The agentic power of artificial intelligence (AI) is making itself felt in many stages of print and packaging production. Estimating—calculating the cost of a job and deriving from it a selling price the customer will accept and the shop will earn a profit from—may present AI with its biggest opportunity to shine on the business side.

AI assets for estimating are now widely available for printing and packaging companies to take advantage of. The tools have been built into popular print MIS and W2P software and into equipment vendors’ workflows as well. All of them aim at the same thing: optimizing the estimating process for speed, accuracy, and bottom-line benefit.

Three developers of solutions for AI-based estimating agreed to speak with us about how their products work, what they accomplish, and why PSPs should lose any apprehensions they may have about harnessing the power of AI to this pivotal business function.