This is especially true if you find yourself immersed in high volume transactional output (HVTO) digital printing. We make no excuse for focusing on digital print within this article for a couple of good reasons; the main one being that sometimes you just need see your print file. This is a capability that many organizations have lacked in the HVTO space unless they were willing to make high investments in a proprietary system.

For those in offset printing, digital print files like AFP, Xerox Metacode and PCL probably don’t affect your daily procedures. If we bring PDF in to the discussion then that might be a different story, but then PDF is one of the most viewable print file formats available. However, in digital printing we have seen, and you may have experienced for yourself, that it is difficult to view an AFP, Xerox or PCL print files (print-streams) in one application. What has been lacking for many companies producing high volume transactional documents is a single print file viewer that will handle all of the above, including PDF.

This is one of the reasons why Crawford Technologies recently announced our new product PRO Viewer. If you saw our recent newsletter article, Sometimes You Just Need to View the Print File, then you are aware of many of the efficiencies that can be gained by actually being able to see what will be produced. If you haven’t, then we invite you to take a look back at last month’s newsletter; it is full of valuable problem solving solutions.

Some of the main areas you and your company might see efficiencies is in both workflow and customer relations management. With PRO Viewer it is possible for your operations and production floor managers to see the print files they need to print all in one viewer. With our ‘Print Resolution View’ your production staff can see how the print file would look as it is sent to the printer. You can check changes to print files from your internal departments or your customers. By being able to look at files before they are printed it is easy to see how this would save you time and money.

In the Customer Service area, PRO Viewer can give Customer Service Representatives the ability to retrieve and view customer documents from print files.  With this ability a CSR can research a customer’s problem while talking to them.  The advantage with PRO Viewer is that they don’t have to request a print file or a file conversion. This makes retrieving customer documents from archives simpler and easier. It also makes it possible to re-print that customer’s document(s) immediately.

Finally, for this discussion, we want to address the print designers out there. If you are being asked to design in a composition engine where the output will be AFP, Xerox, PCL or PDF, then our viewer can be a significant time saver. Imagine being able to proof the print file without having to send the document to print until the final proof round. Not only will you be saving time, but also ink, paper and other consumables.

As we said in our newsletter article, sometimes you just need to view the print file.

If you would like more information on PRO Viewer, please drop us a line here. We would be happy to share all the benefits of this new and exciting product from CrawfordTech.

[Picture and content copyright Crawford Technologies 2012]