Digital On-Ramp for Super-Efficient Operations
RSA’s WebCRD™
By Greg Cholmondeley
In-Plant Segment Marketing Manager,
Ricoh Americas Corporation
Numerous in-plant and commercial printing operations have chosen a strategy called “super efficiency” where their streamlined operations and production printing expertise separate them from the competition. Often these operations are labeled “convergence print shops” because, due to their efficiency, they handle data center transactional printing as well as publication jobs. These shops may offer a variety of services, but their primary print volumes are handled in a near-lights-out manner. Web-to-Print for these operations is an essential step for linking their clients into their streamlined workflow.
Rochester Software Associates, Inc. has numerous products to address this type of operation’s needs – starting with WebCRD. WebCRD is an award-winning sophisticated web-to-print solution that can extend into highly automated routing and printing environments including managing converged data center/ in-plant operations supporting a variety of data formats.
WebCRD includes all the essentials of web-to-print for job ticketing and submission – including genuine Adobe PDF print drivers for both Macs and PCs for 100% document fidelity, ensuring that the submitted files are truly print ready. It provides customers with a variety of ways to submit orders via print drivers, catalogs and portals. It is so flexible it even has an Apple iPhone interface! These interfaces are more than just attractive packaging and include efficiency features like user histories for reprints, user job template presets for streamlined repeat business, and simultaneous multi-lingual support for diverse customer bases. Security is paramount with fully encrypted file and ticket transfers and real-time integration with authentication services like LDAP and Active Directory.
The primary goal of these types of in-plants is being super-efficient – and much of that happens after jobs arrive into the shop. As good as their client interface is – this is where RSA’s products really shine. WebCRD has a production dashboard that separates jobs by production phases and uses both text and pictograms to clearly show what is happening, and what needs to happen, in the job queue. It can handle multiple sites, automatically warn when stocks are getting low, provide automated cost estimating including volume discounts and prices based on groups, and even automatically route jobs to appropriate printers based on business rules and printer capabilities for “lights-out” type productivity using AutoFlow™.
WebCRD has proven to increase print volume, especially color printing, by making it easier for customers to place orders and Print Centers to complete orders more efficiently. Jobs that may have gone to outside shops stay in–house with WebCRD. Print centers are often able to increase volume without adding staff!
RSA has a long heritage of production and transaction management and conversion expertise, through their M.I.S. Print™, IPDSPrint™, RDOPrint™ and QDirect™ solutions. WebCRD easily ties into other RSA products for operations that need efficient workflows across legacy vendors and data streams – particularly convergence in-plants doing both production and data center work. Their QDirect product, included with the WebCRD Enterprise System, takes automated routing, workflows, load balancing and data conversion to a whole new level. WebCRD Dynamics adds powerful, automated Variable Data Printing capabilities using FusionPro® templates, while WebCRD Analytics delivers powerful enterprise analysis with professional reports. The rest of the RSA portfolio offers a variety of services including the ability to transform many legacy data streams (like RDO, IPDS, LCDS, XES, metacode, etc.) into contemporary formats.
In academic environments in particular, hardcopy documents need to be integrated as well. QDirect.SCAN™, RSA’s Scan to Print Center solution is proven to streamline the hardcopy job submission process. Users scan and ticket their job directly at an eCopy-enabled Multi-Function Printer (MFP). The friendly interface can be easily customized by the Print Center to offer numerous paper stock and finishing options, as well as prompt for logins, passwords, and billing codes if desired. The job is scanned and sent electronically to the RSA server, and a confirmation page is printed automatically at the MFP. Jobs can automatically print or be held and released by location, for example, to facilitate courier delivery. Many schools use WebCRD in conjunction with QDirect.SCAN, with 75% of jobs coming in by web and 25% via MFP. QDirect.SCAN functionality is included with the WebCRD Enterprise System, and only MFPs need to be licensed.
RSA uses the highly reliable and scalable Sun server to ensure that your platform is not a roadblock to handling high volume.
RSA also makes it easy to get started by conducting extensive customer interviews so when the preconfigured server is installed, pretty much all you need to do is plug it in to power and the network.
So, if your in-plant's strategy centers on becoming super-efficient, especially if you are a convergence shop handling both production and transaction work, Rochester Software Associates’ WebCRD is the web-to-print implementation you should consider first.
Greg Cholmondeley
Segment Marketing Manager
Ricoh Americas Corp.
An expert in production printing environments and solutions, Greg Cholmondeley is responsible for in-plant marketing for Ricoh Americas’ Production Printing Business Group. He brings 25 years of engineering, systems architecture, solutions development and industry marketing experience to this assignment. Greg can be reached at Greg.Cholmondeley@Ricoh-USA.com or at 561.516.0238.
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