Pixartprinting Improves Customer Satisfaction and Gains Competitive Advantage with a Database Solution
 
 

Pixartprinting Improves Customer Satisfaction and Gains Competitive Advantage with a Database Solution

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Pixartprinting, a Venetian company, founded in 1994 by Matteo Rigamonti, is now the largest Web-to-print services player in Italy and all of Europe. It specializes in providing online printing services for small print products (such as magazines, catalogs, postcards, stickers, labels, and brochures), larger products (including high resolution reproductions, posters, billboards, banners, and displays), packaging, and much more.

Pixartprinting is a young company with a well-defined growth path. In 2000, its decision to switch from being a simple service bureau for print shops to a provider of online printing services enabled the company to grow, both structurally and in profits. To support its new structure, the company decided to adopt MySQL as a database solution. MySQL immediately provided new features aimed at increasing production volume, for example automatic management of all prepress phases, and the constant monitoring and gathering statistics of the whole production chain. Today, Pixartprinting has approximately 250 employees that provide 24/7 service to its portfolio of 120,000 clients—60% which are in Italy—and the company processes an average of 3,800 orders per day. MySQL improved efficiency by sorting orders, ensuring accuracy and timeliness, and organizing customer data—enabling the company to maintain an annual growth rate of more than 40% in recent years.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from Pixartprinting

  • "Choosing the right technology, tools, and providers with which to work is critical to our business. Today, thanks to Oracle MySQL, we can offer innovative, high quality services by using advanced technology, with an unrivalled time-to-market." – Rodrigo Padovan, IT Manager, Pixartprinting

  • Create a very reliable IT structure, based a new database connected to a print e-commerce Website that supports the company’s solid and strategic competitive differentiation in the printing market
  • Implement a new technology solution with a greater service availability and flexibility for a faster, always-available Website that provides users with many product options and benefits, including product-delivery time guarantees
  • Choose a robust and reliable database solution that will scale with the company over time
  • Provide data management and control tools to optimize the database according to the thousands of print products ordered per day
  • Provide internal production users and external customers (clients) with maximum service availability and greater system stability

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Implemented MySQL to enable automatic management of all prepress phases, thanks to its highly affordable software, reducing the time required by 40% and optimizing service, from quotation to delivery in less than 24 hours
  • Developed an automated custom-built enterprise resource planning system, based on MySQL that helps sort and process an average of 3,800 orders per day, always on time and with no errors
  • Realized a competitive advantage, gaining growth rates of more than 40% per year, thanks to the new model of purely Web-to-print service, automated on MySQL
  • Enabled Pixartprinting to access and use data on production, sales, product efficacy, and quality of materials to constantly monitor the production chain and customer satisfaction from any device, anywhere, and at any time
  • Used MySQL tools, such as Enterprise Monitoring to ensure system functionality and critical orders processing, and MySQL Enterprise Backup to complete online backups—without query or update interruptions
  • Achieved a high level of satisfaction among 120,000 customers, through a faster, always-available Website that provides a lot of product options, including product delivery time guarantees
  • Eliminated the previous system instability and ensured maximum quality and service continuity with zero downtime in the last six years
  • Obtained excellent performance from internal and external database systems that handle 1,500 transactions per second
  • Capitalized on the improved Website functionality to help the company grow its revenue from US$3.8 million to US$55,800 million and increase the number of orders processed each day from 50 to 3,800

Why Oracle

Pixartprinting had very limited budget. In addition to evaluating MySQL, the company examined Microsoft, Sybase, and PostgreSQL, an open source solution—all of which would have required more system management time. The Microsoft solution was too expensive and not stable. With MySQL, Pixartprinting has a high-efficiency and productive system at a cost that is 94% lower than Microsoft and 98% lower than Sybase.

"We chose MySQL due to its safety and performance, as well as the reliability of Oracle as a long-term partner," said Rodrigo Padovan, IT manager, Pixartprinting. "Moreover, MySQL is much faster, more stable, and easier to use, compared to other databases on the market."

Implementation Process

“The implementation process took place in two phases—product selection and deployment. Our IT team has received support from the Oracle MySQL consultant in every step of this evolution, and receiving this quality consultancy helped leverage existing resources to exceed our goals.”   

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