Fitzgerald Photo Imaging streamlines its lab with dakis

Where they started

More than a decade ago, Fitzgerald’s online operations were largely manual. Orders came in on paperwork, and the lab handled each step by hand. Paul wanted to streamline the work and reach a wider market, At a conference, he met the dakis team and saw a platform built for the photo industry, and built to run a lab. He moved the operation over and hasn't looked back.

The timing was ahead of the curve. While many retailers waited until later in the decade to take online selling seriously, Fitzgerald was building for it years earlier. Paul could see where the industry was heading: professionals were moving away from selling prints and toward selling digital files, and the lab needed a way to serve anyone with an image on a computer or a phone.

Bringing it together

More than a decade ago, Fitzgerald’s online operations were largely manual. Orders came in on paperwork, and the lab handled each step by hand. Paul wanted to streamline the work and reach a wider market, At a conference, he met the dakis team and saw a platform built for the photo industry, and built to run a lab. He moved the operation over and hasn't looked back.

The timing was ahead of the curve. While many retailers waited until later in the decade to take online selling seriously, Fitzgerald was building for it years earlier. Paul could see where the industry was heading: professionals were moving away from selling prints and toward selling digital files, and the lab needed a way to serve anyone with an image on a computer or a phone.

“You’ll save one staff member without even thinking about it.”

Key results

The clearest gain is time. Automation absorbed the equivalent of two roles’ worth of manual work, the file checking and order handling that used to take staff hours, even as the business grew.

Production runs on that automation. Orders that arrive overnight are checked, logged in the job-tracking system, and into production right away, coming off the printers within two hours of the lab opening. New product ideas move just as quickly, from concept to selling in about a week, where building one in-house once meant finding staff time the lab could rarely spare.

“Online ordering is so integral to what we do that I couldn’t not have it. It’s just part of our framework.”

Online ordering has become central to how Fitzgerald works, and the dakis-managed Google services keep new customers finding the lab, with about a third of new customers saying they found the lab through Google.

More than a decade in, Fitzgerald has kept pace with a fast-changing industry by automating the routine and freeing its people to focus on new products and creative work. dakis is part of how it keeps doing that.