Preflighting in Client Services

[freshmic1]

Is there anyone out there that has the CSRs doing basic Preflighting prior to sending the job into Production?

Currently, our CSRs use Switch Submit point and the PDFs get a basic preflight report sent to the CSR prior to putting the job in Production.

If you currently have Client Services doing basic preflighting, could you give me some feedback on how you do it and the pitfall/problems you run into.

There is some debate as to who should be doing the preflighting. I'm just curious to hear from those that have CSRs preflighting and how that is working out.

[magnussandstrom]

Today 65% of our manual jobs are fully handled (all the way to press) by our CSR's and inhouse sales persons. The rest is handled by dedicated Prepress employees. The CSR's are using a few dynamic Submit Points to preflight, impose and send approvals to customers. After reviewing the imposition they send it further to press. We have about 40 CSR's today and are handeling a lot of jobs everyday.

The journey have not been without cruxes, we have been working with this for years. But most of the CSR's love the workflow by now. It's fast and accurate.

Regarding preflighting:
(All our DFE:s and RIP:s are PDF/X-4 compatibled and configured)
We check for the most common things in the initial preflight
Fonts
Page size
Image res
No of pages (based on selcted product)
If not PDF/X we check for transparency and flatten if found

[freshmic1]

Wow, that's impressive. I'm literally just fighting for basic preflight by CS.

Thank you for your reply.

[freddyp]

I would like to draw your attention to BoardingPass, a preflight product that is targeted at CSRs: https://www.enfocus.com/en/boardingpass

[freshmic1]

Hi Freddy,

I know about Boarding Pass. That is not the issue and my report is so basic in PitStop, also not the issue.

The issue is "Who should preflight" IMHO, it's not Preflight if you put the job into Production for Prepress to "Preflight"......that's just production.

I'm looking for other users who have CSRs doing the Preflight. I'm having a surprisingly hard time finding them and getting their feedback.

[magnussandstrom]

This is how it looks for our CSR's:

1. Submit job

submit_1.jpg (92.15 KiB) Viewed 4047 times

2. Review preflight (only if any warnings or errors, in native simple language):

submit_2.jpg (62.68 KiB) Viewed 4047 times

3. Review imposition

submit_3.jpg (87.82 KiB) Viewed 4047 times

4. And a mail with link to PDF Review is sent to the customer and CSR automatically (if preflight is without any errors or if the CSR's continues the job).

I been backed by the management buliding this and I think it's really important to make the UI really simple and understandable, also provide something that the CSR's are missing today (Maybe imidiate repsonse, a sense of control or other things that makes the CSR appreciate their new tool instead of the feeling of "Are we also supposed to do prepress work now...!?"

[freshmic1]

Thank you.

I'm doing something similar but much more basic and still getting complaints from CSRs about 'doing prepress'

Submit point>Add job number>get Preflight report in a Checkpoint, if good> send to Prepress.

So simple, yet complaints and mistakes so looking for any input from anyone doing it in CS.