The Cloud, The Workflow and The Rules: Prinergy Expands the Ecosystem
Published on December 10, 2020
Survey data from around the world shows that printers have identified their workflows as the source of their productivity. But in many cases, they are also the source of their inefficiency. While they know that there are bottlenecks lowering their capacity and margins, they see the road to integration and automation as difficult and time-consuming. There are always reasons to avoid changing the processes that feed jobs into the workflow, even if the benefits are easy to identify and quantify.
One reason for avoiding change that comes up in interviews is that workflows have traditionally been people-based. Pat knows how to spec the job and Bailey knows how to do the imposition for that customer, while Jean has color management under control. Everyone has their tool sets, and everyone is good at their job, so why consider changing?
The best answer is survival. There is more short-run work, analog and digital devices are sharing the shop floor, there is more hybrid work, and clients continue to expand their demands for faster proof and final work delivery. These are the driving forces in print shops of every size. In addition to the production demands, companies that lack tight integration between their business and production systems are finding that reliably tracking costs-by-job and ensuring that every job is invoiced may not be happening as they believed.
For any shop that has come to this conclusion, there are answers in the modern marketplace. They may surprise you because they may be offered by a vendor you already work with. One of the most widely installed workflow systems in the world is Kodak Prinergy. The Prinergy On Demand solution introduced last year added a cloud solution that adds new levels of security and helps customers contain the costs associated with managing the data center environment. It was a great start, but it wasn’t the end of the story.
Once you have a cloud-based workflow infrastructure, the options to grow it into a powerful integrated business tool become clear. With the introduction of Prinergy On Demand Business Solutions, Kodak expands the footprint to incorporate the power of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform, including the compatible applications available in the Microsoft APPSOURCE to link your business applications to a larger business workflow that is aware of production. It also adds PrintVis for ERP and MIS connectivity and Vpress to add an integrated Web-to-Print with full ecommerce storefront support. Both are cloud-based, integrated with Microsoft Dynamics, and have been delivering solutions to the market for twenty years.
Why is this an important workflow offering? For years print businesses have tended to operate their production workflows independently from their business workflows. It leads to missed invoicing, misunderstanding of true costs, and obscures the true health of the business. The value that Prinergy On Demand Business Solutions brings to the market is embedded in its name. It brings clarity to the bottlenecks between processes while providing a modern approach to tracking the credits and debits to the business.
Published by Pat McGrew
Speaker & Communication Technology Evangelist! Best Practices for Your Business! Print, CCM, Product and Sales Triage and Consulting
I am a fan of policy-based, rules-based workflow automation, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that I was intrigued by the Kodak Prinergy announcement yesterday. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and I think there are many ways to think about the options that a Microsoft Dynamics integration can bring. If you are a commercial printer thinking about scaling your workflow for more remote working conditions… take a look! hashtag#printingindustry hashtag#workflow