Web-to-Print a Pandemic Lifesaver for Wyoming In-plant

Transitioning to the cloud-hosted version of EFI’s MarketDirect StoreFront Web-to-Print solution was a lifesaver during the pandemic for Laramie County School District One’s Graphic Arts Department. That switch was directly responsible for increasing the four-person in-plant’s volume from 450,000 pages per month to 1.6 million pages, contends Graphic Arts Manager Rebecca Young.

Much of that new work was previously being printed by the Cheyenne, Wyo., district’s teachers on office copiers. When COVID-19 sent them all home in March 2020, making those classroom copies was no longer possible. But thanks to the in-plant’s switch to the cloud-based EFI MarketDirect StoreFront, those teachers were suddenly able to order classroom materials from home, where previously, when the software was internally hosted, they could only order using school computers.

“So, they have just been thrilled about that,” enthuses Young.

As a result, the in-plant stayed very busy printing pallets of workbooks and student packets for the district’s 14,000 students on its color and monochrome Konica Minolta digital printers last year.

MarketDirect StoreFront has improved both workflow and productivity at the in-plant, Young says.

“The automation and the flow is so amazing,” she reports. “It integrates well with Fiery Command Workstation.”

Gone are the days when server glitches would render the StoreFront unavailable.

“Having everything based in the cloud instead of our own server made troubleshooting so much easier,” remarks Young. “EFI service has been amazing, and we have issues resolved from [within] 15 minutes to two hours.”

To keep teachers from returning to their old habits of printing on office copiers now that they are back in class, the in-plant will soon implement a program to flag large print jobs and urge the sender to route them to the in-plant through the StoreFront.