Xerox iGen3 Comes to Boise State

Ted Bailey didn’t need a crystal ball to know that changes were coming.

“We saw the trend moving not just to more color, but to more sophisticated variable data campaigns,” says Bailey, manager of Printing and Graphics Services at Boise State University.

The 15-employee western Idaho in-plant had done some simple black-and-white variable printing jobs, and its 32-ppm Canon printer was doing its best to meet color demands. But clearly the busy shop needed a faster, more variable-data-friendly color printer.

So this past summer, after a lengthy bidding process, the in-plant installed a Xerox iGen3 digital production press with an EFI Fiery server.

“I wanted the front end to be compatible with EFI,” says Bailey. The shop already had EFI’s PrintSmith MIS solution and EFI’s PrintSmith Site for order entry, plus it had an EFI Prepress Workflow solution in place. The iGen3 integrated easily with the EFI workflow, as well as with PrintSmith through the EFI Fiery JDF Connector. This enhanced the production workflow and provided real-time estimating, accounting and billing.

“PrintSmith Site integrates with our workflow and requires minimal intervention,” adds Bailey. “Job tickets are created automatically. We check the details, add a few production notes and expedite.”

The Fiery front end features EFI Impose Fiery Edition, a WYSIWYG client/server-based imposition application that enables entire documents to be imposed quickly.

The iGen3 replaced one of the in-plant’s two offset presses. The shop retained a two-color Heidelberg Quickmaster.

The in-plant uses the iGen3 to print direct mail post cards and brochures, as well as fliers, newsletters and annual reports. It recently did a job for the athletics department that was previously done on offset—a series of trading cards depicting members of the football team and their statistics. The improvement in turnaround time was amazing, Bailey says.

“We were into bindery in a day instead of having to go a week to a week and a half to print those and then all the hand bindery work to get them collated,” he says. The cards were printed 28-up on the iGen3.

“They came out collated,” he enthuses, and were sent right to the cutter.

But speed isn’t the only advantage the iGen3 has brought. It is enabling much more complex variable data projects.

A recent mailer done for the school’s Orientation Office and sent to incoming Freshmen was graphics intensive, double-sided and had several variable components: the student’s name, the date of his/her orientation session, a map of that student’s particular campus, and a parking permit for the student’s lot.

“The Fiery server delivers incredible efficiencies that enable us to produce the most complex VDP jobs quickly,” remarks Production Manager Shalom Pennington. Adds Bailey, “VDP is an untapped market we can fully address with the Fiery-driven iGen3.”

He hopes to upgrade the shop’s XMPie variable data software to include the Personal Effect Cross Media Edition, and is visiting campus groups now to make sure there is enough business to support it.

The in-plant expects to double its color printing output over the next year and expand personalized printing to include brochures, posters, post cards and complex one-to-one communication campaigns. These will work in coordination with e-mail and Web communication targeted to students, alumni and contributors to Boise State University.