Prepress responsibilities

[Michael Smith]

I get 35% of 45 daily order as "TBD" under both (color and print process) . I have gotten used to the fact that I am Customer Service, Order Tracking Specialist, Data Order Entry, Pre-Press, Custom Job Estimator, Proof Specialist, and I stock all the paper from the pallets. Recently I have taken on janitorial duties as well... Lots of Overtime!!

 

[shorty83]

I work in a smaller shop with three sales people, three CSRs and am the only prepress person. I make the decision on how every job coming through prepress will print. Back in the good old days we had sales people who knew about printing and even a little about prepress so they would make the decision on how many colors, etc. Now we have totally incompetent sales people who know nothing about printing so they now rely on me to make the decision. I don't mind it sometimes, if a file is going to be horrible to prep with certain areas spotted out or changed then I can make the decision on how to fix it and how it will print, which sometimes makes life easier for me.

 

[EskoClub]

IMHO, ideally, it would be great to provide the sales with a simple tool to allow them to "look" into the customer's files. This way they will be able to harmonize all the info about the files with the customer without pre-press operators. Have a few nice examples of such workflow and this works like a charm.

 

[prepressdork]

IMHO, ideally, it would be great to provide the sales with a simple tool to allow them to "look" into the customer's files. This way they will be able to harmonize all the info about the files with the customer without pre-press operators. Have a few nice examples of such workflow and this works like a charm.

Hi EskoClub. Do the examples of the workflows you mentioned use Switch?

Thanks
pd

 

[EskoClub]

Not exactly My successful implementations use Automation Engine with AE Pilot and the Viewer module. It's simple, so, even sales people can use it to get the info about the geometry, inks and so on.

 

[lantz_xvx]

We're a three person shop. I handle all the estimating, which means I need to know what a job is and how it's going to run in order to price it accurately. I also make the job ticket, so that our pre-press person knows what to look for. She does all the preflighting and sends proofs, etc. She's VERY good at it, so if she notices anything that's not on the job ticket, she checks in with the client to make sure they're aware of the discrepancy, and if they want to send a new file or revise the invoice based on changes to the job. We're all printers, so we can strategize the best way to run a job and know what to look for. Salespeople who don't know anything about printing seem like more of a liability than a help.

Also, just want to give a brief shout-out to all the pre-press people out there, holding it down in the bowels of hell. And if you're ever having an especially stressful day, there's always this:

https://twitter.com/prepresshulk

- Lantz

 

[gabebabe]

I have been a prepress geek for 30 years now in both screen and offset print. "It's a simple RIP and print job" is the funniest (and/or scariest) sentence spoken. Unfortunately and extremely ironically, with the onset of technology that has replaced straight edges, triangles, pica rulers, stat cameras, non-repo blue pens/pencils, etc.......has brought upon our industry a whole new level of incompetence and laziness. One would think this technology would allow the "designer" to be more knowledgable of production; however, I have observed the complete opposite has prevailed and prepress departments are the brain AND brawn that will make or break a project. We receive files that look pretty on screen but are not thought and "drawn" out for actual physical production. Missing fonts, wrong colors, low resolution images, poorly executed artwork plagues the majority of files we are expected to push a button and magically fix in 5 minutes. We the prepress geeks are the silent super heroes.

 

[prepressdork]

Ah ok. I've been looking for a way for our sales reps to be able to ascertain this info but I always seem to run into roadblocks whether it is cost ($$$$$) for software that will do this perfectly or some technical roadblock when trying to 'Frankenstein' a solution together. For now, we'll have to continue involving Prepress.

pd