EFI IQ, a new suite of free and paid cloud applications for digital print professionals from Electronics For Imaging, Inc., makes cut-sheet operations using EFI Fiery digital front ends (DFEs) smarter.
To access IQ’s free applications, businesses can simply open an EFI IQ account online. Additional paid applications in the suite, including EFI ColorGuard and the new EFI Manage, extend users’ capabilities.
One early EFI IQ user, Vancouver, Canada-based BOND Reproductions, is seeing greater data insights that drive productivity. “With EFI IQ applications, we can improve our production performance,” said BOND Reproductions Production Manager Kara Marcal. “Because we can see our data, we can identify inefficiencies, make process improvements to be more productive, and make better all-around decisions.”
Driving value from data
The free applications in this cloud-based suite, which are designed to operate with Fiery Driven™ cut-sheet digital printers, help printing businesses extract value from data to minimise bottlenecks, optimise equipment utilisation and increase profit.
· EFI IQ Dashboard provides a personalised view of a user’s digital printing operation and is the launching pad for all EFI IQ applications. Users can monitor the status of any printers, consumables and job status on their Fiery Driven printers. Printer groups as well as role-based permissions allow for managing more sophisticated environments with many printers or users.
· EFI Insight provides users with deep historical data in an interactive environment to help users transform print production data into actionable analytics that drive business improvement. Insight displays trend analytics, including shift and other comparisons. Print users can use this intelligence to make data-driven decisions to increase shop floor productivity, or import a job log to perform extensive analysis.
· EFI Notify allows users to get production-blocking alerts, as well as establish timing for automatic distribution of production reports.
Customers can also get IQ capabilities such as dashboard metrics, notifications and more on their mobile phones via the EFI Go app.
Extended capabilities for in-depth quality and production control
The EFI IQ Suite’s paid applications include EFI ColorGuard – winner of a 2019 SGIA Product of the Year Award for colour enhancement software. This cloud-based software helps automate and standardise colour verification and calibration processes to help ensure printers get the best colour output. By ensuring consistently accurate colour, users can win more business, reduce waste and eliminate rejected jobs.
Sites with many Fiery digital front ends will benefit from subscribing to the EFI Manage application, which remotely monitors Fiery DFEs to keep production running at its best, syncing print devices and setting compliance targets for the best print production outcomes.
“Print operations generate an overwhelming amount of data, and it can be difficult to transform that volume of data into actionable business insights,” said Toby Weiss, senior vice president and general manager, EFI Fiery. “Our objective with the EFI IQ Suite is to make data readily available in a form that makes it easy for users to take action. That way, customers can optimise production in real time with a goal of creating the most efficient and effective digital printing operation possible.”
A suite of applications, a wealth of benefits
In summary, the EFI IQ Suite helps businesses of all sizes:
· Make informed decisions to grow their businesses using EFI IQ data and analytics;
· Leverage past production data to improve future performance with production analytics from EFI Insight;
· Boost shop floor productivity with status alerts using EFI Go;
· Satisfy colour-critical print buyers with consistent, accurate colour with EFI ColorGuard; and
· Keep print production running smoothly with EFI Manage.
Future enhancements to the EFI IQ Suite will bring many of its capabilities to wide and superwide-format inkjet printers as well.
