Two decades deep in Esko and HYBRID — fluent across every system your prepress has to talk to.
Seven service lines, one operating model: senior engineers own the engagement from discovery through support. Automation Engine and Cloudflow are where we're deepest, but the integration work spans MIS (Pace, Avanti, Tharstern, Radius, Label Traxx, Cerm), ERP (NetSuite, JDE), competing RIPs (Prinergy, Apogee, Prinect), and the Enfocus / callas / OneVision glue that holds modern prepress together. Every project starts with a free discovery call and a written assessment — yours to keep, whether you hire us or not.
Esko Automation Engine Implementation
We design and deploy Esko Automation Engine installations that hold up in production. That means tickets and task chains built to your real jobs (not a demo reel), JDF integration with your MIS, proper separation of pilots from production, and documentation your operators will actually reach for.
- Clean install or rescue of an existing AE server
- Workflow tickets and task chains matched to your job profiles
- JDF/MIS integration for order intake and status reporting
- User roles, queues, and escalation routing
- Runbooks and operator documentation
HYBRID Cloudflow Implementation
HYBRID Cloudflow rewards shops that take it seriously. We build workflows, smart hot folders, and client-facing portals that hold up under load — and we won't paper over the gnarly bits by dropping files into a watched folder and calling it automation.
- Cloudflow workflows scoped to your product mix and press lineup
- Smart hot folders with proper preflight and routing
- Portal setup for client uploads, approvals, and job status
- Integration with Esko AE, MIS systems, and RIPs
- Migration from ad-hoc watched folders to a real workflow
ERP, MIS & Workflow Integration
Prepress doesn't live in a vacuum. Jobs come from the MIS, tickets have to round-trip status and cost back to the ERP, and half the automation in your building runs on something other than Automation Engine or Cloudflow. We build the connectors — and when one doesn't exist, we write it — so the systems your shop already paid for start talking to each other instead of past each other.
- Print-industry MIS: EFI Pace, EFI Monarch, Avanti Slingshot, Tharstern, PrintVis, Radius, HP PrintOS
- Label and packaging MIS: Label Traxx, Cerm
- Enterprise ERP: NetSuite, Oracle JD Edwards, and the custom SQL or REST edge every shop seems to have
- Competing and adjacent RIPs / workflows: Kodak Prinergy, Agfa Apogee, Heidelberg Prinect, Fuji XMF, SCREEN EQUIOS
- Automation engines beyond Esko and HYBRID: Enfocus Switch, callas pdfToolbox, OneVision Asura, Enfocus PitStop Server
- Web-to-print, VDP, and digital production: Aleyant Pressero / tFLOW, XMPie, uStore, Quadient Inspire, Canon PRISMAprepare, Xerox FreeFlow Core, Ricoh TotalFlow
- JDF, JMF, XML, CSV, REST, SFTP — whatever format your systems actually speak
Workflow Automation
Most prepress floors have two or three places where a job sits on someone's screen waiting for a human to do the same thing they did yesterday. We find those spots and automate them — preflight, imposition, proofing, reporting — with pipelines that fail loudly instead of silently. Works the same whether your backbone is Automation Engine, Cloudflow, Prinergy, Apogee, or a stack of Enfocus Switch flows held together with hope.
- Preflight profiles tuned to your substrates and presses (AE, Cloudflow, callas pdfToolbox, Enfocus PitStop)
- Imposition automation driven by job data, not templates
- Proof generation and delivery pipelines
- Reporting and dashboards that surface real throughput
- Exception handling that alerts instead of disappearing
Custom Scripting & Integration
When your stack needs a piece of glue that doesn't exist, we write it. JavaScript, Python, Groovy, PowerShell — whatever the surrounding system demands. We write code that's readable by the next person who opens it, with tests where tests make sense and documentation where they don't.
- Connectors between AE, Cloudflow, Prinergy, Switch, and your MIS (Pace, Avanti, Tharstern, Radius, Label Traxx, Cerm) or ERP (NetSuite, JD Edwards)
- XML, JDF, and JMF parsing, transformation, and validation
- Scripted hot folder processors and custom task / Crossroad nodes
- API integrations with external tools, partners, and vendor portals
- Code handed off with documentation, not just a zip file
Training
The people who implemented your workflow should be the people who train your team on it. We run onsite and remote sessions pitched to the audience — operator-focused for the floor, admin-focused for the workflow owners — and leave you with reference material you can actually use six months from now.
- Operator training on daily workflow use
- Admin training on ticket and workflow maintenance
- Custom-written documentation and runbooks
- Recorded sessions for onboarding new hires
- Follow-up check-ins after go-live
Migrations
Migrations are where the buried technical debt surfaces all at once. We plan them backwards from go-live: what has to move, what gets retired, what gets rebuilt. Rollback paths. Asset integrity checks. A cutover window that matches your shop's reality, not a vendor slide deck.
- Version upgrades for Automation Engine and Cloudflow
- Cross-platform moves: AE ↔ Cloudflow ↔ Prinergy ↔ Apogee ↔ Switch
- MIS / ERP re-platforms (e.g. Pace → Avanti, Label Traxx → Cerm, bespoke → NetSuite) with live prepress cutover
- Workflow consolidations across multiple plants or sites
- Asset and ticket migration with integrity verification
- Documented cutover plan with rollback procedure
Every engagement is scoped after a free discovery call.
We don't publish hourly rates, because no two prepress stacks are alike. A one-week scripting assist and a six-month Cloudflow migration are not the same animal.
After discovery we send a written assessment with a fixed scope and a fixed price — typically 20–35% below large professional-services firms for comparable work.
Book a discovery call