Ivie & Associates power their Rapid Remark brand management service with Viki's Vera Custom Workflow

Flower Mound, Texas and Victoria, Canada – Viki Solutions announces the successful cloud deployment of Vera Custom Workflow by Ivie & Associates. The Vera platform powers Ivie's Rapid Remark–bringing together thousands of marketing professionals and brand clients from around the world to collaborate on assets and jobs. Vera has been in production at Ivie since November 2012.

Ivie was looking to replace their existing Kodak InSite Creative Workflow and Prepress Portal with a platform that could integrate with Kodak Prinergy and accommodate their diverse workflow needs with automated task routing, multi-step approval workflows and email notification. They also needed an adaptable system that could be easily customized to create a unique customer experience and continue to evolve to meet future opportunities.

J Ackley, Director of Information Systems at Ivie, says he chose Vera because "it's backed by a team of industry-skilled developers who are ready to add functionality as we need it and who can deliver new features at a very rapid pace." Ackley adds that "Vera is highly flexible and can hook into our back-end systems including our prepress workflow and MIS."

One of Vera's key features for Ivie was its deep integration with their existing Kodak Prinergy system, including file processing, preflight messages and Rules-Based Automation (RBA). Ivie used Vera's easy migration utility to transfer existing customers and users, and facilitate a smooth transition to their new Vera system.

Deploying Vera as their online proofing platform has translated into cost savings for Ivie. Todd Tompkins, Manager of Information Systems at Ivie, says that "hosting Vera in the cloud has reduced our costs for server hardware and maintenance," noting that their recent server upgrade "was five to ten times faster than upgrading in-house." As for training users, Tompkins adds that "Vera's interface is clean and intuitive, so training end-users has been easy–we can get new users up to speed in just ten minutes." Vera does not use Java, which simplifies customer deployment and IT acceptance, and the platform supports the iPad, which offers flexibility for Ivie's distributed and mobile workforce.

When asked what the partnership with Ivie means to Viki, Luke Niedjalski, Director of Solutions at Viki Solutions, responded, "We truly value our partnership with Ivie because they bring great ideas to the table that we're eager to implement–ultimately, these new concepts lead to better products." Ivie is excited about Vera's steady stream of new features, such as job file archiving with Box.com and further integration with their workflow processes and systems. Ackley was also impressed with "Viki's depth of prepress workflow knowledge and their vision for the future."