PRINTING United Alliance is grateful to serve its members who make such significant impacts on the printing industry. Through our Member Spotlights, we continue to recognize our members, and help our community get to know their peers better, both professionally and personally. The following is a Q&A and video interview with Marc Raad, president of Significans Automation.
Please provide a brief history of your company and its core mission.
Since its inception in 2018, the success of Significans Automation has come from having a small, growing, dedicated team of workflow automation and integration specialists who are laser-focused on the customer’s unique production needs. Our mission is to deliver highly customized, next-generation automation solutions to every sector of the printing and packaging print industries across the U.S. and Canada, regardless of size or specialty. We intend to expand into Europe by early 2026. We offer programming and expertise in custom workflow development, communication and project management, prepress training, end-to-end business integrations, and much more. Our corporate slogan, We Are Integration (TM), best describes our team’s mindset and ultimate goal.
With automation rapidly evolving (particularly with advances in AI and intelligent workflows), how does Significans Automation stay ahead of these trends, and in what ways are you incorporating AI or other emerging print technologies into client solutions?
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) reshapes industrial processes, Significans bridges the gap between traditional operations and intelligent automation. Our approach centers on proven, reliable automation practices utilizing sophisticated rules-based and business-logic-driven systems, rather than machine learning algorithms. This ensures predictable, transparent, and immediately deployable vendor-neutral solutions that integrate seamlessly and cost-efficiently with current workflows. As machine learning continues to evolve rapidly, we actively monitor all technological advances, positioning ourselves to thoughtfully incorporate emerging AI capabilities as they mature, and demonstrate clear value for our clients. We deliver automation that works today, while preparing our print partners for the disruptive innovations of tomorrow.
Our team has utilized AI for automation of prepress checks, layout optimization, faster processing of large volumes of data, and much more. One recent example of the game-changing power of combining customized workflow automation with AI, was an online signage printer based in Pennsylvania that reduced a staggering four months of job processing to just six hours, creating about 38,000 signs in just one evening. We’ve been deploying specific AI technologies into our workflows for several years – including Aggregate to Generative AI, and Narrow AI, to Super intelligent AI techniques.
What are some future goals for Significans Automation? Are there any upcoming features or developments that your clients can look forward to?
Our overall goal is simple: make print professionals more profitable by automating and integrating every essential process – from order intake to final delivery, from prepress to finishing. To continue to lead the industry in workflow automation and integration solutions, we always tell clients exactly what our highly customized technology can and cannot do. We provide upfront objective guidance about limitations, timelines, and expectations. Next, we never claim vague “efficiency” improvements. Instead, we target specific bottlenecks in current workflows and create measurable improvements that drive both immediate and long-term results. We engage in honest conversations, making sure our clients understand exactly what’s happening and how we can work together to move forward. Finally, we’ve always believed that we must be much more than just a workflow software provider. We must be a caring partner heavily invested in our customers’ current and future success.
As far as upcoming features or developments, we’ll continue to rollout exceptional new products such as S-Launch, Enfocus Apps, custom built AI workflow solutions, and more. Where we see a need, we’ll come up with the best solution. Most of the time, this is client-driven. Rest assured that as the print industry evolves and becomes more complex, so too will our workflow solutions evolve to meet any current and future challenge.
Why did you decide to join the Alliance? What resources do you plan to or have already utilized through your membership?
The decision to join was driven by our attendance at the new PRINTING United AI Pavilion. We view the AI Pavilion as a natural fit for us, as automation and AI are now central to our identity and the ongoing success of our clients. We are always pro-active at spreading the word, extolling the enormous untapped benefits of our customizable AI solutions at major industry events including PRINTING United Expo, the Wide Format, Digital Packaging and Leadership Summits, and others.
As a first-time exhibitor at PRINTING United Expo, what are you most excited about experiencing or showcasing at this year’s event?
As a first-time independent exhibitor, we’re most excited about connecting with the printing and packaging industries and showcasing our expertise in next-generation, transformational workflow automation solutions in combination with our AI-powered innovations. For example, we’ll be demonstrating how our proprietary solutions, such as the AI Fuzzy Matcher app and S-Launch submission system, have helped production teams scale smartly and eliminate literally thousands of hours lost to costly, error-prone manual processes. We’ll be engaging with attendees interested in learning about everything from AI basics to advanced AI solutions for print production automation. I am particularly excited to discuss the “State of AI adoption and AI’s Value Proposition” during my presentation at the AI Pavilion Sponsor Panels.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
Every printing business is unique and therefore requires highly customized solutions to get the most from the equipment and people they already have. Our team, with a combined 350+ years of hands-on experience, is totally vendor neutral. We know the top workflow technologies on the market inside-out and how they function. Above all, we understand their strengths and their weaknesses. This allows us to mix and match and deploy the best solutions for each individual customer based on their specific production needs. We are not – and never will be – a ‘one-size-fits-all’ integrator.
Finally, some printers believe that deploying workflow solutions is a costly ‘all-or-nothing’ proposition. It’s not! Many of our successful clients have begun their automation journey in stages, reaped immediate ROI and other benefits, then moved on to automate other crucial areas of their business that cry out for improvements.
For more information on Significans Automation, visit their website at https://significans.com/.
Marc Raad, president of Significans Automation and first-time exhibitor at PRINTING United Expo 2025, discusses how the company has emerged as a leading force in highly customized workflow automation for the printing and packaging industries. He highlights new innovations, including S-Launch, Enfocus Apps, and expanded custom AI workflows designed to make print businesses more efficient from order intake to final delivery. Raad also shares why Significans Automation joined PRINTING United Alliance, inspired by the inaugural PRINTING AI Pavilion and its alignment with the company’s vision for next-generation automation.