Faced with the convergence of two industry trends – an increasing number of short run jobs coupled with a broadening customer base – Tangent PLC turned to Enfocus and Switch to profitably handle as many as 2500 orders per day across multiple product lines.
Brian North, Tangent’s group workflow specialist, was in charge of the workflow automation process across the group, ‘We’ve always had the need to manage data and file transfers from a variety of sources to a variety of production platforms, both internal and external. The sheer volume and complexity of traffic meant we had to reconsider what we were doing and find a single solution that could support the entire group.’
Tangent chose Enfocus Switch to handle multiple flows of varying complexity across the entire organization for its production, backup and development platforms. Switch has allowed the company to transform an initial collection of often disconnected processes into a single-platform prepress model seamlessly operating across multiple company and partner locations.
Enfocus Switch is a powerful workflow solution designed to automate as many repetitive operations as possible, freeing users to spend their time on more productive activities.
Primary uses of Switch at Tangent include preflighting, file conversion, and the correction of files as necessary. Switch also automates the process of building JDF job tickets, integrating with various databases to combine the necessary information into an XML template.
North described Switch’s immediate impact as ‘excellent,’ adding, ‘Switch pulls everything together. Although we have multiple publishing and consumption methods, there is now a centralized workflow for managing, processing and distributing files, as well as updating and interacting with several databases.’
Switch has also helped with workflow management, said Tangent’s operations director Ian Gordon, ‘Switch has given us the ability to normalise processes. We now have a transparency of workflow within the group and with our customers and partners. That gives us greater control and resilience.’
Maxim Heyndrickx, sales account manager of Enfocus, said, ‘The true value of Switch lies within its concept as an open solution that easily and seamlessly integrates with almost any third party application. This includes database modules, image manipulation modules, file conversion modules, XML generators and editors. Tangent is now taking advantage of almost all of those capabilities and will continue to adapt and integrate both its own in-house applications and readily available public domain products to carry out required tasks more efficiently.’
Gordon added, ‘There are more improvements to come but there is no question that we are in a much better position today than we were 12 months ago, so for us Switch has been a great investment.’
