Printable Technologies Takes Bold Step to Drive Rapid Adoption of Variable Data Printing
Today, Printable Technologies®, Inc., the world leader in Variable Data Printing (VDP) solutions and Web-to-Print workflow, dramatically reduced the price of its latest release of FusionPro™ Desktop to $399 to put VDP on every desktop and accelerate the adoption of personalized and variable printing past Geoffrey Moore’s technology "chasm."
"The production speeds are there, the output quality is there, the costs are low enough; why isn’t everyone doing it? Why hasn’t this industry moved VDP from ‘early adopter’ to ‘early majority?’ What is it that seems to be preventing the wholesale adoption of variable printing? We have asked ourselves these questions," said Coleman Kane, President and CEO, Printable Technologies, "and concluded that we should take a bold step that would make sophisticated VDP technology affordable and available to any desktop user. FusionPro Desktop — a robust stand-alone application — is not stripped-down, hobbled, or limited in any way; it provides more features and functionality than applications selling for $5,000, $10,000, or even $25,000. FusionPro Desktop is all you need to get into the business of VDP; no additional Printable products or services are required."
"As industry leaders, we are forging the way for the rapid adoption of variable data printing. We believe that for one-to-one marketing to become ubiquitous, the tools to create VDP documents need to be powerful and inexpensive and they need to produce as many different output data streams as possible. By reducing the price to this level, we anticipate the market will quickly embrace VDP," said Kane. "As more companies use personalized and customized documents in their marketing campaigns, our print service provider partners will want to upgrade to FusionPro Server, FusionPro Web, or our Web-to-Print service."
Pricing
$399 — FusionPro Desktop, backed by e-mail product support, access to a detailed knowledge base that includes a library of detailed JavaScripts, and peer support through a new FusionPro User Forum.
$599 — FusionPro Desktop with full telephone product support.
No annual maintenance contracts are required; future version releases will be available for separate purchase.
FusionPro Desktop Features
FusionPro Desktop is a powerful VDP template creation and print-stream output tool based entirely on Adobe PDF workflow. Templates with variable text, graphics, and charts, driven by advanced business logic, can be merged at amazing speed with tens of thousands of data records to create print-ready output streams.
Features in FusionPro Desktop include:
- 100% Adobe PDF workflow
- Adobe Acrobat plug-in for both Mac OS X and Windows
- InDesign®, QuarkXPress, and other page-layout applications supported
- New powerful imposition functionality:
- Multi-up simplex and duplex
- XYZ ordering and repeating
- Horizontal or vertical folding
- Stacking
- Saddle stitching
- Slip sheets
- Perfect bound booklets
- Slug lines, color bars, trim marks
- Input data formats: flat files (e.g., CSV), tagged, or ODBC
- Full copy fitting capabilities
- Powerful business logic via industry-standard JavaScript interface
- Automatic generation of dynamic tables and charts
- Eight output data streams including PDF, PostScript, VDX, PPML, VPS, VIPP, and more
Other FusionPro Products
FusionPro Desktop is the first step in a scalable, variable data printing solution. Templates created in FusionPro Desktop can be incorporated into an automated or online document creation and ordering process with FusionPro Web or FusionPro Server.
FusionPro Web: Capable of merging templates, form data, database files, and images online, FusionPro Web simplifies the process of creating, ordering, proofing, and processing variable data print jobs. FusionPro Web is a powerful integrated VDP component that works in conjunction with the PrintOne Customer Center and the Printable Dashboard. When used with an auto job-ticketing workflow, orders go from shopping cart to press queue in minutes.
FusionPro Server: FusionPro Server accepts templates designed with FusionPro Desktop, performs a high-speed data merge, and produces production-ready data streams with no human intervention. With a queuing mechanism that manages multiple jobs and provides automatic load balancing and auto-failover, FusionPro supports both "lights out" batch processing or — as an embedded system — can produce one-off documents.
About Printable Technologies
Printable Technologies is the world leader providing Variable Data Printing and Web-to-Print solutions to commercial and digital print service providers, ad agencies, and direct marketing companies, and the enterprises using their services. Three modules – PrintOne Customer Center, Printable Dashboard, and Printable Manager — comprise the Printable Web-to-Print System, delivering real-time integrated business communications applications, online ordering and e-commerce, versioned and variable documents, job submission, and file transfer.
Printable solutions easily integrate with ERP solutions such as Ariba, SAP, and Oracle; content management solutions like Documentum; accounting and shop floor management applications such as Prism and Quantum; and major digital production workflows from Hewlett-Packard, Canon, Xerox, NexPress, Xeikon, and more.
Today more than 500 service providers around the world use the Printable VDP and online workflow systems to serve more than 1,300 corporate customers. Over 75 of the Fortune 500 companies offer enterprise-wide desktop access to their printed materials using Printable’s products and services. Improved efficiency for every aspect of the procurement process means printers enjoy higher revenues, new business growth, and better customer retention. For more information, go to www.printable.com.
