Talking to visitors on the stand, Daniel Aloi, senior regional manager, Sales (APAC) at eProductivity Software Solutions – the former EFI software business – found that labour shortage and an ageing workforce are “without a doubt on everyone's minds”.
“It's something we need to address as an industry, and I don't know necessarily how we do that, but from our side we offer technology as a solution to make it easier to train staff and process work. Technology also makes a difference in reducing the necessity for skill as much as it used to be.”
Another area of interest to those visiting the eProductivity stand at PacPrint was automated scheduling, said Aloi. “A lot of companies, especially those in the packaging space, have used conditional scheduling boards with little tickets and cards that they move around manually, and they simply can't keep up with the amount of work that's coming in,” he said, emphasising that this is particularly as a result of the delays with material and stocks due to the current global supply
chain problem.
“Prior to Covid, everyone was talking about just in time, so managing that was a key interest, and a key benefit for our technology. Today, it’s less about just in time, and more about when the material will arrive and when the supply shortages will be experienced – that’s a different challenge, but our system is capable of dealing with this as well,” added Aloi.
Aloi says he and the eProductivity team have been “absolutely blown away" by the fact that visitors have come to the stand “laser focused”.
“We've been doing these shows nationally and internationally for a long time. At PacPrint this year, people have approached us and know exactly what they're looking for, and what they want to talk about.”
Aloi attributes this to what people have been through as a society, and as an industry, over the last two years of the pandemic.
“People are now more knowledgeable of their business, which wasn’t typical in the past. This is fantastic for us, because that's the kind of language we speak and the tools that we have to offer.”
Summarising eProductivity’s offerings on stand, Aloi said, “We offer a full end to end workflow – everything from web-to-print, and that extends to packaging as well. Then, we have our Enterprise Resource Planning solutions which offer estimating, order management, procurement, inventory, fulfilment, warehousing, and financials. We've also got our vertical applications, which is something I think is important for people to understand and learn more about.
“We do not need to come in and rip out entire systems, we can add to what is in place, then see and identify where the deficiencies are and sell the modules capable of solving those problems.”
“We’re connected to the industry, and take pride in understanding where businesses are at, what their plans are for growth, and their immediate needs, and then identifying that within the portfolio that we can offer to doing workflow.
“We’re not here to change the DNA of the business, but instead to enhance what a business already has in place,” he concluded.
This article was first published in the July-August 2022 print issue of PKN Packaging News, p38.
