Using digital technologies

Understanding digital transformation as a process

Entry into the digital transformation

Advantages of using printformer.io

May makes all new. In our case already April and this means especially our website. In the last few months since the move of our office from Stuttgart to Ludwigsburg, a lot has happened. After the new look offline, i.e. our new office, a small facelift for the digital home was urgently needed.

Admittedly - it is not always easy to cut off the old pigtails and venture into a completely new layout. But in our case the general overhaul of the website was more than necessary. Too much has happened here in the last 12 months alone and many innovations needed their own place. In addition to the modern and much lighter look, we have now structured and prepared our digital home more clearly. The start page as a central "take off" with an overview of the various sections as well as the new page navigation provide quick access to all sections and guides you easily through the rissc universe, whether you are on the desktop or mobile.

Our printformer, the heart of our Web2Print passion, not only presents itself with a revised logo and its own area on the new website, but also shows in detail what it is capable of in the Web2Print area. With our cloud software we created our own standard, which is ready for use in a few minutes and can be integrated into any existing system. Automatic updates, which continuously expand your own Web2Publish offer and catapult your personal business into another galaxy, of course included!

The printformer.io area is a completely new addition to our rissc universe, both in terms of colour, logo and function displayed. As the name suggests, we present here a special version of the printformer software - the printformer.io App. With this innovation we have combined the best of two worlds and integrated our printformer into the environment of the e-commerce platform Shopify in an easy way. How easy, uncomplicated and fast it is now possible to realize your own print shop with integrated editor with printformer.io is shown there in single steps. Web2Print has never been easier.

With all the new features, we feel completely at home in the revised digital home and would be delighted if you would take a closer look at our new rissc universe. Feedback is always welcome - have fun exploring!

On your mark, get set, go! Also this year, the Online Print Symposium in Munich at the beginning of March was on the agenda for us. As in previous years, we were once again present as a premium partner and were able to introduce our "rissc universe" to the 300 or so visitors there.

Although the signs for OPS 2020 were not necessarily positive - as is to be expected - due to the beginning corona crisis, a cancellation on our part was never in question. So it was all the more pleasant to discover many new faces among the visitors present, in addition to many old acquaintances of the industry. With around 300 participants, the rooms of the Infinity Hotel in Munich were once again well attended and the perfect backdrop for our now well-known blue "rissc universe". Visually, there was a small, but no less important addition - bright green in the form of balloons now also adorned our stand, along with versions in blue, and generated initial inquiries after only a few minutes.

The solution of the riddle was revealed to everyone who was not only interested in the additional coloring but also in the printed logos. In addition to Shopify, a brand new logo, the printformer.io logo, now also found its place there, because the OPS was the perfect event for us to present our new app to the wider professional audience. Our CEO Alex Sperrfechter revealed this to attentive visitors in a creative way in the OPS teaser videos (click here for the VIDEO ) and those who wanted to have everything explained live afterwards had plenty of opportunity.

Our printformer.io app, a version of our printformer specially tailored for seamless integration with Shopify, now combines the best of both worlds. After we implemented the first integration of this kind in the Shopify web shop of Logolini®Präsente at the end of last year (click here for the article), we will continue to use the innovative e-commerce platform Shopify as the basic e-commerce framework for their presentation at OPS 2020. Not only since the current corona crisis, the topic of transformation and digitalization has been a real challenge for many companies in the print and media services industry. The crisis now clearly shows how important it is to deal with these issues in a future-oriented and sustainable manner. If not yesterday, then even more so today. With the release of printformer.io, we are giving companies of all kinds the easy way to overcome these previously insurmountable entry hurdles in the field of Web2Publish and support the process by integrating the printformer software into Shopify in just a few steps. If you want and need to take advantage of the signs of the times right now, you can set up your own shop in just a few minutes and use the printformer.io app to place a professional print shop with editor and print data upload on the market. Fast time-to-market without lengthy implementation processes has never been more in demand than now - this was also the response of the interested visitors at our stand at the Online Print Symposium. If you want to know more about this, you can obtain further information in advance at www.printformer.io.

For us the days at the OPS in Munich were again a complete success. The numerous positive feedback, the generally positive mood and many interesting discussions and inquiries, round off the significance of this event for us optimistically. With the alignment of our new app, we have hit a nerve in the eyes of the industry, which for many companies is a real option for maintaining their future prospects. Reason enough for us to continue to convince with our passion for print, our experience in Wep2Print or Web2Publish and with customer-oriented software solutions. We are already looking forward to the year 2021 and the next OPS in Munich

Web-to-print systems are on everyone's lips. In this article about our customer Utsch24.de, we will show you how our printformer can be used in a concrete and uncomplicated way.

Every car has it and yet it hardly attracts any attention: the license plate number. Behind this is Erich Utsch AG from Siegen, where millions of license plates are produced annually for customers from all over the world. For more than five decades, the world market leader has been responsible for technologies and integrated system solutions for the production, personalisation, registration and identification of car number plates. This is complemented by a wide range of products such as license plate blanks, vehicle recycling systems, laminators and laser coding equipment. In addition to classic license plates, the range also includes "Windshield Label", license plate holders and FUN plates.

How can a license plate manufacturer now use our web-to-print system? Utsch AG, together with the agency dotfly, has come up with a creative service for its private customers: an online shop in which an individual licence plate holder, the desired licence plate or a decorative FUN plate can be designed. The button "Configure" opens our converted HTML5 editor in a mobile first version and can thus be used on the tablet.

Behind Mobil First is the idea that the presentation works first on mobile devices. Up to now, the optimization for desktop screens has been the top priority. This means that the Mobile First version is limited to the essentials. The clear advantage here is that no additional app needs to be used.

Slowly now, how does the Web2Print system actually work as a "commercial tool"? With the help of the prinformer, quotations can be created for any print product. The system can be used universally for the entire printing industry, so the settings can be flexibly adapted to the respective product. Thanks to the printformer's API functionality, the calculator can be embedded in any external system; at GGP Media it is the Magento shop system. There are two options before the calculation: fixed price lists and configurable functions. Firstly, an Excel file with prices that have already been set can be imported, and our web-to-print system links these with selectable properties. In this way, price combinations can be defined individually per customer. On the other hand, properties can be stored in the Admin, where an option e.g. book finishing is linked to a specific price. Depending on the settings and the number of products, the price changes automatically.

The printformer therefore not only serves as a design tool, as in the online shop Utsch24.de, but also enables the quick and easy calculation of books from the 18 km high book tower of GGP Media.

To get an idea of where web-to-print is applied and how our printformer can be used, I will present some projects with our customers on this blog.

A tower of 1 million print products at a height of 18 kilometres is created, symbolically speaking, every day at GGP Media. Eight books are produced per second. This requires 70,000 tons of paper per year, which corresponds to an area the size of the Saarland. The large printing plant has been part of the Bertelsmann Printing Group since the beginning of 2016. GGP Media offers a wide range of services: pre-press service, production of e-books and print products such as brochures, paperbacks, catalogs, leaflets, as well as finishing and logistics.

When it comes to the words print jobs, prepress service and catalogs, web-to-print cannot be far off. And that's the way it is. Our printformer is used at GGP Media as a powerful calculation tool for huge amounts of paper and countless print products. The web-to-print system is used, for example, to calculate a book with all its settings such as number of pages, material and finishing. Once the selection process is complete, a PDF file is generated and filed as an offer. It is a time-consuming process to provide your customers with a binding offer. With the calculator, GGP Media can show how much it costs to produce a book in just a few minutes.