FREMONT, Calif. - Electronics For Imaging, Inc. has entered into an extended partnership arrangement with Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A. for Konica Minolta to re-sell cloud-based EFI? workflow packages to its broad base of customers. Konica Minolta currently re-sells EFI Fiery? digital front ends for Konica Minolta bizhub? digital printers and presses, along with EFI Digital StoreFront? web-to-print software and EFI Wide Format printers. With the new arrangement, Konica Minolta will help customers automate their business operations using one of three print workflow offerings featuring either EFI PrintSmith? Vision MIS and Digital StoreFront software or EFI Pace? MIS/ERP software.

The offerings — sold as the PrintSmith Bundle, Premium Pace Bundle and Enterprise Pace Bundle for Konica Minolta — give customers significant benefits with streamlined, integrated job submission, estimating, accounting, scheduling and more, including integration with EFI Fiery color management capabilities for digital printing. The bundles are delivered as an out-of-the-box solution that can be up and running quickly. In addition to these new MIS offerings, Konica Minolta will resell Digital StoreFront in new Digital StoreFront Entry Level, Core and Digital Marketing Bundles.

"Our commitment to our customers goes beyond providing print engines. They stand to gain important benefits by improving their business processes with seamless, integrated business management tools," said Kevin Kern, senior vice president, Business Intelligence Services and Product Development, Konica Minolta. "Using proven EFI Fiery digital production technology to connect a Konica Minolta bizhub press or an EFI Wide Format printer to a plant-wide business production workflow will reduce errors and drive automation, which ultimately helps our customers achieve greater productivity and profitability."

"Using a cloud-based MIS solution has many benefits, especially for companies that do not have a strong IT staff or those that are looking to minimize IT hassles," said Frank Mallozzi, senior vice president, Worldwide Sales and Marketing, EFI. "Konica Minolta customers stand to benefit from the opportunity to connect their Fiery Driven? printing engines with an EFI MIS technology to establish worry-free, certified end-to-end production workflows. We're pleased to be able to extend these additional solutions to Konica Minolta customers as an integrated offering."