PRINT INDUSTRY KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE saves thousands of pounds for WOOD RICHARDSON
Printing IT
Commercial digital and litho print company Wood Richardson has been working with David Rayner and Richard Twigger for over 25 years, and their IT has been outsourced to, print specialist IT company, Conformedia since 2003.
Initially Conformedia was involved with setting up and supporting the studio Sun Solaris servers. The Macs in the design studio were added shortly after. Their involvement has grown and now Conformedia takes care of all IT functions, supporting both front office PCs and prepress Macs as well as all their servers.
Wood Richardson needed specialist IT partners to ensure all aspects of production could be supported.
Simon Pirie, Sales Manager at Wood Richardson explains, “Conformedia does a great job for us. They provide excellent support for both Macs and PCs and everything in between. It surprises me how little knowledge other IT companies have when dealing with Macs, but this isn’t the case with Conformedia. They understand what we need and deliver, without costing the earth.”
Conformedia also provides advice and assistance to ad hoc requests such as dealing with IT issues connected to printing and estimating software. With the introduction of GDPR legislation, Conformedia designed and installed secure FTP system allowing print customers to securely transfer files and access information through a secure portal.
Estimating is central to any print business and therefore all IT work at Wood Richardson must be integrated with the central Tharstern MIS system. A thorough understanding of the printing process is therefore a real benefit.
David Rayner, Managing Director of Conformedia explains why they are ideally suited to provide IT support to print organisations. “Conformedia (Consulting for Media) was originally established to provide specialist IT support and services to the newspaper, print and publishing industries. We have the industry experience and cross platform knowledge, to integrate and consolidate complex IT systems for printing businesses; it’s a definite skill set that most IT companies don’t have.”
Simon Pirie, Sales Manager at Wood Richardson agrees. “When we have encountered problems with our workflow and platemaking equipment, the Conformedia team have saved us thousands of pounds by analysing the problem and fixing the software. Without this support we would have had to invest in replacement equipment, which in turn would have meant extended down time in the press room.”
Equally the digital presses are fully supported with anti-virus software and security measures to ensure that the RIP does not become infected with malware which would have a devastating effect on production output.
Anti-virus protection is important to the printing industry which is seeing an increasing number of malware attacks. Conformedia has implemented Sophos Intercept X for ransomware at Wood Richardson, which has reduced the number of attacks significantly. Any problems, which are now few and far between, are dealt with swiftly by the helpdesk team.
Simon summarises, “I can’t praise Conformedia high enough for the support we receive from them. As anyone involved in the print business knows, when the print presses aren’t running, they are costing the business money, so ensuring that prepress can continually produce plates for our presses is absolutely essential."
