RISE OF THE
MACHINES:
How Workfl ow Automation
Is TRANSFORMING PRINT
By Laurie Weller
For an industry that has been
around since the days of Gutenberg,
the future is fi nally here.
In fact, commercial printing processes
are rapidly moving out of the
hands of skilled artisans – and into the
tech-driven world of workfl ow automation.
And, those who embrace this
new paradigm will reap the benefi ts for
years to come.
“Integrated workfl ow solutions help
eliminate manual repetition of basic
tasks, freeing your staff up for more
productive, revenue-producing activities,”
said Tony Tarpey, chief operating
offi cer for SmartSoft .
Stephanie Pieruccini, product marketing
manager for Crawford Technologies,
agrees, noting that workfl ow
automation solutions can dramatically
improve the customer experience for
print service providers (PSPs). “Th e
more automation you have in place,
the more services you can off er,” she
said. “It is hard to have experts in many
diff erent areas of print. When you
automate processes according to how
individual communications need to be
handled, that reduces the amount of
on-staff expertise you need.”
According to Darrian Young, VP
of product management, workfl ow
for Aleyant, workfl ow automation
solutions are also going mainstream because
their costs are falling. “Workfl ow
used to be an expensive system you
had to install in-house,” he said. “Now
there are more subscription and cloudbased
options in the market, which are
simplifying things and bringing down
the costs. So, we are seeing the democratization
of workfl ow – it’s not only for
the top 500 shops anymore. Anyone
can get into workfl ow if they want to
put the time and eff ort into it.”
And, doing so is rapidly becoming
a must, says Joseph Rouhana, VP/GM,
soft ware business group, Xerox. “Print
providers are producing more jobs at
lower value with shorter turnaround
times, so the managing and processing
of jobs has to be automated to reduce
costs and lead time,” he said.
Susan Cotter, analyst for Madison
Advisors, adds, “Workflow automation
solutions enable PSPs to manage
the chaos. The solutions provide
the capabilities needed to take
advantage of the PSP’s entire fleet of
printers and inserters by putting the
right job on the right equipment at
the right time.”
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