If you’re researching software to digitize and streamline your print business, you may have been confused by all the different terms and abbreviations we suppliers may use.
Let us explain what they all mean, so you can find the right software for your print business.
First of all, let’s get out the three main phrases you might have heard about:
We refer to our software as 'Business Workflow Software' because it covers every aspect of a business workflow - from sales and estimating, through to production and delivery.
While it’s clear that Business Workflow Software is a better description for what our software does, you will find us using both phrases still, for SEO purposes – that’s because there are around 2,400 monthly Google searches for the phrase “Management Information System” and only 10 a month for the phrase “Business Workflow Software”. So while we might not agree with the limits of the phrase “print MIS” we know that’s how the market describe our product, and so we need to roll with it!
FYI, we’ve also occasionally seen the phrase “Print Workflow Automation System” used to describe an MIS solution. Again, it means the same as the first two phrases above.
There are also software applications that deal with one or two particular parts of the workflow e.g. “Print Estimating Software” or “Print Production Management Software”, sometimes they are used in combination to demonstrate they deal with more than one part of the workflow e.g. “Estimating and Production Management Software”. These solutions are obviously not designed to be end-to-end solutions and are typically used by small printing companies.
You may also see the below phrases being used intermittently in place of “Print MIS” or “Workflow Management Software”, but these are actually different types of software applications used for different purposes:
The best advice we can give you when researching software for your print business is to look at the modules and tools available on their features page, like this one from Tharstern. All MIS providers have these as standard, and you will instantly be able to see if their software covers the areas of your business that you want to improve.