Donald Goldman

RESTON, VA—10/08/08—Which industry trends are here to stay? How can graphic communications companies leverage the industry's hot technologies for the greatest business advantage? These are just some of the questions that will be addressed at this year's EXECUTIVE OUTLOOK® Conference, to be held in Chicago's McCormick Place on Saturday, October 25, 2008, the day before the opening of GRAPH EXPO®. GRAPH EXPO is the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of graphic communications equipment, products and related services in the Western Hemisphere. GRAPH EXPO will take place October 26 - 29, 2008.

A KNOCK frequently made against printers is that many don’t know their true costs and, as a consequence, can’t say if they’ve made money on any given job. Another way of looking at is that they don’t know the dollar value of individual jobs and customers to the bottom line. In order to know that answer, shops need to have the required infrastructure in place and an ingrained discipline throughout the company to capture and analyze the relevant data. It takes a big commitment to implement and religiously use a comprehensive Management Information System (MIS), now also called Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP),