ASU Print and Imaging Lab Keeps Getting More Connected

# Integration

# Workflow

# Automation

# Digital Printing

# Strategy

A self-funded university print lab, 70 products, and an integration project that is still running after two years.

Kyle Pendley runs one of the more unusual print operations in the Dscoop community. The ASU Print and Imaging Lab sits inside Arizona State University, one of the largest public universities in the United States, serving an institution with more than 215,000 students, faculty and staff. The lab is entirely self-funded, earning its existence by competing for every order it receives from nearly 300 university departments and roughly 100 student organizations. Along the way, it also serves as a hands-on learning environment, with about 25 student employees working across customer service, prepress, production, press operations and shipping.

The lab is not protected by a mandate requiring departments to buy internally. Faculty and staff are free to use outside vendors, so every product on the storefront is another opportunity to win work the university might otherwise send elsewhere. That creates a discipline you don't always find in in-plant operations, where the storefront becomes not just an ordering tool but one of the lab's most effective business development assets.

From stationery problem to commercial platform

When Kyle joined ASU in 2012, the operation was still relying on highly manual processes for many standard products. Every business card order meant opening a file, typing the customer's information by hand, creating a proof and sending it back for approval.

"As you can imagine, the amount of translation, typos, and things back and forth to everybody's names was just becoming too much," he said.

As order volumes increased, the process simply wasn't sustainable. Producing 10 or 15 business card orders a day could consume an employee's entire schedule. "It's just one person's full-time job. It's just typing business cards," Kyle said. Standardizing that workflow became the catalyst for change. What began as a solution for business cards, letterhead and envelopes gradually expanded into a storefront offering 70 to 100 products, including on-demand promotional items, processing roughly 4,000 to 5,000 orders each year.

Access control as a business tool

The storefront runs on ASU's single sign-on system, so every employee and student logs in using their university credentials. While it's technically one storefront, Infigo automatically tailors the experience based on who is signing in. A faculty member, staff employee or student sees a different catalog of products and services based on their role, helping ensure users order the right products without having to navigate unnecessary options.

The storefront has become much more than an ordering portal. It's also one of the lab's most effective marketing tools.

For ASU Print and Imaging Lab, the value extends beyond convenience. "We can help fine-tune the way every individual is now representing ASU because at the end of the day, a lot of people are just focused on getting their jobs done," he said. "They don't need to know what logo they should use or what colors they should be using." By placing approved templates and branded products in front of the right people, the storefront simplifies ordering while helping maintain consistency across one of the nation's largest universities. The storefront has become much more than an ordering portal; it's also one of the lab's most effective marketing tools. The access controls keep ordering simple while allowing the storefront to scale across hundreds of departments and student organizations. In one case, a department discovered the lab offered pop-up banners — a product it had been producing for more than a decade — and immediately shifted work from an outside vendor.

Kyle's team has also refined the ordering experience to reflect how departments actually work. Rather than forcing users to start over if they decide to change a business card design midway through an order, the system preserves the information they've already entered while allowing them to switch templates on the fly. It's a small enhancement, but one that saves time for business managers who are often placing orders for entire departments and juggling multiple rounds of internal feedback before submitting them.

Automation that runs in minutes

The automation behind the storefront connects Infigo to Switch, which manages the workflow for incoming web-to-print orders. Once an order is submitted, files flow automatically through production with minimal human intervention before reaching the press. "Somebody could place a business card order now, and it could be at press in a few minutes," Kyle said.

The ASU Print and Imaging Lab runs an HP Indigo Digital Press, large-format equipment and a DTF heat press setup, with the workflow managing the handoffs between them. The integration work still in progress

The MIS integration is the piece still in progress. Kyle adopted PrintIQ about two years ago, specifically because of its integration with Infigo, but the bidirectional connection — where order data flows seamlessly between the storefront and the production management system — is still being completed. Custom development has been required to reflect the complexity of the lab's products and workflows.

Rather than treating automation as a finished project, Kyle sees it as an ongoing process of refinement and continuous improvement.

Even so, Kyle has already seen the impact digital integration can have. Within days of implementing PrintIQ, the operation replaced printed job jackets with digital job queues viewed on iPads, giving production staff real-time information instead of paper tickets. Completing the Infigo integration, he believes, will deliver the same kind of leap forward for web-to-print orders.

That is a familiar story among operators where the platform is capable, and the configuration is the real work. Kyle oversees the lab's technology strategy but relies on specialized partners to help develop new templates, products and integrations as the operation evolves. Once the Infigo-PrintIQ integration is complete, the next priority is a broader modernization of the workflow — rebuilding Switch automation, moving more infrastructure to the cloud and reducing reliance on on-premises servers. Rather than treating automation as a finished project, Kyle sees it as an ongoing process of refinement and continuous improvement.

What comes next

For Kyle, the storefront continues to evolve alongside the operation. Every new product added to the catalog becomes an opportunity for other departments to discover a capability they didn't know existed. The storefront encourages customers to think beyond the job they came to order, often sparking ideas for additional products and services.

Once the Infigo and PrintIQ integration reaches full bidirectionality, the lab plans to overhaul its Switch automation, move more of the workflow to cloud infrastructure and reduce reliance on on-site servers. But Kyle doesn't view the work as chasing technology for its own sake. Each improvement is intended to remove friction, simplify operations and free the team to spend more time helping customers instead of managing processes.

Kyle has also learned that successful integrations require compromise. He has also learned that successful integrations require compromise. Not every legacy process can — or should — be recreated exactly as it existed before. Working with technology partners has meant identifying the workflows that matter most, letting go of edge cases and focusing on making the overwhelming majority of orders as simple and efficient as possible. That mindset, he believes, has produced better long-term results than trying to customize every last detail.

ASU Print and Imaging Lab is a case study in building for an audience that already exists. The university community needed a better way to order. The lab built it, and kept building it. The work is ongoing, and so is the return. For Kyle, the next generation of web-to-print is helping customers discover what's possible.

Note: This September, Kyle will join a panel of other PSPs featured in this series to discuss integration, IT governance, and ASU's next steps.