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ePS Monarch

ePS Monarch at a glance
VendorCAI Software, Graphic Communications division (formerly Print ePS / eProductivity Software; originally EFI)
HeadquartersPittsburgh, PA (Graphic Communications division); CAI Software corporate: Lincoln, RI
OwnershipPrivately held; majority investor Symphony Technology Group (STG)
DeploymentOn-premises; hosted arrangements available
Target marketLarge, high-volume, multi-plant commercial print and mailing operations
IndustriesHigh-volume commercial print, direct mail and mailing services, multi-plant print production
PricingNot published; tailored to size, volumes, and modules
Websiteprintepssw.com/monarch-enterprise-print-management-software

What ePS Monarch is

Monarch is an enterprise-grade management information system (MIS) and ERP for the printing industry. The target sits at the top of the market: operations with multiple plants, complex scheduling requirements, and large material inventories. Within the Graphic Communications product family, which also includes ePS Pace and PrintSmith Vision, Monarch is the heavyweight. Many US enterprise printers still know it by its former name, EFI Monarch.

Where Monarch comes from

EFI introduced Monarch in 2008 as its enterprise print offering, assembling it from the Hagen OA MIS toolset, Prograph production planning with JDF control, PrintFlow dynamic scheduling, and Auto-Count shop-floor data collection. The Hagen part of that reaches back decades: Hagen Systems was one of several print MIS developers consolidated into Printcafe, which EFI acquired in 2003. In 2022 EFI carved out its productivity software business as eProductivity Software under Symphony Technology Group, and Monarch moved with the Print ePS division. The merger of equals between Print ePS and CAI Software, announced in October 2025, placed the product inside CAI Software's Graphic Communications division, where it is now marketed as ePS Monarch. The label on the box has changed repeatedly. The platform and its installed base carried through each time.

What it covers

Estimating, order management, and scheduling are centralized across plants, with capacity planning and dynamic schedule optimization derived from the PrintFlow engine. The Material Director module runs inventory and materials, alongside purchasing and supply-chain functions, job approval workflows, and job costing. Direct machine interfaces collect shop-floor data and feed actual production back into costing and scheduling, filling a role comparable to what an MES does in other manufacturing industries. Financial reporting and profitability analysis are built in. An optional business process management engine handles custom workflow automation.

Who buys it, and how it is sold

High-volume commercial printers, direct mail and mailing service providers, and diversified print groups running shared production across several sites. The segment is small, capital-intensive, and largely North American, and at this scale the number of realistic software candidates is genuinely limited. Midsize single-plant shops belong with Pace or a comparable mid-market system.

Deployment has traditionally been on-premises, with hosted arrangements available; the vendor publishes neither deployment specifics nor prices. Quotes are tailored to business size, print volumes, and required modules, which makes the license only one line in the budget. At this scale a structured total cost of ownership view covering implementation, interfaces, and internal staffing is the number that decides the case.

Where it wins, where it loses

For a multi-plant printer running high volumes, Monarch is the deepest option in the Graphic Communications family, and the Hagen and PrintFlow concepts have been proven in demanding plants over a long period. Below that threshold the complexity is difficult to justify: a single-site shop that buys Monarch pays for coordination it does not need and carries an implementation project sized for someone else. The long lineage cuts both ways elsewhere too. The platform predates the cloud-native generation, rollouts are substantial projects, and the pool of experienced consultants is small. Ask where Monarch sits in a portfolio that now holds several overlapping MIS brands plus the newer cloud-native Nubium platform, and take the answer as a written roadmap commitment rather than a sales assurance.

What the ePS Monarch website looks like

Current view of the vendor homepage, captured by our editorial team.

Screenshot of the ePS Monarch vendor homepage

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Frequently asked questions

What happened to the EFI Monarch name?

It became ePS Monarch. The name changed when EFI spun out its productivity software unit as eProductivity Software in 2022, and the product later moved into the Graphic Communications division of CAI Software after the merger announced in October 2025. The platform itself and its installed base continued through these ownership changes.

How does ePS Monarch differ from ePS Pace?

Monarch is the enterprise system in the family: multi-plant coordination, very large job volumes, and complex scheduling driven by the PrintFlow engine. Pace is the browser-based mid-market offering with integrated accounting, built for single-site or moderately complex shops. The family positioning treats Pace as the growth system and Monarch as the step taken once volumes and site counts exceed what mid-market platforms handle comfortably.

Where does the scheduling capability in Monarch come from?

From PrintFlow, the dynamic scheduling technology EFI combined with the Hagen OA toolset when it assembled the product. It works together with Auto-Count style shop-floor data collection, so actual machine output feeds back into the plan instead of the schedule running on estimates alone. That closed loop between floor and schedule is one of the main reasons enterprise printers choose the system.

What does ePS Monarch cost, and how is it deployed?

Pricing is not published; the vendor states that quotes are tailored to business size, print volumes, and the modules required. Deployment has traditionally been on-premises, with hosted arrangements available for organizations that prefer not to run their own infrastructure. Given the scale of a typical rollout, implementation services, integrations, and training are major cost lines next to the software itself.