What is our primary use case?
I am an independent consultant, serving companies in the region with Quadient Inspire. I have performed many migrations of document workflows for banks, insurance companies, Telcos, and PSPs.
How has it helped my organization?
The biggest benefit for all companies switching their document systems to Quadient Inspire is the centralization of their document resources and templates. This drastically reduces the number of templates/workflows, as well as their maintenance costs. Often this means reducing the number of templates from hundreds to tens.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of this solution are that it is truly multi-channel and completely modular.
Without programming skills, you can start creating your data-transforming operations, layout design, and page operations such as splitting, merging, and combining the output in any desired way. Plus, its easy-to-learn scripting possibilities give unlimited possibilities for any task. There is one workflow for all corporate outputs - print, mail, SMS, HTML.
What needs improvement?
Quadient has always been a leader in innovation, and the existing functionality that has been around for at least two years cannot really be improved further.
What can be improved are the new additions to the solution.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for seventeen years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
In terms of stability, this product has never let me down in fourteen years. The Designer can "crash" here and there (maybe once a year), but only in cases where I really exaggerated (for instance, data mining a several-gigabyte file). Even if this happens, all of the progress is saved and I never lost any of my work.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is awesome! You can add anything at any time. New engines for more volume. You can add any output engine you can possibly think of to "standard" PDF output (from PS, AFP, DocX, Image, etc.).
How are customer service and support?
The technical support is fantastic.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Our solution prior to this was used a long, long time ago (around 2003, I think). We used a different document composition software in the Telco that I was working for. That software couldn't satisfy our requests for splitting PDFs.
When I first saw the Quadient solution (at the time it was called GMC PrintNetT 4.5), I was amazed by its performance. With the click of a button, it could generate millions of PDF files, ready to be archived.
How was the initial setup?
I don't personally do installations. This is done by company IT with the help of Quadient. I only use it once it is installed. I would say you need a competent integrator to properly set up all of the possible parts.
What was our ROI?
The return on investment really depends on your company's output. I have personally led projects where we cut postage costs by 40%. Any postage costs are HUGE in big companies. I have seen cases where after the implementation of Quadient, the decrease in maintenance costs (personnel) was more than 50%.
This is just the beginning. New possibilities with dynamic output content and integration with your mobile platforms offer countless opportunities. All in all, the ROI in the projects for which I was involved was usually one to three years.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I am used to people being surprised when they first hear the price but, I can tell from my personal experience that if you know how to use the software, the return on investment comes in a really short time.
I have been involved in implementations where it was sooner than one year! It is simple for large-scale document creators, you can use its features to cut down on postage, delivery, and maintenance costs, and you will never look back.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
It was a long time ago, and we were deciding between GMC and Exstream. At the time GMC (now Quadient) was just a better solution for us, with a cheaper price tag.
What other advice do I have?
The thing I like most about this solution is that there is a very valuable and connected community of real users, connected in Quadient University. You can post any question there and get answers, opinions, demo cases, and even working solutions from fellow members who are doing it just because they like to help.
Also, official support is fantastic. Be aware that you need to invest a couple of days (maybe a week or two) of your time with the product (preferably guided), to truly get a feeling of how powerful this product really is.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.