertise provides peace of mind.”
IT support is delivered over the phone, by email or remote access to Ryedale Group’s desktops and servers. The design team raise a ticket, which is then dealt with promptly by the Leeds support team.
Kathryn Fairweather, Senior Graphic Designer at Ryedale Group explains, “We’ve worked with Conformedia for a long time so they know us and how we work. If we are looking to renew equipment and make improvements they make recommendations. They also provide vital daily support to our artwork and design studios, which are split across two sites. Any issues with machines, servers or software are resolved quickly, allowing us to keep working.”
The Conformedia team also assist with development projects. The production of prepress “laydowns” of plant labels on sheets were taking days to prepare. Conformedia wrote a series of ApplesScript’s to automate the process, by scripting Quark Xpress to automatically impose multiple plant labels in the most space efficient way. This greatly increased productivity, reducing the lead time of producing an imposed print layout from hours, to a matter of minutes.
Nick Sims sums up, “We chose to work with Conformedia 11 years ago primarily because they have extensive knowledge relevant to the print industry; we benefit from the technical knowledge they bring to the Macs but also an overarching appreciation for the business and how it works. This has proved to be extremely helpful as their expertise within heterogeneous networks helps everything to run smoothly.”
