Tharstern

About Us

750+

Staff Globally

All of our customer-facing team are from either a print background, a technical background or both.

600+

Tharstern Users

Including the UK and Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa

4.4/5

Top Rated

Overall rating on Capterra for our products' ease of use and customer service.

Our Purpose

ePS Tharstern enables the creation of innovative communication and consumer experiences that drive a more engaging, colorful, and sustainable world.

We do this by enabling Packaging and Print companies to harness technology to drive​ mutual success and jointly play a leading role in realizing this vision.​

Meet The Team

Our Experts

Our team of experts has a wealth of experience and knowledge to help you digitize your business and create super cool connected workflows.

Customer Success Product Management HQ
“The Tharstern staff are always eager and willing to help. They all jump in ready to serve the customer, and you just know that the customer is always first.”
Dan Still

Bennett Graphics

“Tharstern's customer service team is great to work with. They take the time to find unique solutions to our ever-changing needs.”
Wesley Kopp

District Photo

Our Values

We operate by 4 core values that are reinforced in all our internal communications and activities, including annual staff awards for going above and beyond in displaying these values.

Helpful

To deliver service excellence being at all times helpful, responsive and approachable.

Pride

To have pride in our product and to ensure quality governs all that we do.

Knowledge

To deploy our knowledge, experience, and heritage for the benefit of our customers.

Integrity

To ensure that integrity and trust are the hallmarks by which our actions are judged.

Our customer experience program

In early 2017 we embarked on a customer experience program to make sure we were not only meeting our customers’ expectations but exceeding them. While we have always prided ourselves on offering great customer service, we wanted to do more.

You can read more about our customer experience program in this white paper written by our MD, but here are some activities that we carry out as part of this continuous improvement project.

Our Customer Experience Programme will never be finished – we are committed to continually improving the experience for each and every customer we have, for as long as we have them.

Journey mapping

Mapping every single touchpoint in our customers’ journey so we don't fall down on any interaction we have with them.

Monthly meetings

Monthly customer experience meetings to discuss how to improve touchpoints, attended by representatives of all departments.

Gathering feedback

We regularly gather customer feedback to assess how we’re doing and identify areas we can improve on.

Going the extra mile

We gather suggestions from our staff as to how we can add a little magic to certain touchpoints in the customers' journey.

Timeline

Learn how it all started and where we are today.

1984

Founded by Keith Harrison

Working as a Financial Director at a local printing company, Keith Harrison noticed how consistently painful it was to work out quotes and re-quotes.

He persuaded his son-in-law to create a prototype of an estimating package on a Commodore PET. When he saw how well the prototype had been received, he decided that he wanted to share his vision and help the whole industry.

He bought an off-the-shelf company called ‘Tharstern’ and employed a YTS lad to re-engineer the software in Microsoft C to operate on the MS DOS platform.

Keith Harrison
1984
1991

An new CEO and the move to 16-bit

By 1991 the two-man team had become six and occupied a 1,000 ft2 unit. A key hire was our current CEO, Keith McMurtrie, who had the technological vision and ability that our company needed to grow.  

Under the management of our new CEO, we achieved a number of industry firsts, including the move to a native 16-bit Windows version of the original DOS-based solution, and later to an SQL platform that allowed our customers to write their own reports.  Keith M also foresaw the importance of the JDF protocol for the industry, and so took the decision to join CIP4 and be one of the early adopters of JDF.     

KM 1991
1991
1998

A new owner and the launch of 32-bit

Our founder Keith H retired and handed over his creation to his other son-in-law Richard Bannister and moved the team into new swish facilities at RB House.

That same year we launched a 32-bit version of the software and, crucially, made the move from a proprietary database to the SQL server platform which until that time was not available to the SME market. This was a real turning point for the company and after this, developments come thick and fast. 

Tharstern building circa 1998
1998
2013

The management buyout

Fifteen years passed by in a blur of innovations, growth, and success until the year 2013, when Richard Bannister announced that he was going to sell the business. After securing backing from private equity house Mobeus Equity Partners, our CEO Keith McMurtrie, CTO Antony Lord, and CRO Lee Ward bought the company in a Management Buyout.

Management Buyout
2013
2015

The big rebrand & launch of our MIS in the United States

Free to make investments and think big, the management team worked with Mobeus to create a 3 year plan for significant growth.  In 2015 we had a major rebrand of our visual identity and logo and successfully launched our MIS in the United States.  

Tharstern Green
2015
2021

The launch of Tharstern Cloud

In 2021 we announced the launch of our brand-new MIS product called Tharstern Cloud. At a global launch event, we secured a group of trail-blazing innovators to beta test the software before its commercial launch in 2022. 

Tharstern Cloud Launch
2021
2023

We became a part of the ePS family!

In March 2023 we officially became part of the eProductivity Software group, instantly expanding our portfolio offering and opening up a range of innovative complementary solutions to our customers.

ePS acquire Tharstern
2023
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