Page 29 - Business Info - Issue 109

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magazine
29
The printer with the
smiley face
for goods.
Huws Gray IT manager Michael Owen
said: “With the old paper process, if a
customer phoned our accounts staff at
head office with a delivery question, the
specific branch would then have to be
contacted and the paper proof of delivery
found and faxed over. That process could
take a day or two, as our branches are
busy selling goods. Now everything is
instantaneous as proof of delivery is
available electronically.”
Border Merchant Systems’ (BMS)
POD scanning module links to BMS
CounterAct merchant software, which
Huws Gray has used for the past 15 years
for its accounts, price book, point of sale,
stock control and quotations.
Each proof of delivery form is given
a unique barcode, which Kodak Capture
Pro Software reads automatically. This is
matched against a sales number within
CounterAct Software so that the proof
of delivery scan can be archived together
with the customer’s order. If there is a
query, accounts staff can run a client
report or look at the sales ledger and click
on a link to the scanned POD, which can
be emailed as a PDF directly from the
system.
As well as dramatically improving the
speed of response to queries, this system
allows accounts staff to produce reports
on orders that do not have an associated
proof of delivery, whilst also eliminating
the need to keep paper records at
individual branches.
BMS advised Huws Gray to use 30
pages per minute KODAK i2400 scanners
throughout the company. Each scanner
connects to a desktop PC and comes with
Kodak’s Perfect Page imaging technology
and a license for Kodak Capture Pro
scanning software, which allows the POD
scans to be matched to orders.
Owen said: “We wanted a solution
where staff can just grab a bunch of proof
of deliveries, put them into the hopper,
press a button and the system takes care
of everything. That’s what we’ve got, with
the barcode recognition within KODAK
Capture Pro Software being particularly
impressive.”
kodak.com/go/docimaging
...the Little
Printer scours
the web on
the owner’s
behalf and
assembles
items of
interest ...
HP’s results for Q2 2012 highlight the
decline of home printing, with the
Imaging and Printing Group revealing a
23% fall in consumer hardware units,
year-on-year. Clearly, HP’s hope that
the launch of web-connected home
printers would lead to a new era of
on-demand (or automatic) printing of
customised material, from newspapers
and magazines to recipe cards and
colouring pages, was seriously
misplaced.
Yet, here we have another company
with high hopes for an internet-connected
home printer. Developed by the London
product and design studio Berg, the Little
Printer scours the web on the owner’s
behalf and assembles items of interest
into miniature newspapers just 2.25in
wide – i.e. no larger than a till receipt.
Due to ship at the end of October, the
Little Printer works in conjunction with
a publishing platform that developers,
publishers and website owners can use
to produce bespoke publications for
individual users.
Berg has already signed up a number
of content partners, including
The
Guardian
for news headlines; Google for
daily to-do lists; foursquare for location-
based services including restaurant
recommendations for your area and the
location of friends; and Arup, which is
producing a series of mini-publications
on building projects such as the Sydney
Opera House and London Zoo Penguin
Pool.
The Times
and BBCWorldwide are also
said to be developing material for the
Little Printer that in addition can be used
to send messages to friends and print
daily weather reports, horoscopes, puzzles
and weekly birthday reminders from
Facebook.
In many ways, this is no different to
what HP was trying to do – and maybe
still is – but what Berg has in its favour
is the novelty value of the tiny thermal
printer with the smiling face and the
fact that it is designed as a smartphone
accessory, which as we reveal on page
23 is a major new market for hardware
manufacturers.
Little Printer owners manage their
subscriptions and set up printing times
via their iOS, Android or Windows
smartphone and the Berg Cloud Remote
mobile website.
The web-connected home printer can
be pre-ordered from bergcloud.com. The
price of £199 includes the printer; BERG
Cloud Bridge, which plugs into the user’s
home broadband router and provides a
wireless connection to theWeb; and
spare paper.
www.bergcloud.com