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6 Integration Lessons From Dscoopers Doing the Work
Posted Sep 16, 2026 | Views 2
# Integration
# WebToPrint
# ECommerce
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SUMMARY
Integration rarely follows a straight line from disconnected systems to a perfectly automated operation. In the final conversation of Dscoop’s Integration Series, Kyle Pendley of Arizona State University, Erwin Driever of Cober Solutions, and Jay Harris and Jesse Brooks of Peczuh Printing compare what they’ve learned from connecting systems, responding to customers, moving bottlenecks, and building teams capable of keeping everything working.
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CONTENT & TRANSCRIPT
For weeks, Dscoop’s Integration Series followed three very different print operations as they tackled integration in the real world. Kyle Pendley, director of Arizona State University’s Print and Imaging Lab, Erwin Driever, vice president of technology at Cober Solutions, and Jay Harris and Jesse Brooks of Peczuh Printing then came together for an interactive roundtable hosted by Greg Young of Infigo and Peter van Teeseling of Dscoop.
In this open conversation, they compare decisions, challenges, and lessons.
Here are six ideas worth taking from the conversation:
1. Integration eventually stops being optional.
At ASU, one example is remarkably simple: business cards. Years ago, someone could email a request and an employee could manually typeset it. But when volume grows to 30-plus business-card orders a day alongside everything else the lab produces, “we’ll get it done” stops being a sustainable workflow. Each panelist described a different version of that non-negotiable moment — the point when integration moves from something that would be nice to have to something the operation genuinely needs.
2. Customers can become the catalyst.
For Peczuh, integration decisions frequently begin with customers asking for an easier or better way to order print. Those requests have led the team through storefront development, platform migration, and increasingly sophisticated workflows. But Jay and Jesse don’t automatically build everything a customer requests: They examine the potential ROI, the value of the project, whether the expected volume is real, and what it will take to deliver the solution before committing resources.
3. Solve one bottleneck and another one introduces itself.
Automation has pushed work efficiently downstream at Cober, but that success has made finishing increasingly important. Older equipment may not understand JDF, XML, or modern software connections, so the company has found other approaches, including QR codes, barcodes, and data matrix codes that help automate setup. Erwin describes integration as a “living, breathing animal”: Improve one stage and the constraint may simply move to finishing, packaging, or the next process waiting downstream.
4. “Integrated” doesn’t have to mean everything came from one vendor.
All three operations live with a reality familiar to many printers: Different systems have different strengths. Cober has built its own middleware and job-management tools to accept work from multiple systems and direct it into appropriate production paths. Peczuh likewise works to make disparate technologies communicate with one another. That makes architecture and the ability to connect important considerations when evaluating technology — sometimes as important as what the individual product does on its own.
5. Automation still depends on people.
The deeper the integrations become, the more dangerous it can be when all the knowledge lives with one person. Peczuh deliberately cross-trains and works with outside expertise so an employee’s absence doesn’t become a single point of failure. The conversation also highlighted something less technical: Strong relationships with technology partners matter. Integration inevitably produces unexpected problems, and having people on both sides who understand one another and are willing to work through them can be a genuine operational advantage.
6. There probably isn’t a finish line.
Peczuh is now looking beyond digital automation toward offset, where imposition and production instructions introduce another set of complications. Cober keeps chasing the bottleneck farther downstream. Kyle believes print is only beginning to see what advances in manufacturing, robotics, and other technologies may unlock over the next 10 or 20 years. Integration, in other words, isn’t a project printers complete. It’s a capability they keep developing.
***
That may be the most fitting way to end the Integration Series. Three companies took different routes, built different technology stacks, and encountered different problems, yet their experiences point toward the same conclusion: There is no universal integration roadmap. The value comes from understanding your operation, choosing problems worth solving, building the people and partnerships to support the technology, and continuing to adapt when the next bottleneck inevitably appears.
And that’s also why ending the series with a roundtable made sense. The panelists didn’t have every answer, and neither did the people watching. They could ask questions, compare experiences, and help one another think through what comes next — turning a series about connecting technology into a conversation that connected people.
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