Disclaimer: The “Drop that Tune” tally is actually higher than what was finalised during the episode. Dan Dan Dan the Man is the current title owner.

Lieti: Creating New Ways Podcast your source for bringing the power of automation to paper-based processes. Presented by Objectif Lune UK Marketing, we explore how business process automation can create new ways of communication and share sales tips and tricks on solving the integration challenge.

Who the tech? This episode we learn Objectif Lune technology advice and tips from one of Objectif Lune’s most prized possessions, Dan Dan Dan the Man. For those of you that have been fortunate enough to meet the man, the myth, the legend, you’d know that Dan is our technical guru. He is our sales-based Pre-Sales manager and also my guest for today. Welcome Dan.

Dan: Hello everyone

Lieti: So, we have Dan here this episode to discuss all things technical and I am a technical nincompoop so bear with me as we breakdown some interesting technical titbits about OL software technology. So before we dig in, I think you would’ve heard in the last three episodes, that there was a presence of a bell. This episode, I am excited because we have Dan and I gave him a heads up about the Drop that tune game, that were gonna play here, and the artist today Dan is…

Dan: The Black Eyed Peas. Just so you know, I had a bit of anxiety [Bell] in the lead up to this because I really want to beat Matt’s score.
Lieti: Okay, let’s do it. Okay, so,

Dan: Where is the love [Bell]

Lieti: Yes, two in a row. Startin off to a good start, Shut Up [Bell] Dan, that’s a great start.

Dan: It’s like that [Bell]

Lieti: See this is why I like that you chose black eyed peas because I can, I know songs and I can actually play along. So, before we go into software related questions, I want to share with listeners why you are one of OL UK’s most prized possession and a lot of it is because of what you do and your involvement in the pre-sales cycle. In our first three episodes we broke down on a high level the Objectif Lune Sales Cycle and that’s where we discuss the pre-sales and technical validation stages. But Dan, can you share abit more detail and explain what being a presales manager entails?

Dan: Yes, As pre-sales manager, my job is to understand the customers’ needs and requirements and determine the solution to fit. I run advanced detailed investigations of customers environments before a project begins. From that, I do detailed demonstrations to the customer, I can also go onsite and do workshops with the customer as well. That could be with a group of technical people to find out more detail of what they require and also to get more information about what our software does as well. Following all of this I produce an RFI, which is a request for information, for our account manager or account managers, which then gets turned into a proposal by our account managers that goes to our resellers.

Lieti: So we also have a partner programme here at OL UK that nurtures and supports accredited reseller organisations, and as a part of the training and ongoing support and bridging the gaps [Bell] a mentoring programme is offered to enable and equip technical sales and analysts during sales engagements and also to help build the reseller to become a little bit more self-sufficient. Dan can you go into a little bit more detail about mentoring?

Dan: Mentoring is of OL champions normally nominated by OL account managers, these are pre and post sales people who require technical guidance following training from our training manager. This is more like top up training if you like, for the presales people it could be on additional training on demonstrations for instance on our accounts receivable and proof of delivery demonstrations. To top up training on discovering opportunities. Along the way, I do workshops and we can also do additional phone calls with post sales people as well.

Lieti: So, How long does mentoring normally go for?

Dan: That’s a good question. So, some analysts just can’t get enough [Bell] and I’ve been speaking to them for about 12 years. Although the mentoring programme has been going for two years now, it’s been going for a lot longer. I’ve worked on support for instance, it can be calls regarding how do I build this solution, what’s the best way of building that solution. So, it’s guidance, but what we don’t do is build that solution for them, because that’s professional services and that’s chargeable, but how to questions, that sort of thing, they come to me and I can advise them. The other nice thing is we get them in a room, a round table session we call it and its all about going through new features. For example, what’s in Connect 2018.19, sorry, 2019.1, which is coming out shortly. We will be going through those features and yeah, it’s just a really useful session.

Lieti: Yeah it sounds like it. So, for those of you that aren’t in the mentoring programme, or would like more sessions with Dan, please feel free to contact your OL account manager and they can organise and book you in.

Dan: Yes, don’t contact me, I’ve got a project manager that dictates my schedule, so yeah ill get in trouble if you come direct.

Lieti: That’s good to know. Ok so let’s go into some technical tidbits. So, straight off the bat, can we explore the differences between Classic vs. Connect? Can you give me some key feature differences?

Dan: Ok, Classic uses something called absolute position.

Lieti: Woah, what’s is absolute position?

