Integrate printing with your business systems

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 If you’ve integrated your printing with your ERP system or other business applications, you’ve taken the first step towards a more efficient label production process.

However, if you’re hard-coding label templates to match the printers in your organization, you’re probably still struggling with maintaining a large number of templates that have to be manually updated by your IT team.

The main goal of any integration is to ensure accuracy and efficiency by interfacing with the master data. Our label management system enables you to achieve the highest level of integration quickly at much lower cost than with legacy approaches to integration.

Loftware’s Automation integration system includes

• Intuitive graphical integration builder for building integrations without any coding
• Pre-built integrations to leading business applications for rapid deployment
• NiceLabel ABAP package for rapid and seamless SAP integration
• Triggers that accept data from any protocol
• Filters that integrate with all modern and legacy data formats
• Actions for building business rules and workflows
• Next generation 64-bit print server that meets performance and scaling needs by consuming minimal system resources

All-in-one integration system

Loftware Automation integration system includes data connectors (triggers), data extraction and transformation (filters), business rules and workflows (actions), and a print server in a single service. All transactions and data processing happen in the same memory space. In-memory processing is 100x faster than transmitting data between applications and servers.  The all-in-one architecture also reduces downtime and simplifies maintenance.

Pre-built integration to leading business applications

Designed to meet the integration needs of businesses of all sizes, our integration system provides unrivalled connectivity to any application or source data via web services, event based integration and certified pre-built integrations to SAP®, Oracle®, Microsoft® and many other leading MES, ERP and WMS applications.

Industry leading SAP integration 

Loftware Automation can be supplied with a ready-to-use ABAP package that enables print previews of the label template with master data, meaning fewer label errors and avoiding costly reprints. All of this happens within the SAP system’s user interface without spending months writing code for such a tight integration.  Our ABAP package can be transported into a SAP system within seconds, and you get a streamlined SAP label printing process in a matter of hours. Our integration system also includes pre-built triggers and filters for the Loftware ABAP package for rapid deployment.

Build integrations without any coding

The integration system includes an intuitive graphical integration builder that lets you build simple or complex integrations. It lets your IT team rapidly configure connectors (triggers), data extraction and transformation (filters) and business rules and workflows (actions) without any coding. You can also use the integration builder to enhance pre-built integrations.

Triggers that accept data from any business application or hardware device

The integrations system is an event-based application that extracts and transforms data (filters), and executes business rules and workflows (actions) based on triggers. It supports modern and legacy triggers including web services, HTTP, TCP/IP, database, serial port and file drop. Triggers allow you to connect to modern and legacy business applications, Android or iOS devices, PLCs and many other software and hardware devices.

Filters that integrate with all modern and legacy data formats

Our integration system’s filters extract and transforms data in any format so you don't have to customize your existing business applications. Our data mapping tool helps you easily extract and map data from common formats like XML, CSV or fixed-width text files. The mapping tool also supports legacy system modernization by supporting data in unstructured formats such as legacy reports or even binary printer commands.

Actions for building business rules and workflows

Our integration system includes a engine that allows print requests to be dynamically changed based on business logic that is applied to inbound dynamic data. The business rules engine selects the applicable workflow to run and execute a task, i.e. requesting data from additional data sources, selecting one or more label templates or targeting specific printers. Everything happens within our system, so there's no need to customise your existing business applications.

Next generation 64-bit architecture provide unmatched performance and reliability

The integration system’s print server was built from the ground up for the modern 64-bit multi-core architecture to provide the fastest, most reliable and efficient printing capability.  It is a 100% native 64-bit application that eliminates the need for additional technology layers required by the previous generation of 32-bit applications.  Our integration system print server takes advantage of modern technologies to maximise performance and scaling needs by consuming minimal hardware resources.

71 print requests per second

One of our retail customers printed 1 million labels on Black Friday in 3 hours and 55 minutes. On average, 71 print requests where handled per second. That’s 4,255 per minute or 255,300 per hour. In an operation of this scale, performance and reliability are critical. Any downtime would have cost our customer 100s of millions on this day.

Scalability you can't outgrow

Scalability and reliability are built into the next generation architecture of our integration system. It also provides failover and high availability options required for business-critical operation. Our integration system also supports load balancing to optimize performance in high-volume environments. Some of our customers drive thousands of printers from a single centralized server.