CHICAGO, Oct. 11, 2004 – Enabled by open industry standards, Xerox Corporation’s partners are delivering print providers digital workflow solutions that reduce costs, boost efficiency and streamline operations. Xerox today adds a new component to its growing portfolio of partner resources, a software development kit (SDK) that opens up more ways for partners to integrate with Xerox technology. The SDK enables easy integration of Xerox’s digital print engines with JDF-based workflows, a common set of software instructions that direct a print job from creation to completion, in a consistent, uniform way. Resources like SDKs are one of the many ways that Xerox employs open standards, working with industry partners to bring best-of-breed workflow solutions to print providers. These tools help Xerox partner companies enhance their software solutions to optimize Xerox’s FreeFlowTM Digital Workflow Collection—the company’s strategic initiative combining industry standards, partners, software and hardware to help customers streamline the printing process. Lytrod Software, for example, is a Xerox partner that specializes in software for variable-data document design, offering tools to create personalized communications with information that varies from page to page. Using a specific Xerox SDK designed for variable information integration, Lytrod helped customers in a variety of industries harness the power of personalized documents and one-to-one marketing. Two recent customers include: Compassion International, an organization that helps needy children in more than 20 developing countries, wanted to reach its children’s sponsors faster with letters, photos and information. By incorporating Lytrod’s Proform Designer software with two DocuPrint 75 Printing Systems and two DocuColor 6060 Digital Production Presses, Compassion International can now produce high-quality sponsorship materials on-demand, reducing the number of children waiting for sponsorship. With its increased print capabilities, Compassion plans to grow the number of children it helps from 600,000 to 1 million. Equitable Life & Casualty, a company providing life and health insurance through 3,600 independent agents nationwide, needed to expedite the turnaround time for agents to send customer communications and respond to customer requests. The agents were working with a large repository of policy information that existed in numerous file formats, making the searching of comprehensive customer information impossible. In addition, any printed customer communications required agents to manually attach photocopies of insurance information to pre-printed policy statements. Using Lytrod Proform Designer, Xerox VIPP Thin Printer and a Xerox 92c Highlight Color Printer, EL&C turned variable-data documents into electronic Adobe PDF format for proofing, Web presentment and printing. By migrating to a VIPP/Lytrod workflow solution, document production went from a 30-day to a four-day turnaround time and has reduced customer response time to minutes instead of hours. “Xerox understands the value of companies working together and sharing their fields of expertise with customers,“ said Karen Lytle, vice president of marketing, Lytrod Software. “Partnering with an industry-leader like Xerox has not only benefited our customers, but it has helped raise our profile in the industry and given us worldwide recognition for creating advanced electronic print resources.” At Graph Expo, in Xerox booth #1431, Lytrod Software will demonstrate several applications on a collection of Xerox digital printers that include the new DocuColor 8000 Digital Press and the flagship Xerox iGen3 Digital Production Press. These applications—designed for the service bureau, public sector, insurance, financial and health care industries—were created using Lytrod's Proform Designer, which is optimized to work with Xerox’s FreeFlow software to drive Xerox’s monochrome, color and highlight color products.