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Certification boosts performance and sales appeal for The UPS Store Center in Indiana By John Grubb he UPS Store Center in Carmel, IN, opened its doors in 1989. About fve years ago, store owner Gary Rapp decided to augment its printing services. To meet the growing market demand, his company again upgraded its color printing services in 2010. Today, the center has become a leader among The UPS Store franchises in the state of Indiana, offering a full range of small business services from mailboxes, packing, and shipping to design, production printing, and mailing. It is the only center in the state with Fiery Certifed Professionals on staff. T The Challenge "As we grew our color printing business, we needed to ensure that our staff had the appropriate level of skills to deliver against the more stringent customer requirements this type of printing entails," says Rapp. Small, medium, and large businesses quickly learned about The UPS Store Center's print services capabilities. As a result, owner Gary Rapp knew he would need to add supplementary services to meet increasing customer demands. Having added a Xerox digital press about five years ago, and then upgraded capacity with a Konica Minolta digital press in 2010, the company needed to also enhance its staff's skills to ensure that the center was utilizing its color printing assets to the fullest extent possible. With an embedded EFI Fiery server in its Xerox color printer and an external Fiery server for its Konica Minolta digital color press, Rapp and his team have become comfortable with a Fiery workflow for their color printing business. "We manage both Fiery digital front ends (DFE) using Fiery Command WorkStation," says Rapp, "bringing jobs into the workflow, configuring them for production, and printing and finishing them with as much automation as possible. We quickly saw a need to increase our skills to take full advantage of all of the benefits of our Fiery workflow." "The Fiery Professional Certification program was both conve- 18 QUICK PRINTING / January 2014 "Having a Fiery Certified Professional on staff has brought us a great deal of credibility with our customers. It was an investment well worth making," says owner Gary Rapp, pictured here with print service manager Adam Marvin. nient and cost effective. The certification enhances my professional career and increases the value of my knowledge and skills to the business," says print service manager Adam Marvin. "As a result of the training, I've been able to implement significant workflow improvements that increase the shop efficiency and color quality. In addition, we have introduced new variable data services that allow us to broaden our portfolio and provide more options for our customers." Moving Forward "We are extremely pleased with the progress we have made in building our production color printing business," Rapp says. "Today, we can handle long runs of higher quality color printing on our Konica Minolta press, and can use the Xerox DocuColor for shorter runs and walk-in business without disrupting the longer runs. With Fiery Command WorkStation, it is fast and easy to manage the workflow throughout the center from a single interface. In addition, because both are Fiery Driven, we are able to get the best possible color quality out of both presses." Rapp also wanted to ensure that he was utilizing his assets as efficiently as possible. This included generating the best quality in the least amount of time with minimal waste. "Fiery workflow gives you some very high-end options," Rapp says. "Part of using it efficiently is knowing when you do—and do not—need to use those tools. Once you truly understand what the Fiery DFEs can do, it is much easier to match each job to the various capabilities and streamline the workflow through the center." w w w. M y P R I N T R e s o u r c e . c o m