Increasing capacity, speed to market and profitability in one fell swoop was like a dream come true for GA-based Benson Integrated Marketing Solutions. The company recently invested in an HP Indigo 10000 Digital Press to support its paper print business of crafting strategic and integrated marketing solutions for their customers. However, to get the ROI out of the new equipment, they needed to fully automate their workflow.
“While everything was extremely automated with our new digital press, there were some gaps in getting ganged jobs to our equipment,” comments Courtney Sumners, SVP Business Development and Technology for Benson Integrated Marketing Solutions. “Apago’s expertise is what we needed to fill in the gaps.”
Apago recommended using Enfocus Switch and Pitstop Server along with HP SmartStream Designer. “One of the driving reasons we purchased Switch was to bridge the automation gap between our digital production and our few remaining manual front end processes. The front end of the HP 10000 digital press is wonderful as far as being able to build hot folders and job folders, but we didn’t have a solution for some of our basic needs,” comments Sumners. “Apago developed a custom workflow in Switch to solve our problems without adding any manual steps.” The workflow automatically sorts products by size and coating then logically gathers together jobs into gangs to optimize print run sizes.
“The Apago team did such a good job at explaining the capabilities of Switch and the workflow automations, that we really understood what it could do and how we could utilize it,” comments Sumners. “We process a lot of requests to handle a large quantities of files that all need the same functionality applied to them. We are able to generate a workflow to automate that process.”
“Some of the things that would have normally taken days, we can now accomplish in an hour with Apago’s automation.” Sumners adds, “This enables us to increase capacity with our current staff, and achieve more than ever before.” “The Apago team was able to help us understand every aspect and utilize Switch’s capabilities. We could then dream up things to make our lives easier and further improve efficiencies in the production department,” comments Kerri Lively, Director of Creative Services for Benson.
Increasing Profitability and Capacity
With the success of the automations, Apago has established itself as Benson’s goto provider for solving difficult workflow tasks or implementing one-off projects that enable new lines of business. For example, Benson regularly fields project requests from clients asking for artwork to be provided in a variety of sizes, resolutions and formats. This type of request usually amounts to a lot of manual work for very little profit. “We can see when and where we can use Switch, and that when we reach out to Apago,” comments Lively. “A job that would have taken our team 40 hours, now takes 1 hour. Apago helps to make our projects more profitable while increasing capacity in the production department.”
“The return on investment, can’t even speak to it, as far as the time savings, reduced touchpoints, speed to market. Whether it’s going to press or just the proofing process to the client, we can’t even put a value on it,” comments Courtney. “Apago far exceeded expectations. They guided us, taught us and helped us understand the capabilities. We learned how to harness it and implement it.”
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