Image Label Systems Case Study - featured in Print 21 August 2008 - New Zealand and Australian Issue.

Seeing the world through a Prism

Prism MIS is helping one New Zealand company expand overseas while continuing to operate on an integrated MIS platform.

New Zealand has a reputation for spawning hi-tech companies that then go on to conquer the world. One of the best-known examples is Prism which started out as a New Zealand-based MIS developer and now has a presence in graphic arts markets as far afield as South Africa, USA and Europe, as well as Australia and New Zealand.

It is appropriate then that Prism software should also be driving the flow of management information for another Auckland-based company with offices throughout the region and Asia, providing it with an integrated MIS network across several locations.

Image Label Systems is a company specialising in labels and tags for the garment industry including swing-tags, care labels, brand patches, self-adhesive and woven labels – practically anything associated with apparel and clothing. It’s a vast range of products that use a variety of manufacturing techniques, not all of which are printed but which nevertheless share some of the characteristics of printed labels and are managed in a similar way.

According to David Marshall, CEO of Image Label Systems, the company first started using Prism back in 2000 when it was still just servicing the local New Zealand garment market but when that industry moved offshore, Image Label Systems followed it and took its Prism software with it. The head office is still based in Auckland but these days the company also runs sales offices in Australia as well as manufacturing facilities in Fiji, Hong Kong, China and India – all of which share the same MIS system.

“It’s a completely integrated business in that every location runs the same business software with a small amount of tailoring for local customers. China, for instance, has Chinese and English on its invoices, but the layout would be identical to, say, an invoice from Fiji,” explains Marshall.

The advantage of having a single platform is transparency and accountability across the whole business as well as the ability to move staff from one location to another, such as for training or short-term assignments, without any disruption to day-to-day operations.

“Because the Prism software platform underpins most of our business processes we can have a vacancy in New Zealand and fill it with anybody in our business in the same role. The business processes and the software that underpins those processes is completely identical,” says Marshall.

Each site, wherever it is, operates as its own profit centre but the beauty of the Prism system, says Marshall, is that it can generate quotes for customers in Australia and New Zealand while simultaneously giving information to manufacturing sites such as in Fiji so that management there can see how much profit margin they have on each job.

“The relationship between the businesses is completely transparent, there’s no ducks and drakes, and no opportunities for one site to take advantage of another.”

Power and simplicity

Marshall says the company uses the software to supply ‘snapshot’ weekly and monthly reports but nothing in greater detail unless there is a requirement to investigate a particular aspect. With a background in accountancy, Marshall has a firm idea of what he expects from a system and understands how Prism stacks up against its alternatives.

“I’d be hard-pressed to recommend another system like Prism that combines two of what to me are the most important things – one is power and the other is simplicity.

“You’ve got to be able to have the power in terms of the functionality of the system to be able to do what you want to do at different levels in the business, and Prism does a lot of things very well in that regard. Secondly it’s a system that’s not difficult to learn to use, it’s relatively user-friendly, the screen layouts are simple and the navigation is simple – and for us that’s vital.”

The customer-facing element of the software is also important enabling the company to have fast access to quotes, job orders, customer history etc without have to dig too deep or use terminology that might not be understood in non-English speaking countries. In that regard, Prism truly is an international system able to span cultures and link countries together – the United Nations of MIS.