FuturePrint Podcast

#303 - Beyond the RIP: Anna Tobler on Software, Productivity and the New Era of AI Support

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In this episode of the FuturePrint Podcast, Ed sits down with Anna Tobler, CEO of Ergosoft, ahead of her participation at the FuturePrint AI for Industrial Print Conference in Munich this January. Anna shares her journey from a career in IT and financial services to leading one of the print industry’s most respected software companies, known globally for its RIP technology across textile, décor, large format and industrial printing.

Anna outlines the shifting dynamics shaping today’s print environment – from shorter runs and rising quality expectations to increasing workflow complexity and the pressure on operators to “know everything.” With hardware becoming faster, more stable and more capable, she argues that workflow, automation and software intelligence are now the real differentiators. The conversation highlights how smart job preparation, bottleneck elimination and AI-enhanced decision-making can significantly boost productivity and reduce errors.

A major focus of the episode is Ergosoft’s development of Casey, the company’s AI agent designed to deliver instant, 24/7 multilingual support. Anna explains how Casey was trained on Ergosoft’s expert knowledge base and continuously evolves with every update, giving customers immediate access to guidance, troubleshooting and best practices. She also shares some of the surprising and amusing lessons learned while fine-tuning Casey’s behaviour – including the need to stop it from offering cooking recipes or praising competitors a little too enthusiastically.

Looking ahead, Anna discusses the accelerating pace of technological change, the growing importance of intuitive front-end experiences powered by complex back-end logic, and the challenge of using AI to empower rather than overwhelm users. It’s an insightful conversation full of practical perspective on the future of workflow, software and AI in print.

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FuturePrint TECH: Industrial Print: 21-22 January '26, Munich, Germany


SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Future Print Podcast, celebrating print technology and the people behind it.

SPEAKER_01:

Hello and welcome back to the Future Print Podcast. My name is Ed, and in the next few weeks we'll be chatting to a whole host of people who will be presenting at the AI conference in Munich that we're really looking forward to. Today we're talking to Anna Tobler. Anna, hi, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_02:

Hi, Ed. I'm doing good. And how about you?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, all good, thank you. So do you want to just introduce yourself, uh, tell us what you do, and kind of give us a bit of a background to ErgoSoft?

SPEAKER_02:

Sure. First of all, thank you very much for giving me the chance to talk here. Very happy about that. Um, so basically, who I am and what I do. Um I'm Anna Tober, CEO of Ugasoft, and um I started my career in IT. Um, I was working in the financial industry for quite quite some time. And then um, yeah, I I my father was basically asking me if I'm going to join Ubusoft, and I said yes, and I did that around about 10 years ago. Um, Urgusoft is a Swiss software company. We are doing mainly rip software so far. Um, and rip software is everything, you know, like to preparing uh this file, sending it to print, and making sure that all the printers out there are properly controlled by the software. We focus a lot on column management, workflows. Um, we are strong in textile, strong in decor, strong in large format. We also do some industrial printing. Yes. And what I did in the last couple of years at Ugasoft is I I did work a lot on modernization, simplicity, integrations, accessibility, so that we are more ready for today, where everyone asks for automation, uh, being very customer focused, everyone wants to work with AI. So basically, we lay laid a solid foundation the last couple of years to make Ubisoft ready for what is actually needed today.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's really it's really interesting. Before we get on to AI, I just wanted to ask you first kind of what you see as the major challenges and trends impacting the print sector right at this minute. What would you say to that?

SPEAKER_02:

Sure. So the complexity increases, right? Shorter production runs, less time. Um the operator needs to know everything. They need to be specialists in everything. They need to know the printer, they need to know the media, they need to know the application, they need to know the software. So it's getting more and more complicated for print service providers to train their staff, to retain their staff and make sure that their staff knows everything. And on the other side, they fight with small margins, um, you know, like high demand, uh high quality approaches from customers. Um, they need colour accuracy, etc. So it the demand on print service providers today is is increasingly high. Um so hardware itself, printers itself getting better and better, right? That they are they are like uh high in speed, they are super stable, um, they they bring the performance that that that is needed. Um and now the the most complicated thing is is the workflow, right? How how do you handle all that? And that's where software is is coming into play and and make a real big difference. So, you know, like um automation is key. You want to avoid human errors, so repetability, you want to make sure that that you that software can do that, right? That you don't have to click like 500 times if you can do it in five clicks. Um, so what we've been focusing on is is making life easier for operators, making um life better for printer uh factory managers, so that they that they struggle less with you know like human errors, um time constraints that they don't uh finish on time, etc. AI is of course playing a role in that as well, um, because it helps helps to reduce complexity if used right. It can increase complexity if roost wrong. And the idea is not necessarily to replace operators, but making life easier for them, right? As what I mentioned before, you know, um repeated jobs. If you can do that easier, if you can, you know, like run have the printer running through the night, coming in the morning, and not everything is wrong, makes life easier, right? So that it is basically what workflow makes, what automation works, and what AI is going to help there as well.

