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There are three fundamental approaches to integrating online print sales portals to printers' MIS/ERP, production, financial or CRM systems in order to automate job information transfer. Bespoke software development: Developing a unique tailored system should in theory give the best match to a printer's exact requirements but typically requires IT skills not usually found in smaller and mid-sized printing companies. Many W2P and MIS solutions offer APIs (application programming interfaces), for example, but specialist programming knowledge is required to use them. The alternative is to outsource the development. This may be expensive and the budget will also need to cover ongoing maintenance and development, a hidden cost which can amount to more than 50 per cent of the initial development budget over a three- to five-year period. Wherever the development is done, it will be necessary to keep documentation up-to-date should the system upkeep responsibilities be transferred. In addition to adding functionality as required to the W2P system to keep pace with customer requirements and new print or related products, there is also the constant evolution of web browsers and support for new platforms such as tablets and smartphones to consider. Single-vendor solutions: Some vendors offer complete solutions from the W2P portal software through to MIS/ERP and prepress/production systems for digital, offset or wide-format presses and in some cases, they can supply the presses too. To provide the necessary communications and integration they may use proprietary technology, which may limit future integration with third-party products, though there is a small but growing category of suppliers of integration solutions that specifically aim to address this. Solutions like this may command a premium for the added value of the integration and may not always be first to implement novel new features or types of functionality, though having a single point for support may more than compensate for this. Connecting multi-vendor systems via open standards: In the same way that PDF provided a common format for job hand-off, it was envisaged that JDF (Job Definition Format) would provide a standardised way to communicate job details, initially between prepress, press and finishing systems. Although there is support for JDF among prepress system, litho press and finishing equipment vendors, it is less widely used in digital print and largely unheard-of in wide-format work. One of the criticisms of JDF is that its specification is not tight enough and that JDF-compliant files from different vendors may contain quite different levels and types of information, including proprietary vendor-specific tags, and so do not interoperate well enough; another complaint, paradoxically, is that it is too print-specific and therefore does not explicitly support the information types necessary for management and financial aspects of W2P. In the web development community, generic XML (eXtensible Markup Language, also the basis for JDF) is a popular choice for handling metadata but this format is much less production-specific than JDF and so requires more development work and is even more open to different implementations. In the real world, most W2P installations are a combination of these approaches. The state of current standards is such that there is no 'plug-and-play' solution that can combine a variety of vendors' products without further integration work calling for specialist IT and print production expertise, though single-vendor systems do generally use existing standards as far as they are appropriate. Choosing which route to take should be approached in the same way as any major long-term investment plan. In addition to a calculation of return on investment, printers need to consider which suppliers will have the experience, resources and longevity to provide ongoing support and development, or in the case of bespoke development projects, consider bringing those skills in-house over time to control costs. Whichever route is taken it needs to be understood that it will take sustained effort on the part of the printer. Implementing W2P is not a case of business as usual while someone else takes care of the online portal. Understanding, support and commitment will be needed from management, production and sales staff. It may be appropriate to form a W2P team that is charged with responsibility for success of the project as a whole, with representatives from or access to each discipline to address the technical and organisational challenges. An appropriate minimum roster might include a sales specialist who would focus on the customer experience and its connection into production, thus helping to identify the integration requirements, plus a technical staff member who understands both the production processes and IT, who would be able to suggest solutions or frame the requirements in technical terms for suppliers or consultants. Experience suggests that the full benefits of integration are not always apparent until after it has been achieved. Production staff can be reluctant to trust the automation, especially in the wide-format sector where the typical operator's experience is still of a largely manual craft-based process. Given the penalties for failure, this attitude is unsurprising and there is not always a substitute for printers for seeing it work, so seeking out reference sites will be an important part of the pre-purchase research. This article is an extract from 'Making web-to-print work', a free white paper from EFI written by UK technology writer Michael Walker that outlines the mistakes made by early web-to-print users and explains how this experience can be used to ensure that current implementations maximise the potential of online sales and job capture through automation and integration.
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