EFI Acquires Prism

Electronics For Imaging, a world leader in customer-focused digital printing innovation, announced it has acquired privately-held Prism Group Holdings. Prism, with headquarters in Australia, is a provider of MIS/ERP software products for the printing and packaging industry, including Prism WIN MIS and Prism QTMS automated shop floor management and work in progress tracking software.

While financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, the agreement is not expected to be material to EFI's 2011 results.

“We are dedicated to providing a portfolio of industry leading products allowing customers to choose the right solution for their environment with the consistency of delivery needed for long term success,” said Marc Olin, senior vice president and general manager of EFI’s APPS business unit. “Following in the footsteps of PrintStream, Prism is another example our consolidation strategy.

“We continue to actively seek out additional Print ERP/MIS solutions worldwide to consolidate,” added Olin. “By concentrating our investment and efforts on Monarch, Radius, Pace and PrintSmith, we can ensure that the largest development and support teams in the industry are delivering the best possible solutions to give our clients the best chance to succeed in today’s challenging business environment.”

EFI intends to continue supporting and developing Prism Win (now “EFI Prism”), but will no longer offer it to new customers. Instead, EFI will offer new clients these four ERP/MIS platforms:

• EFI Monarch: for larger single and multi-plant operations looking for full workflow automation with specialization in publication, book, direct mail, transactional and large commercial printing operations;
• EFI Pace: for mid-market digital, offset, hybrid, wide format and specialty printing operations;
• EFI PrintSmith: for on-demand, copy shop and small commercial operations;
• EFI Radius: for labels, folding cartons and flexible packaging operations.

In addition, EFI intends to continue to support and develop QTMS (now “EFI QTMS”) but no longer offer it to new customers. Instead, EFI will offer new clients EFI Auto-Count DMI for automated shop floor data collection and real-time shop floor production visibility and embed the best of QTMS features into the Auto-Count platform.

EFI has historically supported all of its ERP/MIS offerings for many years even after it stopped actively selling them. For example, the PSI, Logic and Covalent software systems are all legacy ERP/MIS applications that EFI continues to support. For Prism clients that wish to move to a new platform, EFI will be offering special incentives to encourage them to transition to one of our four platforms, as well as transition assistance to help make the move as seamless as possible.

“We are extremely happy to bring Prism into our expanding portfolio of customer-centric technologies. They have built a very impressive list of clients in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, South Africa and North America, and we welcome those clients to our large global client base,” said Marc Olin, general manager of EFI’s Software Applications business unit. “In addition, we're very excited to have Prism's employees join EFI and help us expand our rapidly growing global presence with their years of expertise in software for the printing and packaging industries."

“We are very excited to be joining EFI, the clear leader in the business process automation software space for printing and packaging companies,” said Filip Buyse, president and CEO of Prism. “It is a natural fit for our client base and we look forward to introducing them to EFI's portfolio of solutions.”

Prism software will become part of EFI's Software Applications (APPS) portfolio. EFI intends to integrate support and operations of Prism into the existing APPS organization, which will provide the EFI PrintSmith, EFI Pace, EFI Monarch and EFI Radius software products while continuing to support the existing Prism client base.