SPEAKER_01:

It's really fascinating. It's definitely a theme that I'm starting to pick up doing these interviews is AI working as a foundation for what we already do and strengthening our offering as kind of uh uh as a um as a business, uh uh uh etc. What what would you say? I mean, you you mentioned software there, we see software and AI expanding and growing in importance within the printing community. Can you just expand on on why you think that is and what advantages does the right software provide for the print service? Because I I know that you you have this um this service, you know, your rips. Um can you just expand on that a little bit and let our listeners know?

SPEAKER_02:

Sure. Um so basically a printer can only be as as efficient as the workflow that feeds it. Yeah, you know, like you can't print whatever, but you know, like you can do a production run in you know, like in hundred uh separate jobs, or you can combine them. So we we basically see that with software, you have the possibility to bring that performance. Yeah, you can combine what is possible. Um you can um you know like uh take some intelligence in in preparing jobs, in differentiating orders into separate um production runs, right? So for example, if if if something takes two hours, other things take 20 minutes, um it's nicer to start with the two hours first because you know, like and and and have the 20-minute jobs running next to it. So so basically it's it's it's the intelligent preparation of jobs that that you can um do with software, right? Uh a printer is basically just printing what you tells it. But if if you if you prepare that properly and and combine uh things properly, you're getting much uh more efficient in a way. Um when you see what's happening in the market right now, I mean it it's it's it's a clear trend that hardware manufacturers care more about software than they did, I don't know, five, ten years ago. You see a lot of acquisitions um of hardware manufacturers for software companies. You see that they invest heavily into software, providing uh software solutions rather than just the printer. Everyone talks about solutions these days, and and they want to basically um bring a complete solution to the to the customer they they serve. Um so it's basically um that that is helping. Then also, you know, like removing bottlenecks. That that is what I what I mentioned before a little bit. Um, you know, like uh identify what is taking is killing the time, and then finding solutions for that. And um with AI, the big advantage is that you can reduce complexity food and and basically identify bottlenecks food and define workflows for it, involve AI for it, and you know, like get even more efficient. And that is basically what I think is AI really helping. It helps efficiency to provide complete solutions into the market.

SPEAKER_01:

