At Printivity, speed is the standard. As an online-first print provider, they handle 200 to 300 orders daily, ranging from business cards to complex perfect-bound books. For Lucero Kabashima, Pre-press Manager, and Oliver Chou, Chief Intelligence Officer, the challenge was clear: how do you move high volumes through the shop without sacrificing the quality of the 'human touch'?
The Manual Bottleneck
Before implementing a structured workflow, the prepress department at Printivity was "super manual". While the team used PitStop Pro for basic edits, they weren't leveraging its full power. Lucero recalls the frustration of repetitive tasks that could have been automated, like resizing files one by one.
"I would get annoyed with how inefficient it was", Lucero says. During a period of downtime, she began exploring what their software could actually do. That curiosity led the team to Enfocus Switch.
The Workflow: Switch Handles it First
Today, Printivity uses a Switch-first architecture. When a customer hits submit on their online storefront, the file doesn't go to a person; it goes to Switch.
Switch handles the initial file setup and routing, then delivers a prepared file to the prepress team for a final manual check. By the time a technician opens a file in PitStop, much of the heavy lifting is already done. This allows the team to:
- Speed up priority orders: Some jobs now move from submission to production in just a few minutes.
- Maintain a 4-hour standard: Most orders are processed and ready for the customer within a four-hour window.
- Achieve same-day delivery: For rush orders, Printivity can get products out the door in under two hours.
Maximizing Potential with Expert Help
Lucero and her team are prepress experts, not programmers. To push their automation further, they partnered with Significance, one of our platinum partners, to handle complex API calls and custom scripting. This collaboration allowed them to bridge the gap between standard automation and a fully integrated system that talks to their other business tools.
The Results: 30% More Efficient
Since fully integrating Switch and PitStop, Printivity has seen a 25% to 30% boost in efficiency. Interestingly, they’ve chosen to reinvest the time they saved back into the customer experience.
The reason efficiency isn't growing even higher is because we are using the extra time to do more for the customer's files.
Lucero Kabashima, Prepress Manager, Printivity
The team now performs deeper formatting and file fixes that they previously didn't have the time to handle, providing a level of service that differentiates them in a crowded market.
Automation made Printivity faster and gave them the freedom to be better printers.
