The tie-up has already led to additional business for ROI360, in the shape of long-standing Heidelberg customer Apple Colour in Bristol, which has recently replaced its existing web-to-print system with ROI360's ROI Storefront.

Heidelberg UK digital product manager Chris Matthews said: "We decided, as we have done in quite a lot of areas of our business to partner up to get better penetration into the market.

"We have quite a few salespeople out there in various disciplines across the UK talking to our customers, and where expertise is needed and we don't have it, it makes sense to partner with someone else."

He added: "Apple are quite a big Heidelberg customer – they've got an XL 75 and they've also got one of our digital Linoprint C901s and a Prinect workflow – so they were a good one to start with.

"What ROI has done with Storefront is make web-to-print more affordable by having a software-as-a-service [subscription] option."

Apple Colour, which has taken on an additional member of staff, Lindsey Butcher, to administer the ROI360 Storefront and to steer the company's web-to-print offering, is one of several joint Heidelberg and ROI360 customers, together with Northend Creative Print Solutions and Kingfisher Press.

Matthews said that varying degrees of integration were available between ROI360's Storefront software and Heidelberg's Prinect workflow, "depending on how far the customer wants to go with it and how much they want to invest".