“Today, according to research from InfoTrends, less than 10% of print jobs are produced without intervention, so there is a huge opportunity for print service providers to increase their productivity and profitability by implementing more automation in the future,” said John Henze, vice president, Fiery marketing, EFI. “The significant advancements in Fiery JobFlow 2.2, such as the ability to import and export ready-to-use workflows and to connect to third party systems, provide a clear path for printing companies to achieve these automation goals, stay competitive and boost customer satisfaction.”
 
By automating the manual job preparation steps required for the initial setup of a job into a workflow, Fiery JobFlow software gives print professionals the ability to submit and process similar jobs with a single click, as opposed to 10-20 clicks. Today, approximately 50% of brochures, business cards and direct mail are manually prepared by digital print shops. These job types typically require preflighting, imposition and a soft proof creation, and each of these steps can take about 15 minutes. Using Fiery JobFlow automated workflows can reduce the overall preparation time to 2 minutes or less per job. The increased productivity from using the software can deliver a payback time of under 3 months.1
 
One customer, Michael Beer, premastering and technical support manager at Langenhangen, Germany-based EDC – Europe’s largest integrated manufacturing and distribution center for CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs – has achieved significant cost savings by using Fiery JobFlow software to automate its digital print operations.
 
“We solved the problems we faced in efficiently producing short-run print orders by establishing a Manufacturing on Demand department that uses EFI Fiery JobFlow software to produce disc labels, inlay cards and booklets,” said Beer. “If we would have had the opportunity to produce all of our short runs from last year with Fiery JobFlow software, we would have saved a lot of additional money.”
 
Simplified processes even for complex jobs
 
Automating job preparation with this new Fiery software product improves the overall quality and consistency of digital print output and significantly lowers the potential for human error. To help users get started right away, EFI has provided a library of ready-to-use sample workflows, which can be found at www.resources.efi.com/jobflow/library.  
 
The product can be up and running in hours, not days, without additional integration costs. As a result, users can immediately begin taking time and touches out of the job preparation process, producing more jobs with the same staff and equipment. The software greatly simplifies the process for producing print-ready files even for complex jobs.
 
This workflow automation software offering is available in a free version called Fiery JobFlow Base and in a more-advanced, paid version – Fiery JobFlow. Both products connect to all external Fiery servers and to embedded Fiery servers through the optional Fiery Productivity Package. Fiery JobFlow also comes pre-installed on the latest Fiery FS200 Pro platform servers.
 
The free Fiery JobFlow Base version allows users to:

• Perform essential job processing tasks such as image enhancement, imposition, and preflighting (some additional Fiery module licenses may be required); 
• Submit files to the proper location or just drag and drop to a predefined workflow; 
• Archive jobs at various processing stages for later reuse; 
• Receive rules-based email notifications on important job processing steps or problem alerts without setting up and configuring an email server; 
• Manage, import, and export workflows for maximum productivity and efficiency. 

For users with more stringent requirements, the paid version, Fiery JobFlow, enables users to add even more efficiency by:

• Submitting multiple jobs and intelligently routing them to other workflows; 
• Allowing multiple tiers of external and internal reviewers to approve jobs remotely to shorten customer approval cycle, with jobs automatically moving to the next step once approval is granted; 
• Inspecting, troubleshooting and correcting jobs using Enfocus PitStop software; 
• Using advanced scripting to incorporate job processing from third-party applications.