Founded in 1996 above a chip shop in East London, Millnet is now a document management company with a turnover of £9 million, specialising in the production of paper and electronic documents for the legal, financial and professional services markets. Occupying state of the art premises in the heart of the City and also in Leeds, Millnet employs 45 permanent staff, 120 part time operators, and is open 24/7 to satisfy the demands of customers needing fully comprehensive print services around the clock.

Digital printing technology has been key to achieving Millnet's projected year on year growth rate of 10 – 20 per cent, and furthermore, a recently installed Web-to-print solution, EFI Digital StoreFront, has resulted in an overall 60 per cent reduction in admin time, and job submission to production time by 50 per cent. The award-winning Digital StoreFront solution eases print job specification and file handling for the customer while automating workflow at the printer. It offers an end-to-end e-commerce workflow, and features inherent connectivity with other EFI solutions such as Fiery servers.

Millnet's Fiery servers deliver precision colour, consistent high-quality output and workflow innovation, providing such features as the fastest, most open VDP solution; WYSIWYG imposition; and advanced production management tools that optimise the Fiery's power to deliver the fastest output in Millnet's demanding print production environment. And because EFI solutions comply with JDF, PDF, PPML and other open standards, Fiery and Digital StoreFront readily integrate into Millnet's overall print shop operations.

Digital printing technology has greatly impacted Millnet's core business now that the quality of digital output meets the high standards of the company's specific customer base. The time savings offered by digital solutions have enabled the company to grow its business by capitalising on the fast-turnaround times that are imperative to customers in the highly pressured financial and legal markets. Around 40 per cent of jobs undertaken by Millnet, particularly those which are short-run, are now executed in-house on the firm's three Fiery-driven Xerox DocuColor 6060s, and twelve Ricoh black-and-white printers, whilst the remainder (mainly high-volume work) is outsourced to a litho print partner.

Importantly, the instalment of digital technology has allowed Millnet to expand its business offering by undertaking ancillary work for existing customers, such as presentations, proposals, training materials, research reports and shareholder communication. As demand for these products has grown, Millnet realised that an automated, Web-based job submission capability would be invaluable if it could reduce the admin and job-to-print time.

John Walker, director of Millnet, commented, ‘Having had previous experience of working with proprietary Web submission tools, I was aware of the potential impact that such a solution could have internally at Millnet and for our customers. However, products I have known in the past tend to be either very print-centric, which can be baffling for customers not accustomed to print environments, or very complex.

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