Supporting customers through investment and development
CMYUK’s demonstration and training centre represents a tremendous knowledge resource, unique in the industry
The joint CMYUK EFI Demonstration and Training Centre in Shrewsbury is specifically focussed on supporting customer development. The largest EFI distributor facility in Europe, it has also become the epicentre for all EFI customers in the UK due to COVID-19 wreaking havoc on international business travel.
It is also the largest independent demonstration and training facility in the UK supporting market-leading technologies from ESKO, Mimaki, Klieverik, Canon, Gerber and Graphtec.
An investment and development support system
More than a demonstration centre, more than a showroom, what this facility does is to equip all customers with an investment support system. So whether you’re a start-up business looking to make your first investment, or you’re a multinational group running multiple industrial production sites, the focus is the same – to understand how your business works, and the best way to progress its infrastructure.
CMYUK Academy – a technical resource built for customer development
The CMYUK Academy is a major component of the Shrewsbury facility, and puts customer learning at its core. It offers an ever-changing array of training to match the wants and needs of customers as they invest in additional equipment, novel applications that may require specialist materials guidance, or support to diversify into non-traditional market sectors.
Managed by Amira Bouchiba, former Senior Applications Engineer at EFI’s Demonstration Centre in Brussels, the Academy offers a number of initiatives including in-depth customer audits that identify knowledge gaps within a business, bespoke training sessions and workshops.
“Our ultimate objective is to ensure that our customers realise the attainable functionality of the equipment they have purchased,” says Bouchiba. “When customers have a deeper understanding of the total functionality available within a technology, it not only ensures a higher quality of output but also achieves greater production efficiencies saving time, energy, and money,” she says.
Free workshop sessions
CMYUK also offers free workshop training sessions both online and in-person that cover ever-popular topics such as Fiery XF, EFI’s digital front-end RIP for wide and super-wide format production printing.
These comprehensive courses cover all product features including layout, finishing/special print settings, spot colour replacement using a spectrophotometer, Media ID, workflows, backup/restore and online updates. Colour profiling is offered separately as a bespoke option.
In addition, CMYUK also offers pre-press workflow workshops with topics including white ink printing, multi ink layering, pre-flighting, cut path creation, nesting, automatic registration and tiling.
Comprehensive process production audits
Under the Academy umbrella, customers can book free-of charge on-site process production audits. These assessment reports will help to identify areas for improvement within combined technology and human working processes.
Audits generally last a day and it is recommended that they be carried out during busy production periods so that CMYUK is able to get an unrestricted view of all current working practices.
Company audit reports will identify:
• How automation of job file data from CRM all the way through production can be improved;
• What knowledge gaps need to be filled to ensure workflow production reaches and maintains peak performance;
• Where best practice needs to be applied.
After a company has received its report, it can then schedule a meeting with CMYUK to discuss implementing change. This can involve the creation of bespoke staff training and development programmes and/or updates to equipment or software.
The customer vantage point
Every customer that comes to CMYUK for the first time is impressed with the demonstration and training facility, the quality of the consultancy, the equipment evaluations/road tests on offer, and the opportunity to really explore their potential investment in a personal way.
“We put in a great deal of thought when we designed our demonstration and training centre as we really wanted it to support the investment experience from a customer viewpoint,” says Robin East, CMYUK Group Sales & Marketing Director. “Once a customer steps through our doors, it signals the start of a relationship that in our experience evolves into a long-standing one. The customer is the focus of everything we do.”