Organizational Profile:
Hacker Nelson Company is an accounting firm headquartered in Decorah, Iowa offering accounting services to a wide variety of clients. They believe that their competitive advantage lies in not only extensive experience but also in how they present themselves in a highly professional manner.
Situation:
Many clients of Hacker Nelson Company are businesses that require long and detailed financial reports on a regular basis. The contents of these reports consist of multiple documents produced using software applications such as Microsoft Word and Excel. The documents have varying characteristics that require them to be printed individually. Some documents need to printed on company letterhead, some are single-sided, some are two-sided and some require the signature of one of the company partners. There is a desire to include color covers and color charts within the finished report to keep their presentation on the leading edge. Image quality is a very high priority on these reports to maintain their professional appearance. These documents are presently being printed on an network printer and copied on a digital copier then hand assembled and bound. It has been recognized that this process is very time consuming and waste of labor for their skilled office staff. The company also recognized many challenges with their current copier provider specifically the inability to get the device to connect and print properly on their network.
Solution:
A short needs analysis meeting with Advanced Systems’ Solutions Specialist, Dave Hansen, revealed a need for a streamlined process to assemble the documents for their reports and produce them without the need for hand assembly. An integrated solution was presented including a Canon imageRUNNER 3480 full color networked system and Canon’s imageWARE Publishing Manager software. This solution allows multiple documents to be assembled digitally using the Publishing Manager program. Specific print commands are determined for each page or section of the report so that the entire report or multiple copies of the report can be printed at one time. The user can designate which pages of the report should print single-sided and which should print two-sided. They can choose to print on special paper stock for different parts of the report such as letterhead or cover stock and can designate which pages need to print in full color and which will be in black and white. Digitally scanned signatures can be added where necessary and custom watermarks can be used for draft versions of a report. Once these specifications are set for a report it may be saved with all of these print specific settings. This allows the user to open the complete report and print additional copies without taking the time to specify all of the print commands again all while retaining the image quality of an original print.
This process dramatically reduces the time it takes to produce client reports for Hacker Nelson staff members and creates a “print-on-demand” situation when additional reports are needed.
Conclusion:
Hacker Nelson Company now offers reports that feature a more professional appearance while dramatically reducing the time required for reports to be produced. This process keeps them on the leading edge of technology, maintains their status as professional service providers and reduces their operating expenses.