Paul, Cindi and I just attended another Esko road show event, this week in San Francisco. We started the morning with an in-depth exploration of Automation Engine and how Esko can integrate with a variety of MIS solutions.
Ryan did a great job of explaining all the pieces and breaking down each part of the AE solution. He then invited a Canadian customer (Summit Print) into the meeting via a live video feed. Ryan from Summit explained how his company had integrated AE in with their MIS system. He admitted the process is time consuming and a little painful in the beginning, but the payoff was huge with a 85% improvement to their throughputs and efficiencies within Prepress.
They have developed their workflows to a point that even their CSRs are able to initiate workflow tasks. Repeat orders that don't have any changes are even pushed directly from a CSR and straight to their digital presses. Did you catch that? Can you imagine letting your CSR run a job through prepress?! In Ryan's words they have transformed... "Simple, Fast and Done!" Adam then finished up with an excellent demo where he pulled job information from a self-create XML "database" and then pushed a job through a workflow.
The afternoon continued with a discussion by Jason about WebCenter. This is Esko's centralized communication solution for asset management routing and approval. The current version of WebCenter has an advanced graphical interface very similar to what users of AE are accustomed to using. WebCenter workflows can be saved as tasks that can then be incorporated into an AE workflow as well.
They have also added a great iPad interface that allows the viewer to mark or draw on the digital proof just as they would a hard copy. Right now WebCenter is an excellent collaboration tool for uploading, annotating, and downloading digital proofs but soon it will also allow the user to make "controlled" revisions or artwork changes. This will certainly go a long way to expediting the communication for small changes (especially for established artwork) from the customer or designer to the prepress group.