ORLANDO, Fla.— Page Co-Op members at Nexpo in April met with workflow software providers including Agfa, Fusion Systems International, Screen (USA) ProImage America, Polkadots, Kodak, Presteligence and ECRM to hear the latest developments and solutions for handling the vast amount of digital data now moving into newspaper operations.

Each year at the show, PAGE conducts a session to help its members sift through various technologies and glean the latest on industry trends and the best products available to meet those needs.

Among the focus at this year’s session: the increased volume of PDFs and digital files coming into newspapers and the new workflow challenges this creates for newspapers in terms of streamlining.

Many vendors stressed to PAGE members the importance of tracking processes, preflighting, soft proofing, load balancing and scalability.

Sean Murphy, Fusion’s technology director, stressed the importance of implementing a workflow system prior to the installation of computer-to-plate devices.

Kevin Ward, Kodak’s global product manager, newspaper workflow, meantime, pointed out a need for single-vendor-supplied scalable systems, which enable growth in various areas  of opportunity, such as insert printing.

Presteligence president and chief executive officer, Bob Behringer, focused on the importance of Web-based apps with detailed logging and reports to pinpoint and solve problems.

Mike Monter, support manager for ProImage, discussed access and controls and the need to assign employee access.

Finally, Robert Prah, vice president of sales at Screen, cited JDF-enabled prepress workflow apps as being a key part of the puzzle supporting the advent of hybrid printing operations, enabling newspaper, commercial and sheetfed operations to communicate.