‘Integration is Key’

SITUATED ALONG the San Joaquin Delta waterway, about 80 miles east of San Francisco, San Joaquin Delta College has a student body of about 20,000 educated by more than 400 teachers. To help ensure students’ academic success, instructors provide assessments of each student’s progress just before final grades are assigned. The teacher identifies particular areas that need focus so students can gear their efforts accordingly.

To produce a variable data piece such as this Academic Progress Letter, the college turns to its 12-employee Publication Center.

“With our number of students and faculty, we probably do a half a million sheets of VDP a year,” says Greg Greenwood, who served as manager until his recent promotion to director of Public Information and Marketing.

The in-plant is able to provide jobs like this thanks to its array of digital printing equipment working in conjunction with its EFI Fiery digital print server, just one of several EFI technologies in place at the Stockton, Calif., in-plant. But the shop’s capabilities also extend into the offset arena, where it uses a five-color, 14x20? Heidleberg GTO with CPC 1.02, CPTronics and Alcolor dampeners.

“The press was a great purchase and has been a money maker since the first week we put it in,” says Greenwood. That was about two years ago. “The press has given us enough reserve capacity...that we are now able to insource from other public agencies to offset our cost of doing business for the college district. This is especially important given that we operate on a strict chargeback system and must recover all expenses.”

Cluster Printing Solution

On the digital printing side, the in-plant runs four Canon 7105s and one Canon IR125, all driven by EFI’s MicroPress raster-based production color workflow solution.

“I’m continually impressed by MicroPress,” says Greenwood. “It helps us get the most out of our output devices, which ultimately translates to greater productivity and increased profits.”

All four 7105s have inline two- and three-hole punching, and the IR125 has an inline booklet maker with face trimming. The shop also has a Konica-Minolta CPP8050 and uses an an Epson Stylus 9600 for proofing.

Film is made with a Screen DTR 3075 imagesetter with a Harlequin Viper RIP. The bindery has a Baumcut 31 programmable paper cutter, a Baum 20-20-20 folding machine with right angle and perfing/scoring attachment, a Neopost SI 79 folder inserter, GBC comb binding, and other laminating and saddle stitching equipment.

The Publication Center is responsible for managing more than 600 imaging devices, print servers and fax servers around campus.

Over the years the Publication Center has integrated several EFI products to increase automation, efficiency and cost savings:

• EFI Fiery color digital print servers

• The EFI PrintSmith Print MIS solution

• EFI MicroPress, for cluster printing

• Digital StoreFront, EFI’s Web-to-print platform,

• IKON DocSend, based on the EFI SendMe document capture and distribution solution

“Integration is key, and no other vendor had the ease of integration offered by EFI. Everything plays nicely together with our legacy systems and is built to ease growth when we do add more solutions, regardless of the vendor,” says Greenwood.

He lauds IKON DocSend technology, based on the EFI SendMe for document capture and distribution.

“One really cool thing is that they are so intuitive, with the ATM-style touch screen; they are user-friendly to the extreme,” says Greenwood. “People walk up and are immediately working, and the LDAP server connection is genius. The DocSends we have in place now are so popular and always in use—so much so that we are going to have to order several more to fulfill the great demand. Within two weeks, I had a list of 25 colleagues requesting a system.” LDAP, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, support is among the security features that help eliminate unauthorized use of the solution.

DocSend saves the college a significant amount of money in not so obvious ways—like eliminating late charges with vendors.

“DocSend accomplishes in minutes what would typically take at least two days,” says Greenwood. He is referring to the extended invoice approval and payment process, which formerly involved the college’s internal mail system, the purchasing department and the business office. DocSend enables the faculty to immediately send invoices to the approver, who sends the invoice in for payment. The purchasing department is then able to expedite payments and eliminate late fees, which had become considerable and a source of consternation as an unnecessary and frustrating expense.

Greenwood also appreciates DocSend’s synchronization feature, which saves him a lot of time and delivers greater efficiency.

“When I make a change to the master; every other system makes that change. I don’t have to go out and touch every one of the devices,” says Greenwood. “At 12 employees, we’re a small department. We have to be able to do everything in a time-efficient way, and EFI solutions help us do that.”

24-hour Availability

One of the college’s concerns was working more effectively with the growing number of adjunct instructors, those who teach online courses and classes after 6 p.m.

“The Production Center closes at 6 p.m., so staff is not physically here to take care of their orders after that hour,” says Greenwood. “With Digital StoreFront, we have a 24-hour-a-day online presence and instructors can submit print jobs whenever it’s most convenient for them. With its seamless integration with our other EFI solutions, their jobs are immediately queued up and processed. We come in in the morning and are so much further along with everything—putting us that much closer to completely finishing the job and invoicing.”

On the shop management side, PrintSmith manages the Production Center’s entire business process, from estimating to invoicing. PrintSmith enables the in-plant to easily find information about jobs, both in progress and historic, so they can give accurate estimates.

“We use PrintSmith for inventory and invoicing on a chargeback system, and we’re able to keep consistently accurate records and accounting information,” says Greenwood. “PrintSmith really helps us collaborate and readily share critical job information, too, and that makes us so much more productive and efficient.

“What I want for every solution managed by the Production Center is that I never have to touch it. That’s a tall order, but EFI hits it,” says Greenwood. “We made up a word for our experience with EFI solutions, ‘Automagic.’ Our board of trustees likes what we’re doing. Among students and faculty our approval rating is high and only getting better. I credit EFI solutions for that.” IPG