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Richard Fergusson wrote his first program at school back in 1968. After leaving Kings College, London he spent a short period in media research at Ogilvy Benson and Mather, the advertising agency, where he found plenty of opportunity for programming, before he formally became a programmer for the London Life Association.
Moving to Norfolk in 1979 he worked with Anglian Windows on their in-house systems, and spent some time as a free-lance consultant. In 1984 after a year teaching programming for Data Training Ltd, a leading commercial training company, he joined J. E. Hanger as Computer Manager at the Artificial Limb Centre at Roehampton. The functional administrative software derived from the systems he created in that period was still in use in the artificial limb industry right up until 2006.
In 1989 he created version 1 of the Printpak system, which ran on a Psion Organiser and was limited to print estimating. In 1991 he wrote single-handed the first version of Printpak for the PC. Written in MSDOS it was considered ground-breaking in its innovative construction. Hee and Norman Marks founded what is now the PrintSum partnership to develop the product further. In 1998 they followed up their original version with the first Printpak for Microsoft Windows. In 2004 they were awarded a prestigious DTI grant for research into methods of producing a single data structure to enable rival printing companies pricing to be compared for a job, having full regard for the costs of each print supplier’s factors of production. Richard was the technical director of this project. The methodology derived from this is in current use both in the PrintSum and Printpak desktop systems and in the PrintPrices e-commerce model. He is responsible for the architecture of the current PrintSum version 4 system. He has also acted as I.T. consultant in fields as diverse as insurance, bakery, meat processing, hairdressing, and local authority administration.
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Norman was a scholarship pupil at Warwick School, before moving North and studying for a BA(Econ) at Leeds University. After graduating, he worked at Burroughs Machines Ltd in sales and Provident Clothing as the Central Leeds Branch Manager. He was then headhunted by Hoggett Bowers and persuaded to move south to London’s West End as their Regional Director, responsible for recruiting and supplying contract accounting personnel to both commercial companies and the profession.
Whilst at Hoggett Bowers, Norman won and organised the contract for supplying all the accounting staff to Peat Marwick for the liquidation of Rolls Royce. And eighteen months later, he negotiated the contract with Peat Marwick and Thomas McLintock for supplying the accounting staff to liquidate the Courtline Group.
In 1977 he started Harden Printing Ltd, initially in his garage, and as success grew, in picturesque offices on Platt's Eyot in the middle of the Thames at Hampton. With B2 and B3 presses, and full studio, typesetting and design facilities, he was fully involved in the world of commercial print for 18 years. He is the prime source of the print knowledge built into the PrintSum system. As the software became more popular, it took up an increasing share of his time, so he closed his printing company in 1995 to concentrate on the software.
He is currently a consultant for the printing industry, specializing in formal training, advising on pricing and costing, and in the implementation of PrintSum and Printpak MIS.
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Sameer Vartak was educated at Bombay University where he originally specialized in Chemistry. On leaving university he studied programming at the B.I.T.S. Institute and soon obtained his first posting at B &.B consulting, working primarily on financial projects for the prestigious Mahanagar Cooperative Bank, and also for the clothing industry.
In 2000 he joined Novella Systems, a leading Mumbai software house, where he gained useful experience in creating programs for a variety of other industries. In 2003 he started working on PrintSum, initially in Mumbai and then in London. Originally involved with enhancements to version 3 of the software, he is now the technical driving force behind the extremely innovative PrintSum Version 4, in which his unusual expertise has been given full rein to great effect.
A perfectionist, he remains a keen student of the cutting edge of technology and is very much concerned with keeping PrintSum 100% up-to-date and future-proof.