Partner Article

Uni partnership which saw print firm create £2 million new business rated ‘outstanding’

A Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between the University of Sunderland and a North East print company which generated £2m of new business has been rated as ‘outstanding’ in a national assessment.

When Imprint Group wanted to develop their largely manual business process into IT driven systems, the company turned to the University for help and were assigned computer software graduate Kris Carr, who has spent the last two years supporting the company’s ambitions in IT solutions.

Now Imprint is one of the biggest suppliers of digitally printed promotional material for retail marketing campaigns and Kris has a full-time role as a software engineer with the Newcastle-based company.

The success of the KTP has resulted in a rare grade A ‘Outstanding’ rating by the UK’s innovation agency – the Technology Strategy Board, which funds, approves and rigorously reviews each project.

KTPs are designed to provide businesses with access to university expertise, including academic, consultancy and qualified graduate placements, allowing business to develop new products, services and processes.

Mark Donnelly, Business Development Manager for the University of Sunderland, said: “We are delighted our collaboration with Imprint through this KTP has been such a success and resulted in an ‘Outstanding’ rating.

“The company has significantly improved their IT processes and generated £2m of new business, the academics have had a great experience transferring their research knowledge to help the business succeed, and one of our talented graduates has secured full-time employment.

“This was an exemplary KTP, based on true partnership working with great results for all of the partners concerned.”

Imprint was suffering from bottlenecks and some inefficiencies in their processes, and the KTP was designed to give the company access to the latest knowledge and expertise from the University’s Department of Computing, Engineering and Technology around the development of management information systems and complex processing technologies, as well as methods to engage employees in the adoption of new technologies into their working practices.

Kris’s efforts, alongside another Sunderland software graduate Tommy Catherall have helped the company grow year on year by 30 per cent and produce revenue gains of up to £2m through increased efficiency and new client wins. This has in turn led to an increase in staff from 40 up to 70.

The academic team behind the project were Dr Lynne Hall, Dr David Nelson and Robert Warrender. The KTP with Imprint was developed in conjunction with Sunderland Software City.

Professor John Macintyre, University Pro Vice-Chancellor, said:“We are delighted to be working with Imprint to help with the company’s strategic development, and it is very rewarding to see this partnership recognised as ‘Outstanding’ on the national stage. Our academics – Lynne Hall, David Nelson and Rob Warrender – have worked closely with the Imprint team and Kris Carr and we are looking forward to continuing to work with the company in the future.”

The academic team said: “Working with Imprint has enabled us to transfer knowledge from the University to Imprint with a significant impact for the business. Working with Imprint has given us real insight into the use of innovative technologies in the real world. The project has met and exceeded its original plans and deliverables, and knowledge gained by the academic team has successfully fed back into research, learning and teaching within the department in key areas such as programming, user experience and integrating innovative technologies into the workplace.”

Graeme Wilkie, Imprint Group IT Director, said: “Although the KTP process can be quite in-depth and take a significant amount of management time, the rewards to the company from the process has been immense.

“To then be awarded an ‘A-Outstanding’ grading from the Technology Strategy Board confirms that the hard work of all the team has, not only had a significant impact on the company but has also been recognised by the external lead body as a project of note. We are all very happy with this outcome and are now looking at the formulation of our next Knowledge Transfer Partnership project.”

Imprint made a decision to change their operations and how they interfaced with clients or face lagging behind on technology. At the time they didn’t possess the tools to do what they wanted to do and couldn’t find all the software they needed, so made a strategic decision to employ their own software developers and design software which was bespoke to Imprint’s clients’ requirements.

After getting in touch with the University of Sunderland and talking through their options, Imprint decided that a two-year KTP made sense for a small company to take on a graduate who is technically supported by the University.

Graeme explained: “Since Kris joined us in 2011 he’s been fantastic, bringing with him new technologies which have helped transform the way we work.”

To support the investment in new print technology the business moved into a purpose built production facility in Newcastle, where they continue to be a centre of excellence for large format digital print. Imprint is investing and developing their IT solutions to support their new and existing clients by delivering added value services to their business.

Graeme added: “The infrastructure to support IT development with the help of Kris and Tommy has now been in place for two years and we have developed a number of applications that have been successfully introduced to clients such as online ordering, job tracking, variable data printing and digital asset management libraries.”

Kris, 24, from Fulwell, Sunderland, got involved in the KTP in the final year of his BSc Computing degree after a lecturer asked him if he’d be interested in applying to become a project associate.

He said: “During the project I gained a great two years’ experience in the field I wished to focus towards, with great challenges and opportunities.

“I’m thoroughly enjoying my time at Imprint, the working environment and atmosphere of the business in IT is lively and challenging and with various projects underway or planned for the future means there’s always more to look forward to.

“I will be working on maintaining the systems created during the project as well as building/improving upon t

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by University of Sunderland .