It's really interesting. Like I like we said, um, it's it's certainly a theme kind of coming up. So you'll be you'll be coming to our um event uh and our conference, uh AI for industrial print in January uh in Munich, which we're really looking forward to. Can you just provide an outline of kind of the F essence of your your content at the event? So what you'll be speaking about, uh and why you developed Casey, which uh is your AI agent, how it helps customers and and how it may add productivity to your business. Tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. So um, yeah, AI is a big topic. How do we use it? What do we are we intending to make with it? There is so much, yeah. We could talk hours and days about it. Um, but I we have been thinking about what could be most interesting for for the audience at at the future print. And what we were basically thinking about last summer is how can we make Ugasoft more accessible from the outside? What is what is one of the main pain points that that customs raise to us is well, it would be nice if you would be available through all time zones in all languages. You know, like um if I have an issue on Saturday evening in a production run at high season, hey, how can can you can you help us? And I mean, Ugasoft, we are not not like super huge, so we don't have like thousands of employees doing support. So we had to find a way that we make ourselves more approachable, more accessible. So what we were basically doing is we started to implement an AI agent and we gave it the name Casey. Um and Casey is trained with Ugasoft content. So Casey is basically taking uh support questions and helping um with with answering them. The the funniest thing about is yes, we have global coverage, we have 24 by 7 availability, we have instant access, no waiting time. Um, we can train Casey constantly. We are updating it uh continuously with with, you know, like whenever we have a new release, whenever we have a new software feature, we're making sure that that case knows about it and speaks about it. And we have expert knowledge available to everyone, right? So if you go to the UGOSOT website, speak to KC and ask, hey, how that how does that and that work? KC explains it to you. And that that is a huge um improvement for us internally, for our customers, because it's accessible. And and in the end, you know, like what is what is important today? And today it's all about access. You want to share information that are um interesting for people, so so we want to give it to them. And that is basically the thing that we had in mind that we when we did Casey. And it's actually quite nice um to have this tool and also to speak about it. You know, like a bit about the pitfalls uh when when we when we had Casey first time live, uh we were testing it internally, and Casey was very, very nicely talking about our competitors. It's like, okay, that that's probably not the main intention we have, right? We want it to be more focused on our side. So we basically had to make sure that we train Casey not to speak too good about our competitors. Still, we wanted Casey to you know to take knowledge that is available, you know, like color management is basically a theory out there that is described on several platforms, several people know how it works. So why shouldn't take Casey that from there and speak about it? Because you know, like we know don't know everything about Colored Ugasoft, we know a lot, but not everything. So we had to basically find a way that that it takes the information that we wanted to take, but don't talk the information that it doesn't we didn't want to take about talk about it. So that that was quite funny to set that up. Um then we we were also trying, you know, to to limit Casey that it's not speaking about whatever, right? So uh one of my uh colleagues were testing Casey and was trying to, you know, like to go to put it off. And then Casey suddenly started to give food recipes. Like, okay, that's also not what we want. So that is a bit the challenge when you have an AI that that it talks enough, but not enough, and not not not the wrong things. And that was quite a fun experience. And um, yeah, I think it's it's a super handy tool, super, super, super cool to set up, super cool to to extend further. And yeah, overall, it it gives a good experience, it's simplifying access, it's it's helping our customers to get information that they need. And yeah, I think that that's certainly a versus story to share.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. I mean, it really is. AI really is incredible. It's it's kind of revolutionizing the way you as a business can function and uh you know it's a path forward to you know almost a new world in a way. It's really is quite astounding. Um just as long as it's not, you know, uh as long as Casey's not giving you cooking advice rather than uh rather than you know colour management. So um uh with these podcasts, we're obviously looking more broadly as well. So as a final question, it'd be really good to get your kind of thoughts on what you see as the next kind of development in the industry in the next three to five years. What what what do you see happening in the print industry?

SPEAKER_02:

Mm-hmm. Sure. So what what we basically see is that technology itself is not no longer the the biggest challenge. It's more like the pace of change. Yeah, everything is so quick, everything is so fast, information is everywhere. Uh you know, like you you're basically flooded with with everything that you get there. So um this year, you know, like at the beginning of this year, I was but like, hey, my my work has completely changed. Uh you know, I in the old days I was basically uh spending days to find information. And now I basically have everything immediately. Now it's just a matter of how do I use it, what do I make with it. And that change, I think, affects um almost all of us, right? So it it is the world, how we work has changed. And and that uh will be more extreme in the next couple of years. Um for us, it is we want to stay ahead of the curve, we want to use this technology, we want to improve our workflows, we want to improve our customer experience, but we have to make sure that we are not losing people that are not, you know, like already on that on that level we are. So it is in and that is a bit the thing. Um it's balancing um where where where are people? How do we make sure we we take them with us? But how do we still give enough um innovation and and you know, like new things to other people? And that that becomes more difficulty. So managing the different levels of um yeah of information, right? Um yes, so that that is one thing that I think is quite extreme for us. Um we are also seeing that the the opportunity is in in in helping business becoming more agile, more customization, shorter turnaround times, quicker connections to customers. Front ends become more simpler, the back ends are terrible, right? Because there you have all the logic, there you have the AI, there is there is basically where you we do all the the nice things so that the front end is super simple and the customer can just consume it and do the right things. Um for me, it's not just about AI, it's it's it's basically how do we make use of AI? How do we do we give AI, how do we utilize AI to give customers the best possible experience to make their life easier, not overwhelming, um, faster and more approachable, and and and knowledge uh goes into the into the right way. Um so so basically it's rather empowering and customers with AI than overwhelming then. That that that is the biggest stretch, and that I also see as the next couple of years will stay quite a big stretch to to balance that always.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh yeah, it it's really exciting. Um it's it's gonna be such a uh fascinating next few years. Thank you very much, Anna, for talking to me today. Uh we're really looking forward to seeing you and seeing your talk at the AI conference uh in January. I hope you have a lovely Christmas and new year and we'll look forward to seeing you then.

SPEAKER_02:

Awesome. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00:

I wish you were the same. Take care of you.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you very much. See you later.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, you can subscribe now for more great audio content coming up. And visit futureprint.tech for the latest news, partner interviews, in-depth industry research, and to catch up on content from future print events. We'll see you next time on the Future Prince Podcast.

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