Integrating Prinergy InSite within your operation

[chris_r]

good day,

i am curious to hear anyones thoughts on how they have integrated Prinergy and InSite with outside customers, as well as with customer service or sales people within their organization. my place is currently exploring all different ways of getting the CSR's involved with creating and reviewing jobs through InSite, and we are trying to set up Template jobs allowing for customers to upload files straight into the workflow. we are having some success with it, but i am still not sure if i like all of this access being granted to others outside the department. i have some pretty big ideas on expanding our abilities, but for them to work, it relies on others outside of the department having access to some extent to Prinergy through InSite.

does anyone have any thoughts on this? what kind of priveledges do you give your internal and external customers? anything that you regret doing or wish you could do that would make InSite work better?

thanks for any input,

cr

[tommytrc]

This is a huge issue in our plant. Csr's feel threatened with InSite. They use it but they have to be forced to use it. I have come up with all sorts of training materials for our CSR's and customers, but the customers are much much smarter in the system then our CSR's. I struggle setting up our CSR's as staff users and only do it once they prove themselves. We do not let customers create new jobs...we must do that in our department. We do let them upload and auto process, but the autoprocessing is triggered by naming convention so the customer understands what they are sending and if they are 1 color or 4 color etc.

[alang66]

We have been using Insite for a few years now but only seriously for just over 18 months. In that 18 months, some CSRs have become so accustommed to it, they cannot function properly without it. Some of of our customers couldn't do business with us without it. We have all their internal structures mapped out in the user rights and our CSRs create the Prinergy job and assign a customer user to view the job so they alone receive all the customer emails. Once the file is ready, CSR is notified and they request approval on Insite. All emails return to them with approvals or corrections. Much bettter than using an ever expanding email inbox as a definitive job history

[chris_r]

i also would never dream of allowing a customer access to create a job. what i have tried to do is set up a roadmap for them, where the upload to designated folders, triggering upload processing. what we want to achieve is for our CSR's to create the jobs (template jobs), and the customer deposit files directly into them. what are the advantages and disadvantages of using InSite Upload Processing or Prinergy Template Jobs? i am still trying to determine which route seems the best bet for us. i am having a hard time seeing the advantages or disadvantages of either.

cr

[RiotMac]

We just got setup with Insite and Prinergy a couple months ago. Right now we have six customers using Insite. We have a list of customers we are going to switch over but it is going slower than I would like. The CSRs have to be pushed a little. They don't seem threaten by it though. Ones that have started using it really like it actually. I train them before we switch their customer over. It makes things easier for everyone. I have auto-processing setup on a customer by customer basis. If I know a specific customer always sends in untrapped PDFs with a spot, I have their files set to auto process with our process template that leaves spot colors and traps. I also have guides on our website that give the customers step-by-step instructions on how to use Insite as well as how to make a Prinergy PDF.

Chris_r I think I actually work at you old place... Berlin. Is that right?

[chris_r]

brad,

wow...small world. i indeed worked there for nearly 8 years. great experience, and i miss the old gang. in any case, good to meet you. actually i am very interested in what you have to offer, because our shops are similar in that we are new to prinergy, and are trying to get things rolling.

our customers too have been slowly jumping on board. we have a few that have been very enthusiastic, and one that flat out refused to use insite. we have been focusing on one job at a time, trying to get them up and going, and then move on to another candidate.

are you using upload processing, or template jobs?

btw, tell bob s. the sox suck and so does rex grossman.

good to meet you,

cr

[RiotMac]

We are using template jobs that I have applied some RBA to as well as a hot folder to refine automatically. I also have a preflight profile applied to the process template. The PDF is moved into the Web Downloads folder so the customer can DL and view the full preflight report.

I'll be sure to tell Bob that the Sox suck, but I won't be ripping Rex... yet.

[chris_r]

spent a good deal of time speaking with Kodak sunday morning and afternoon (i was at work, im not so bad that i actually do this stuff in my free time), and discussed some cool workflow ideas regarding template jobs and rules-based automation in conjunction with InSite. is it just me, or are the boundaries almost limitless when it comes to RBA? right when you think you have things streamlined, you learn something else.

we are getting to where several of our jobs are practically done by the time prepress even sees the job...with hardly any intervention at all.

cr

[RiotMac]

I was wondering at what point you guys have the customer approve the job through Insite? Right away or after it has been check by preflight or quality control? I am noticing that we can't output any sort of imposed files unless they have been approved. So either the process stops there until the customer can approve or we just set the files at approved ourselves.

[chris_r]

brad,

currently, the way we have been doing it, is that we preflight and refine the pages, and do an internal prepress doublecheck, before making the pages available to the customer for approval. once the pages are made available, we continue with the job, creating the templates, making the impositions, checking the vps proofs and so forth. when a job is ok to plate, we make a spinjet of every form before releasing it to plate. we do not make any imposed spinjets until the customer has granted approval on the pages, therefore the platemakers dont even get the job bag until all has been approved and spinjets pulled. we have never had an occasion where we have attempted to make plates on forms with unapproved pages, becasue they never make it that far until all of the other steps have been completed.

hope that helps, or sheds some light on what you were asking,

cr

btw...grossman does suck! yee haa!