FOSTER CITY, Calif.--Oct. 5, 2004-- When Social & Health Services, Ltd. (SHS) in Rockville, MD, has an urgent customer request they need to respond quickly and flawlessly -- their biggest customer is the U.S. government. To meet tight printing deadlines with high quality, high speed color output, managers at the SHS in-house print facility, Digital xPress, selected the Fiery Q4500 color server from EFI to drive their Xerox iGen3 Digital Production Press. Citing speed, precise color control and consistency across devices, SHS credits the Fiery and Xerox iGen3 combination for delivering increased efficiency and higher profit margins. SHS provides marketing and communications services to governments and private sector organizations. Often required to respond to real time communication crises with immediate material, SHS typically has only a few hours to write, design, print and ship literature across the country. For quick, 24/7 response to real time events, SHS's Digital xPress employees, who are long time Fiery users, chose the familiarity and quality color control of EFI's Fiery Q4500 server to meet their high-level production printing requirements. "The Fiery enables the Xerox iGen3 to perform to its full potential. It has increased our efficiency and profit margins but, what's more important, the Fiery allows us to deliver better customer service. Along with saving us time, it's saving our customers' valuable time. That makes us easier to deal with," said Lewis D. Eigen, President of SHS. Integration into the SHS workflow was seamless; operators began work almost immediately thanks to the consistent user interface of the Command WorkStation(TM), EFI's award-winning job management software. By wrapping an elegant user interface around a range of functionality, EFI Fiery server technology enables the production of complex color jobs with ease. The Command WorkStation provides a gateway to the Fiery Q4500's array of sophisticated, powerful tools. These are the same high performance color management and emulation tools SHS's team was already using on their Fiery-driven Xerox DocuColor 2060 Digital Color Presses, making it a huge benefit for gearing up staff. "For us there was virtually no training time because we had used Fiery servers before," added Ramona Arnett, Executive Vice President of SHS. "From an operator perspective the Fiery is intuitive. All my operators are happy with it." Eigen is also impressed with the flexibility the Fiery provides. "We're getting good color output no matter what the application is. This is important to us from a competitive standpoint. The Fiery delivers color quality and consistency between all PC applications. It's ideal for what we do." For applications requiring greater precision color control, the Fiery also offers a suite of advanced tools for graphic arts professionals to achieve consistently accurate results. Additionally, industry-leading variable data printing (VDP), with support for the most extensive range of VDP languages, enables the Fiery system to integrate seamlessly into existing workflows and creates an ideal solution for high speed, production color VDP. The powerful DocBuilder Pro(TM) imposition tool, which allows staff to build and edit documents on the fly, has proven valuable as well. DocBuilder Pro increases efficiency by allowing SHS staff to exploit the large-sheet capacity of the iGen3 press and print 2-up configurations on 8 1/2" x 11" jobs. With the Xerox iGen3's ability to produce up to 6,000 four-color impressions per hour, and the Fiery's exceptional color quality and control, SHS has significantly increased productivity and profits, making the solution a big part of their future business. "It's our vision to have Fiery-driven DocuColor 12s in the offices of our major customers, so they can design documents, proof them in their offices, and send the documents via the Internet directly to our Fiery," Eigen says. "It would increase our efficiency even more." As a result of their newfound production printing power, SHS recently expanded into a larger print facility and added a second Fiery-driven iGen3 press. "The unparalleled speed of Xerox's iGen3 and the precision color quality control provided by EFI's Fiery Q4500 make a winning combination for extreme printing environments. We are thrilled to help SHS increase their productivity, profit margins and job quality with their Fiery-driven iGen3 press," said Frank Mallozzi, VP of Worldwide Sales at EFI.