Dan: Ok absolute position is where you, for example put a text box on a page, you usually drag it on the page, but its coordinates based, so its fixed in that position, it wont change. Whereas Connect works more like an everyday application such as word or outlook. So, when you type in text, the text flows down the page inline. It can work absolute position but for documents such as mail merge or an invoice its much easier because it’s got page flow and the text will flow onto another page automatically, which in classic you would have to script for example. So, for classic PlanetPress, you would have to script that and Printshop Mail you would have to build logic in for that separate page.

Lieti: So, tell me more about the tables?

Dan: The other thing that Connect can do is, is that it can also have tables. So, something that I was asked for years on, during working with support is. Can you put tables on the page? The answer was no. You would have to put individual boxes on the page and fiddle around, getting the positions correct, but now that’s much easier with Connect because you can just put tables on the page and drag the data in. So, the design process on the template is far quicker.

Lieti: So, what about, variable paragraphs?

Dan: Yes, good question. With paragraphs in PrintShopMail, if you wanted to do a variable paragraph, you’d either have to, have something called layout conditions, which is like a conditional page. So, loads of different pages that switched on and off to change what showed and what didn’t show. Or you would need to know if statement logic to switch on and switch off different paragraphs. However in Connect it’s a case of, or in PrintShopMail Connect and PlanetPress Connect and PReS Connect, you can right click on any object on the page and make it conditional which literally means that you can hide and show it with a wizard and it takes 5 seconds to configure, it’s just like that [Bell]

Lieti: Oh, I like that sneaky one. So Connect usability is a massive step up from Classic. What are some other features about Connect?

Dan: Ok so with Connect it’s a 64bit engine opposed to a 32bit. So, it’s much more powerful and it can take much larger files. So, in terms of processing its much better, it will grow with you as well. You’ve got PrintShopMail Connect which is like the baby product, so it doesn’t have a datamapper, so it takes CSV/excel files for instance, but then you can upgrade to PlanetPress Connect and the templates you make in PrintShopMail Connect will work in PlanetPress Connect. And then we’ve got PReS Connect which is even better and you can take PlanetPress templates and PrintShopMail templates as well and Connect templates. And the difference between them is the speed. PlanetPress and PReS Connect have got workflow and can be automated and have datamapper for the multiple data types. Between PlanetPress and PReS, PReS is much faster and it also has the ability to do performance clustering with its performance packs, which is a big improvement so if you want to run as fast as possible, that’s great. Boom Boom Pow [Bell]

Lieti: So, power and performance is a big improvement and then you also mentioned, earlier to me, just about future proofing?

Dan: Yeah so with Connect you can future proof and with our Classic products, at least with PReS and PlanetPress, emailing was very basic, so it would be, for example PlanetPress a rich text email. Whereas with our Connect products we can do a html text emails, with PlanetPress and PReS Connect you can do web output as well, create web output documents. We’ve also got capture on the go which allows us to create documents into an app. For instance we’ve got proof of delivery application or proof of delivery demonstration on our website, which you can show the proof of delivery note, where you can capture signatures, your location, photographs, and submit that data into our workflow and automate it in a normal fashion and generate PDFs and route it into databases and you could also run it into other systems as well. Just to be aware though the capture on the go application does need additional licenses for users.

Lieti: Ok that’s good to know. So, the key standout differences between classic and Connect that you just ran through is usability especially in designer, the processing power capacity and the ability to output documents, data and information via multichannel.

Dan: absolutely

Lieti: So, an interesting bit that I also want to kind of go into, that you touched on just then in regards to variable data, that is abit outside our normal application of the technology is, that we’ve had a lot of customers actually move from word mail merge to our product can you explain why this is?

Dan: Ok so there is a lot of production print customers for example. That, in fact there is still a lot of production print customers that still use word, but what you will find with those customers, if you see them and ask them the question, when they do file print from word, they’ll say it’s slow, it crashes, they cant do anything else with their machine while its printing as well

Lieti: such a mare [Bell]

Dan: absolutely, bringing it back though [Bell]

Lieti: oh nice, back on back

Dan: one thing that it does do, is it causes them a lot of headache and it also means they can’t get on with other things, if say it is spooling and taking time on that machine, whereas our technology, its much faster. The other thing is they get the designer as well, so we produce an optimised file, so first of all it spools a lot faster on the machine and also can be much quicker on the printer but we can also give them the extra functionality of dynamic images, conditional paragraphs, add barcodes to documents. We could also add intelligence to documents as well, for inserters, you could also add mailmark barcodes and a whole host of things that they may have not even explored.

Lieti: So, can you give me an example of a customer site that uses variable data management in reference to mail merge and also our technology?

