case study

Where quality reporting is business critical, Watkiss equipment provides the solution

Unlike many users of Watkiss finishing equipment Berkshire based Lorien is not a printing operation, but specialises in providing marketing services to a wide range of companies. Lorien’s specific area of expertise is in research and direct marketing with the majority of its activities being based around providing highly targeted reports, questionnaires and mailings to its predominantly blue-chip client base.

Lorien’s operations director Tony Yeulet comments:

"The quality and customisation of reports we provide to our clients is a vital element of the service we offer. So when we couldn’t find an external supplier with the necessary databasing capabilities and decided no longer to use outside printers, we committed only to invest in the best quality equipment."

The equipment chosen by Lorien includes black and white and colour printers from Xerox, a Heidelberg guillotine and a Document Finishing System from Watkiss Automation.

The Watkiss solution is primarily used for finishing the A4 booklets that often form part of reports to clients. It was selected for a number of reasons. Firstly, industry veterans Xerox recommended it. That gave Lorien confidence that it would do the required job. Secondly, as with all Watkiss equipment, the machines chosen by Lorien are modular so any additional equipment can be added in line with Lorien’s growing business needs, secure in the knowledge that it will all work together. Thirdly, Watkiss equipment is well known for being robust and reliable.

Tony Yeulet notes:

"One of our measures of the effectiveness of our equipment suppliers is that we don’t want to see their engineers and with Watkiss we rarely do!"

Lorien’s finishing equipment includes the Watkiss Document Finishing System, an offline solution that offers substantial flexibility in collating and booklet making. It can handle up to 25 sheets from a wide range of media stock and copes easily with both sequential and batch printed work from collation, sheet insertion, stitching and folding through to trimming to produce excellent quality finished books every time.

Lorien’s finishing system also incorporates a Watkiss BookMaster Pro staple/fold booklet maker combined with a TrimMaster Pro fore-edge trimmer. These can manage up to 2500 booklets per hour and automatically adjust to handle a range of paper sizes.

So what does the future hold for Lorien? Its success to date has been based upon excellent levels of service to clients that has resulted in long-term business relationships with clients, some of which have been ongoing for more than fifteen years – a remarkable feat in the notoriously fickle world of marketing service provision.