Over the Past 35 Years

Over the last 35 years, there has been transitioning change in the printing industry, just as it has occurred in many other industries.  However, for reprographers such as BPI Inc., change has been evident more so in the last 5 years.

BPI Inc.’s reprographic world has become an inclusive and seamless combination of traditional and contemporary business.  Traditional technologies include printing equipment, hard copy printing, blue line prints, and color printing.  While contemporary business has come to include digital scanning of existing hard copies, digital plan distribution, and digital close out at the end of a traditional building project.

BPI Inc. witnesses the interesting blend of traditional and contemporary coming together on a daily basis.  As a case in point, our offices recently entered into a partnership with a global mining manufacturing company.  The manufacturing company was faced with the task of hiring and managing additional resources to perform a large in-house scanning project.  BPI Inc. was able to save our partner time, money, and resources by outsourcing and managing the scanning work within our own facilities.

As part of this new partnership, responsibilities include:

• scanning of large and small format documents
• optical character recognition (OCR)
• quality control of the scanned documents

Another contemporary innovation and technological advancement utilized in several of BPI Inc.’s client partnerships is eCommunication, referred to in short as eComm.  eComm provides the owner of a project with the ability to monitor, in real-time, all project activity hour-by-hour as the project develops.  That means information is timely, project workflow remains smooth, and confusion and inaccuracies are minimized.

In a more traditional way, BPI Inc. continues to install, service, and maintain printing equipment using various approaches, from cost per copy programs to leases to straight purchases.  All systems provide our clients, from major energy companies to manufacturing resources to subcontractors, with the ability to print in-house, on demand, day or night at extremely affordable prices.

For the last 55 years, BPI Inc. has flourished in partnerships with clients and seamlessly transitioned them from one stage to another.  We will continue to partner with our clients and make these transitions smooth and successful ones for many years to come.

Best File Sharing App

So many cloud-based file sharing solutions… where to start? There are many different types of file sharing applications ranging from FTP sites to Dropbox to full-fledged document management systems. Based on client feedback and our experience, we have developed a few items that you will want to consider when evaluating a file sharing solution.

1. Security. What type of security does the file sharing solution offer? You want to be sure your data is secure. Redundant servers, encrypted data transmission, data backup, and 24/7 monitoring will keep your information secure and always available.
2. Permissions – Manage who sees what. Application settings allowing you to control who sees certain information will reassure you that only the proper people see the right information.  Controlling who sees what information is a very tricky and time consuming task when using FTP. The more robust applications will provide you the ability to set up users and control access to each of the folders with ease.     
3. Access from Anywhere – 24/7. Cloud-based solutions offer you access from anywhere at any time with an internet connection. There are some file sharing applications that allow for offline syncing as well.
4. Tracking activity – Who, what, when? Ever wonder if you are being watched? When using a file sharing application, this may be something that you need to know…. So your answer may be yes.

As these items are all important when considering file sharing applications, select the solution that best fits your file sharing requirements. Create a scorecard representing the items you require of your file sharing solutions across the top and the product listed in the far left column. This scorecard layout will allow you to compare the feature set of each solution.

Here is a sample scorecard.

Product	Security	Permissions	Access	Tracking	Ease of Use
eShare	X	X	X	X	X
FTP		X	X
DropBox		X	X		X

We have found eShare offers a low cost, easy, and secure way to upload and share files with all project team members. While it is specific to the AEC industry, it has been utilized for file sharing across the web to upload, organize, and share data.

Seminar Follow Up

BPI continues to make the transition from a well-respected reprographics company to a full-service industry partner. Over the last 56 years, we have managed printed media throughout the building cycle for our valued clients such as engineers, architects, owners, general contractors, and subcontractors. As the industry continues to evolve, BPI evolves with it–right into the world of digital and electronic media.

Recently, we invited some of our valued clients to Miller Park for Construction Technology Seminar that included a historical review of how BPI began in this industry and how we developed and transitioned into the construction technology company we are today. We offered a detailed demonstration of eCommunication (eComm) which was very well received by our guests. In most cases, attendees determined that eComm would be a great time- and money-saving digital document tool for their companies.

After the eComm demonstration, BPI’s guests were treated to a fantastic Classic Tailgate buffet and a somewhat-surreal behind-the-scenes tour of Miller Park. Guests even had the opportunity to meet Milwaukee Brewers, Rickie Weeks and Mike Fiers.

For those who were unable to attend BPI’s Construction Technology Seminar, we would be most appreciative of the opportunity to come to your location and present the eCommunication software to you.

eCommunication is Here