Worldwide provider of integrated outsourced business services, Service Point has remained market leader for over 85 years by adhering to the core specialisations
of print related: Digital Reprographics, Document Management and Facilities  management. The central focus is on providing end-to-end print and document management, most specifically of large format documentation for projects of a technical or complex nature.

Service Point’s continual investment in technology, people and service delivery now extends to a network of over 450 global facilities supporting clients and their supply chain partner needs across the UK, Europe, the United States and the Far East..

The typical set-up of one Service Point’s print-for-pay facility is primarily composed of HP1055’s, 4000’s and 5000’s as they have historically been servicing the AEC market. The company decided to expand its production and sales to new markets by adding a fleet of HP9000’s to its printer set-up, thus increasing competitive advantage and enlarging its production capacities. It was at this point that they decided to equip all their facilities with the Caldera RIP.

Because of the many different size locations and the difficulty to state a typical setup of a Service Point Facility (it can range from just one HP1055 in one location to 2×4000’s, 2×5000’s and 1x 9000 in another), Service Point needed a modular, flexible and productive solution.

With Caldera, Service Point now manages all the machines with one single RIP, through Caldera’s unique Client/Server and Master/Slave Architecture feature. Staff can see all jobs on all printers (directly or indirectly connected to RIP servers) from one central spooler. Service Point’s IT Director didn’t want to have to spend time training people on different RIPs who would then be driving only one printer. Prior to Caldera as the household RIP, Service Point was suffering huge bottle necks with file processing as files had become larger, the machines were spending half of the time with the receiving light flashing and not printing, therefore not making money.

Their choice was also motivated by speed of the Caldera RIP, namely the fact that the printing starts while the file is being RIPed. Increased productivity being the most important RIP prerequisite to the eyes of a print for pay provider. Service Point’s IT Director was looking for a RIP that was “fast, offered a good production workflow and had a range of usability from simple user to expert. With Caldera, we have sped up our production tenfold and our quality is now unsurpassed by our competition because of our strict ICC profiling regime.”