Dan: Absolutely, there is a customer that originally started with PrintShop Mail Classic and now has PlanetPress Connect as well. They were actually doing word mail merge to begin with, but they moved to PrintShop Mail sometime ago, saw the benefits of this and then have since hired a developer that allows them to grow the business further taking on transactional jobs.

Lieti: Is the transactional jobs a new customer base for them?

Dan: absolutely, its more complex data, which they couldn’t take in word or PrintShop Mail and also allows them to automate it as well, so its recurrent as well.

Lieti: ok so that’s a really good example that shows the breadth of customers that use OL technology for variable data, so pretty much PrintShop Mail and PP Connect can make the whole process faster and more automated for you.

Dan: Yep, absolutely.

Lieti: So, can you also, I think a big factor that it can do, is also bring down postage costs, is that true?

Dan: It can do, so first of all, if you’ve got a MailMark stream in your data, we can automatically put a MailMark barcode on the page. But we have the ability with MailSort software, to put into our workflow automation, so we can sort, cleanse, address data very easily, to give mail discounts to customers as well.

Lieti: One thing that I have also heard a lot of our sales guys here talk about, that they always go go go [Bell] on about is, how Connect can enhance Fiery users print production. What is that, tell me more?

Dan: Ok yeah, Connect can enhance that by different print languages, so you’ve probably heard of postscript, we can also output optimised postscript but one that doesn’t get talked about so much is PPML. So, there was an instance the other week, where a customer was outputting postscript to a RIP and although it is spooling to the RIP fairly quick, the RIP was processing it very slow, so it was taking about 10 mins before the printer started printing. Whereas sending it as a PPML file, took 2 mins, so that’s much faster, it’s certainly, I mean you could get on with your weekend [bell]. Just for those that want to know what PPML stands for, its Personalised Print Markup Language. It’s available on PReS Connect, PrintShop Mail Connect and PlantPress Connect provided you have optimised output.

Lieti: Ok, thanks for that little titbit. I think that was helpful information, for Fiery users especially. Another question that I get often, is the differences between OL software technology and rival products. What do you normally say to this?

Dan: Ok, I don’t normally start getting into an argument straight away about other products.

Lieti: Good idea. Good idea.

Dan: I normally just build the business case for the customer, so I listen to the customers needs and then try to show the customer our software and the general rule I tend to follow is show the customer all of our software. From the workflow, to the designer as well, showing the features such as, the barcodes, to the designer, to the fact that we can create emails in our designer, web pages in our designer and then also finish off by saying that, all of this is included in our core license because when it comes to our competitors, a lot of them don’t include most of the features in one standard license. You want emails for instance, that may be an optional extra, if you want web output that would be extra. That’s one of the nice benefits of our software, that it’s all included.

Lieti: So, wow them with the features and then tell them, look, there is nothing else its all included. Ok great, I’m definitely gonna take that one away. So, for the very last segment in this episode Dan, we have created your own very special part, called Dan’s shortcut of the day. So, what’s your handy tip?

Dan: So let’s ring the alarm [Bell] first. 19.34 – 19.47

Ok so, my shortcut of the day, is about absolute position because we’ve got lots of customers that are, were Classic users that have crossgraded to Connect, that still like to put objects on specific positions on the page. So, we Do it like this [Bell], if you were to find the field that you would like in your data window, select it, hold the control key down and then drag it onto the page, that will put it into a positional box automatically on the page, so then when you then select the field on the page, you can move it wherever you like on the page automatically, rather than it being in a fixed position and that is my tip of the day.

Lieti: oh nice, that’s actually, a really handy tip because I spend so much time messing about with information positioning on marketing print collateral. So, thanks for that gem.

Dan: It’s dopeness [Bell]

Lieti: It’s dopeness, I like that one. So, thanks for joining me this episode Dan. I’ve had a very fun time and I think our tally that we managed to reach is actually 13! [DISCLAIMER: following recording re-count, Dan Dan Dan the Man actually achieved 15] Great job, so I think just shy of Matts record, but a very respectable effort for the first time on the episode.

So just in summary guys this episode, we broke down pre-sales services available for partners. We broke down the differences between Classic and Connect, we explored performance features and Dan dropped a nice shortcut of the day. If you have any technical topics that you would like us to explore, please leave us a comment and don’t forget to subscribe and also use our hashtag #creatingnewways.

You can find us on iTunes and Spotify under Creating New Ways. Follow us on Twitter @Objluneuk for the latest updates on Objectif Lune UK. You’re listening to Creating New Ways Podcast, knowledge bites about the power of automation to paper-based processes. And don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast for alerts to our new shows.