Democrat Printing (Commercial Printer)

In a League of Its Own

Democrat Printing is a large, full-service web printer specialized in printing corporate magazines and catalogs. To streamline operations and increase turnaround time, the printing company switched to Agfa Graphics' :Delano and :ApogeeX.

Little Rock’s Democrat Printing Maintains #1 Shop in the Region With the Latest Technology

Democrat Printing, which passed its 130th birthday in Little Rock, AR at the turn of the millennium, has always prided itself on being state of the art-even before the term was in popular use. That's partially why the venerable firm has maintained its role as one of the only full service web printers in the Arkansas capital. "Our central location, personal attention to all clients and their needs, advanced prepress technology, and wide range of run-length capabilities have kept us in a class of our own," states Christy Miners, digital prepress supervisor.

The company (which began as the commercial printing division of the Arkansas Democrat newspaper) prints corporate magazines and catalogs for industries that range from educational supplies and packaged goods to archaeology and water sports. Many of its clients publish between one and 20 projects on a monthly or annual basis. Some operate locally, others state-wide, and many nationally. To keep up with the aggressive workload, Democrat Printing operates out of a 126,000 square foot facility and employs 200 people.

Most of Democrat's customers depend upon the quality of its printed communications to attract and retain customers-and that is why Democrat Printing goes to great lengths to have the very best prepress and workflow solutions currently available in the graphic communications marketplace.

Ownership and Pride

"We want everyone here to feel a sense of ownership for everything we produce," Miners says, "and that's why we take our product lineup so seriously. We want to be proud of every printed piece that leaves our facility-and we are."

Digital prepress at Democrat Printing now benefits from a full suite of Agfa products, including (most recently) the :Delano web-based project management system, the :ApogeeX PDF-based workflow management system, two :Galileo VXT platesetters with PlateManager automation software, two :Grand SherpaMatic proofers, three :Sherpa digital printers for two-sided impositions, roll proofs and corrected pages, and the :Salient enterprise computing solution that integrates with both :Delano and :ApogeeX with storage and networking components for higher productivity.

"Most of our older equipment did an excellent job, but our business simply outgrew it," Miners explains. "That's why we continue to research the technology that's out there. We're always in need of equipment to handle new challenges-such as transparencies, increased volume of files and a growing need to turn them out super fast, and many other requirements that come up month after month."

Front Runner

Miners and Larry Brown, Democrat Printing's plant manager, take on most of the responsibility to research new products and technologies. After an initial look at all the available systems during their most recent product search, the combined :Delano and :ApogeeX suite became the clear-cut front runner for primary workflow management, enabling cross-platform integration to operate platesetters, proofers, file-checking, software and more. It was just the kind of automation and quality control that Democrat Printing required.

"It was :Delano that put Agfa way over the top," Miners says. "It is a very robust system that is helping us advance our automation efforts." :Delano provides a complete communications framework that links administration (customer service, estimation, order entry) with production.

To teach customers web-based proofing and data communication, Democrat's prepress specialist Chuck Werninger often leads :Delano training classes, both at the facility and off-site. "We have 39 customers loaded in :Delano now, and we're using the system to meet the needs of publishers and print managers at all levels of skill," Werninger says. "As their comfort levels with the technology improves, we'll add functionality to their :Delano configuration." It has even enabled Democrat to better serve customers in remote areas with dial-up access by offering them softproofs via a simple web portal, which they hadn't been able to do before. Upon implementation, Miners and Werninger immediately recognized :Delano's value in many key areas, not the least of which was significant improvement in time efficiencies. :Delano saves at least two days on every job (days that used to be required to ship bluelines), improves access to proofs, and enables customers to work in real time with Democrat's customer service reps when process questions need to be answered and layout and design changes need to be explained.

"One of the first and most important items of business that was streamlined thanks to :Delano, was data entry," Miners reports. "In the past, job ticket information and prepress work orders were entered by the customer service reps, and then printed and copied to the prepress department, where it had to be re-entered. That, of course, duplicated efforts and opened the door for errors. Now, our reps can simply enter the data, including imposition and templates, and :Delano manages it all quickly and seamlessly."

Prior to the :Delano implementation, the customer service department at Democrat Printing operated primarily with Outlook and Excel spreadsheets, and the reps had grown comfortable with the process. Before training got underway, many of them were excited by the prospects :Delano offered, but several others voiced their concerns about the potential difficulty of learning an entirely new software system. During training, however, it was noted that the entire group of reps commented both on :Delano's ease of operation and on the value it would bring to all prepress operations.

"I am proud to say that they were all eager to get started right away with :Delano and the software," Miners says. "As they all remember, we used to spend so much time each and every day entering data and answering customer questions about files and changes. It was slow and sometimes tense. Now, with :Delano, we've simultaneously simplified and accelerated the entire process, eliminated inaccuracies, and significantly improved communication. And all this occurred in just the startup phase of our :Delano experience."

Continuing Education

The company receives PDF files from about 90 percent of its customers, many of whom were trained by Werninger. For the start-up of :Delano, they put together three classroom sessions, one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast, and an on-site open house. Attendance was high.

"I am extremely proud of our staff's performance, especially when we made our recent equipment switch," Miners says. "We were pushing over 8,000 pages per month with only three prepress techs. They learned the new software and jumped into the new system without a ripple in our production. Our customers were happy, our staff was happy, and the work we did lived up to our own high standards." And that's much the way it's been at Democrat Printing for nearly a century and a half.