Warsaw, 11.11.2006
More than 30 people from different countries participated in the 2nd International Partners Meeting of ACC HSH Group, held from 23 to 25 of October in Cracow, Poland. Numerous new product implemented in the PuzzleFlow workflow system and PdfTools (programs for processing PDF native documents) were presented at the meeting. The most active and the most promising international and Polish dealers were honoured by the managers of ACC HSH Group.

The meeting gathered technical managers and marketing & sales decision makers representing the ACC HSH Group’s international dealers from Germany, UK, Italy, France, Norway, Netherlands, Russia, Belarus and Poland. The Polish dealers included Heidelberg Polska (offering PuzzleFlow since approx. two years) as well as Polish distributors of Screen (Reprograf), ECRM, Escher-Grad (both represented by Fantom Poligrafia) and Lüscher (Grafikus). The meeting was also attended by managing directors of two companies cooperating with ACC HSH Group in the area of PuzzleFlow-based OEM agreement (ePrint Direct, UK) as well as joining editorial and production systems (Tera Digital Publishing, Italy).
The recent innovations introduced in the PuzzleFlow system and PdfTools were the main subject of the technical and marketing sessions of the meeting. The participants discussed many questions regarding new functions, as well as sales and support activities in different countries and industries. This part of the meeting was continued in the ACC HSH Group R&D Center, where the workshops took place.
The meeting was an opportunity for honoring the best and the most promising partners of ACC HSH Group. Lewald & Partner from Germany was named “The Best International Partner” of 2006. The company has already delivered PuzzleFlow systems to approx. 150 customers from Germany and other countries (e.g. Austria). Terem company from Russia was named “The Most Promising International Partner” of 2006. In Poland, Reprograf company received the award for “The Best Polish Partner”, delivering more than 30 PuzzleFlow systems bundled with Screen CtP equipment. The total sales of Reprograf in Poland exceeds 80 PuzzleFlow licenses at the moment. Fantom Poligrafia was named “The Most Promising Polish Partner”. All ECRM and Escher-Grad CtP systems delivered by this company last year were bundled with PuzzleFlow.

PuzzleFlow – a Polish export product
PuzzleFlow v. 3.0 workflow system was the main subject of the meeting. During a welcome speech, Andrzej Czyz, partner at ACC HSH Group, presented information about some important numbers regarding the worldwide sales of the system. Up to date PuzzleFlow has been delivered to more than 700 customers who have purchased almost 2000 licenses. In the first 9 months of 2006 more than 200 installations have been implemented; very often one implementation includes two or more PuzzleFlow licenses. These numbers exclude OEM agreements, signed with companies like Heidelberger Druckmaschinen (the PdfRecombiner module is a part of the Prinect system) and Founder Electronics (PdfTrapper and PdfPreflighter modules are implemented in the ElecRoc workflow system). The interesting point is that the majority of the total 700 installations were realized outside of Poland, which makes ACC HSH Group a really global player in the workflow market.
ACC HSH Group covers 60-70% of the CtP-devoted workflow market in Poland. Currently PuzzleFlow system is a preferred workflow bundled with CtP equipment of Screen, ECRM, Escher-Grad and Lüscher. Until now approx. 150 PuzzleFlow systems driving different CtP’s were installed at Polish printing sites and pre press studios. Today we can offer the most complex and universal workflow system in the market. What’s very important, is that 99% of the system is based on our own solutions – Andrzej Czyz said. – We can say that we have the most highly advanced product in terms of technology. Our customers include companies from Europe and the whole world, e.g. USA and New Zealand. Our main goal today is a further expansion of sales and marketing structures. That’s why we are very glad that our partners network is still growing.
Two companies, that has recently established cooperation with ACC HSH Group, presented its solutions during the meeting. Chris Camp, managing director of ePrint Direct, presented the company’s system which is used in personalized digital printing. Soon it will be enhanced with a few PuzzleFlow modules, on a basis of an OEM agreement between the companies.
Franz Rossi, managing director of Tera Digital Publishing, presented the integrated editorial solution for press publishers. Soon it will be integrated with the ACC HSH Group WebPairer production system, dedicated for newspaper and magazine publishers.

Product news from ACC HSH Group
During a presentation of PuzzleFlow novelties, Tomasz Drazek, head of PuzzleFlow project, said: After five years of sustainable development, the PuzzleFlow workflow system can offer very high quality, speed and compatibility with solutions of third parties. It has many highly advanced functions as well as a modern and intuitive user interface. What’s also important is that we introduce more and more language versions of the system.
Recently the ACC HSH Group has implemented completely new modules into the PuzzleFlow systems. These modules include: Transparency Flattener (creating images of transparent objects), Font to Curves (newspaper-focused module allowing processing texts into curves) and Image Filter (automatic bitmap processing). ACC HSH Group is also working on new two big projects. The first one, code-named ‘Jiffy Printer’, will allow integration of several functions: driving a printer, processing PS2 files into PDF documents, PDF/X files verifying, preflighting as well as job submission and tracking. The second project, called Print Storage, is dedicated to the newspaper environment and other big customers. It will allow big work groups for jobs handling and management using an Internet interface.
Tomasz Drazek mentioned the latest developments in the well-known PuzzleFlow modules, including Normalizer, Toolbox, Trapper and JDF Gate, as well in the PdfTools programs: PdfOrganizer and PdfPlace-It. He underlined a successful integration of PuzzleFlow and PdfTools via JDF/JMF protocol.
A practical session of the ACC HSH Group programs were presented using the PuzzleFlow server installed in the company’s R&D Center. The demonstration included Jiffy Printer and WebPairer systems and was conducted by Rafal Bigaj, head of the WebPairer project.
Marcin Streszewski, CTO and partner at ACC HSH Group, presented the latest developments in PdfPlace-It, a set of tools helping in job placement on large imagesetters and digital printers. In the new version PdfPlace-It became a tool devoted for packaging producers. Mr. Streszewski also presented the company’s plans concerning the packaging industry. Despite its own solutions for this market, ACC HSH Group will implement some packaging-oriented modules from Founder Electronics in the PuzzleFlow system.
The last part of the technical session was a practical presentation concerning the use of different PuzzleFlow and PdfTools modules in different production environments, e.g. in mixed production (b&w pages and colour pages in one publication), automatic page imposition and advanced image processing. This part was conducted by Jacek Franczyk.

Concluding the 2nd International Partners Meeting, Andrzej Czyz said: I wish to thank all our partners who came to Cracow to learn about new products from ACC HSH Group as well as sharing their technical and marketing experiences concerning our products. Considering the contacts established during the last years, as well as further enterprises, we hope that the next meeting will gather even more people from the whole world. It’s very important for us that ACC HSH Group is no longer perceived as a small company from Poland, but as an established partner with big technological potential.

 

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More information about ACC HSH Group products:
Andrzej Czyz, ACC HSH Group
Ul. Jana Pawla II 41c, Kraków
Phone:+48 501 080 888
E-mail: andrzej@acchsh.com
http://www.acchsh.com

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