November 22, 2009

Automation and Digital Workflows

Automation, Automation, Automation!

In today’s economy, no workflow can survive without constant attention to what can be automated next - what steps can be streamlined or eliminated.  Each time the workflow improves, yet another step becomes the new “bottleneck” and an opportunity to remove time, money, human intervention and the possibility of introducing an error.  To be fully automated, a workflow must be fully digital (remember all of that talk when we shifted from film to CTP?)  Surprise!  Very few companies today employ a fully digital workflow!  Why?  Because they still do all of their proofing as hard copy proofs.  Hard copies are not digital, but an analog step - It is the last “break” in our quest for the true digital workflow.  In addition, they cannot easily be linked to the PDF file that created them, rarely carry any information about how they were made, what profiles were used, nor what the calibration state of the proofer was when the proof was made.  You ask for a proof as a “contract” of what your job will look like when printed, and yet we trust that we are receiving a paper proof that was created in the optimum color management conditions.  Unfortunately many of the proofs spending time riding around in FedEx boxes today don’t live up to the trust we put into them.  And let’s not forget that they take days to turn around and use up consumables, boxes, fuel, etc. to add additional cost & time to the equation.  Those proofs that are created in the optimum environment often arrive at their destination to then be viewed in something other than optimum lighting conditions (your desk next to the window, NOT the D50 light booth) and thus what you are viewing still does not accurately reflect the true color that the proof creator worked so hard to achieve.

But - back to automation!  One of the most important moves a company can make in this direction is to add “Virtual Proofing” (color accurate monitor proofing) to their arsenal of proofing options.  This not only insures that this last barrier to a job staying digital throughout its life is removed, creating an awesome automation opportunity - but gives you the assurance that you know exactly HOW the proof was created, what profiles were used, what PDF was used.  Last, in the case of Remote Director, we also check and validate the viewers monitor, forcing a calibration if necessary and actually giving you a guarantee that the proof viewed has the same color accurate appearance as the one created.

While mass adoption has been slower than we’d orchestrate if we had our “druthers”, the top players in each segment of the food chain today have implemented and proven that this works - removing days & dollars from their workflows and ensuring quality control (think WorldColor, Brown Printing, RRD, Quad, Time, Inc., HFM, Hearst, Schawk, Vertis, Bemis, SGS, JWT, FCB, Leo Burnett, Macy’s, Walmart, JC Penney - the list goes on and on in North America alone).

Where and how do they utilize it? On press - where press operators have ONE controlled target to match, in prepress - first internally to cut costs and create an ROI on the cost of equipment, then in collaboration with clients to significantly reduce the cycle time in markup and retouching, in the publisher - to eliminate or share resources for editorial production, in the agency - when client communication becomes an order of magnitude faster, they can spend their valuable time on creativity, and last in the CPC or brand - where time to market means thousands of dollars a day and color consistency around the globe is vital.

Once you’ve added this awesome capability to your proofing line-up and started to migrate critical customers and important communications to the new method - where else do you turn for automation?  Hot folders (in the case if ICS, this is ProoFlow) allow multiple members of an organization (CSR’s for example) to drop PDF files into folders with pre-set proof creation parameters and have emails automatically sent to a customer where they will then be returned either signed as approved or with marked up modification requests - which can then automatically trigger events in the appropriate next stage of the workflow.  Integration to third party solutions provides yet a more streamlined process.

A perfect example of this is a large European publisher who recently presented at an industry association meeting a new workflow combining ICS technology, an automation tool called PowerSwitch by Enfocus and the GWG ad delivery ticket.  In this scenario, where hundreds of creative organizations are dropping files into an ad portal, a proof will be generated automatically after preflight and an email will arrive within minutes in the inbox of the person submitting the ad.  Then by simply clicking a link, he can view a color accurate virtual proof, sign off and again within minutes his ad will be moved automatically into the publishers production workflow - without any human intervention from the publishers side!

So, what needs to be automated next in your workflow?  Are you truly digital yet? How can you cut costs, time, minimize human error and maximize productivity today for tomorrow’s workflow needs?

Call us for more information!

Vicki Blake
VP Business Development
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Permalink | Posted by Vicki Blake on November 22, 2009 - 10:46 AM | 22 Comments
Tags: workflow, monitor proofing, remote director, virtual proofing, automation
Categories: Workflow