Publishing triggered the establishment of the business, however, shortly after its inception, it was clear that more than a prepress department was needed. When the company began working within the industrial catalogue area, data exchange with the customers took on an entirely new dimension. It was therefore decided not only to sell the typesetting services but the accompanying software and hardware. In addition, training services were set up; the same training services that the company provides today. Digital picture editing shortly followed and Top Publishing established itself as a service company for text, typesetting, picture and film services. Keeping pace with the development of the printing industry, Top Publishing changed from a basic prepress service provider to a full service provider that included CTP and a press department. Among the tools of their trade, today, are a two-color GTO, a four-color Speedmaster and a Xerox digital printer. Four years ago, Avato, part of the Bertelsmann Media Group, acquired 49 per cent of Top Publishing and today, the company is a partner in editorial and technical services for the publishing market.
iWay was introduced into the Top Publishing in 2002. Implemented by Systematics Integrations GmbH (http://www.systematics.de/), the fully digital workflow enables customers to order their Print Jobs over the Internet and allows the Print House to process each Job within the same system. Bernd Vieregge, managing director and partner of Top Publishing, was immediately won over. Vieregge outlined the reasons that iWay convinced him of its essentiality: “All of the markets within the digital printing area operate under massive amounts of pressure to meet deadlines. With iWay, we are able to process the Jobs within minutes of the orders being placed. In addition, there is the benefit of our 24-hour-availability to our customers”. Bernd continued: “This service is relatively new to most of our customers. Up until a short time ago, all orders had to be placed within business hours. Now we can accept all orders at the very time that the customer decides to send them.
When the order appears on our desks, most of the prepress work has already been carried out by the system: the customer has filled out the order form and in the case of business cards, the customer has submitted the Variable Data. The customer has received a soft proof of the Job from the iWay Server and has approved it. All that needs to be done for our part, is the impositioning and the digital printout. Apart from the commercial aspect of our business, that is all”.
The experience that Bernd Vieregge has acquired with iWay is significant. “As a system in our business, iWay is being accepted mainly in the area of business cards and we have targeted a whole new set of customers within this area. After talking with potential customers, we provide demonstrations of the system that illustrate implementation of the customers’ Corporate Identity and business area. This is an ideal way to show our customers and potential customers the flexibility of the system. For example, we present iWay with templates of the customers’ business cards, letterheads and internal communication materials. These are just some of the Print Jobs that are not highly considered by other Print Shops. ”
“The companies are especially interested in the area of Variable Data printing, which includes business cards. After the purchase departments of potential clients are convinced that our way of working with iWay is saving them a great deal of hassle and time, they are eager to implement it. In order to promote the use of iWay, we are providing the employees of our customer companies free training sessions. One of our company employees has undertaken to lecture customer employees on how to use the system and everyone is in agreement that iWay is easy to handle and extremely beneficial.” On the Printer Side, Bernd Vieregge is convinced that everyone who is willing to implement new tools, such as iWay, should be willing to implement a new workflow in order to receive all of the benefits of the system. “As soon as the new workflow, which is totally digital and requires next to no manual work, is implemented, you’ve got a fantastic integration”, praises Bernd Vieregge. “The idea behind iWay is ingenious. It is an intelligent solution that utilizes the capabilities of the Internet to the maximum.”
In addition to producing business cards with iWay, Top Publishing customers can order brochures with up to 16 or 32 pages as Print-on-Demand, with runs of up to 50,000 copies (16 pages). “While our customers are using the upload feature as well, we are saving enormous time within the Prepress department because iWay already has carried out the preflight for the entire document”,says Bernd Vieregge.