On Thursday, November 13, two milestone events took place that will be important for the future of web-to-print systems in Europe.

The first was the declaration by a German patent court that a key Vistaprint patent was invalid. For several years, Vistaprint has been filing lawsuits against European web-to-print providers based on the European patent, and several companies had gotten out of the business or made financial settlements with Vistaprint. But one of them, Unitedprint, decided to fight the suit in patent court, and it has now prevailed. The court ruled the patent invalid because the technology involved had already been in general use when it was granted. This means that a dark cloud hanging over the market has been removed, and companies (both system vendors and printers) will be less hesitant about getting involved with web-to-print systems.

The second event was the acquisition of the web-to-print software developer diron, one of the leaders in the European market, by CeWe Color, Europe’s largest photofinisher. This will give diron access to CeWe Color’s huge financial resources, and it could help diron become a major international player in the web-to-print market.

You can find more details on both news items at www.beyond-print.net.

Printers sticking close to home with print production only should take a clue from AdWeek (11/5). As reported by IAB,

Marketers trying to reach the elusive 25- to 44-year-old Generation X segment, which is at the peak of its buying power, face several key obstacles, including splintered media consumption, a greater diversity in “lifestyles,” more penny-pinching habits than Baby Boomers and an aversion to traditional ads, eMarketer has found. Potential avenues of success include ads on social networks, boosting mobile marketing efforts and making online shopping more user-friendly.

For printers, this means that their customers may be finding traditional print marketing methods to be increasingly ineffective, and if those customers are not tracking their marketing channels, they may or may not know why.

Consequently, if marketers see an overall decline in responsiveness to print, they may assume that this decline is a general decline when, in fact, it may be due declines in certain demographics such as this one.

This potential “generation confusion” should be a great concern to printers. As marketers mix up their channel priorities, printers risk losing print jobs to electronic media when not all of this migration is warranted. In some cases, marketers may be better served by switching to electronic media. In others, it may be counter-productive.

Printers need to make sure they understand the dynamics of generational media. Not only as they continue to tweak their marketing services offerings, but also to protect themselves against unnecessary attrition from print. To do this, they need to understand which demographic segments respond most powerfully to which media. Then, they need to begin (or continue) to position themselves to provide (or protect) offerings that best serve each demographic segment.

Pundits have been saying for quite some time that printers need to better understand their customer’s customer, but now the drivers are changing. It used to be that understanding the end user would help printers sell various print applications. Now it may help them protect themselves from losing them.

I’m used to looking at the case studies from digital press and personalization software suppliers for the marketing effectiveness of 1:1 printing, but as “green” continues to gather steam as a hot marketing angle, I’m starting to rethink how I position this information.

This morning, I repositioned a case study from AutoNation and DME that many in this industry may already be familiar with.

In this study, DME overhauled its 1:1 printing workflow to enable AutoNation to eliminate its need to inventory and warehouse pre-printed offset shells that were subsequently personalized using black-and-white overprinting. Using XMPie’s PersonalEffect software, DME changed its workflow so that each campaign is single project, even though each campaign involves multiple brands and dealers. The business rules for composing the individualized offers are programmed independent of the design. All elements become data-driven variable objects instead of static fields. Thus, instead of using pre-printed stock, AutoNation’s campaigns are now printed, as needed, using plain, unprinted paper. The results were impressive. Responses to its direct mail pieces went up 35%. Revenues were up 65%.

But in this environment — so hot for green — these may not end up being the most compelling results. Consider the “green” impact of this switch. AutoNation no longer must warehouse pre-printed stock for different dealerships and brands.

Consequently, it also saves …

• the carbon footprint and resources used to pre-print each set of shells
• the carbon footprint and cost of warehousing those shells
• the fuel costs of transporting them.

Click here for the permanent archive containing the full article.

A new report from the Netherlands based market research firm Strategy Partners explores the advance in automated document process management:

The report describes the research done by Strategy Partners within Europe among a large number of organizations to identify the needs in automation of the current (office and high volume) document production and distribution processes. It will look at the influence of multi-channel, Going Green and other business trends. The results of the research are translated to practical solutions which can be implemented by organizations and managed service providers.

The traditional Print and Mail activities are changing rapidly. Due to the economic environment, business goals, technical developments and the market developments the requirements in communicating with internal and external customers is changing. The need to be able to communicate via the electronic media channels is increasingly becoming popular. The processes in the print and mail department are not dedicated any longer to paper printing and distribution. The market research shows that 25 percent of the respondents want to add multi-channel distribution to the current paper driven processes within the next two year. To optimize the production processes there is an upcoming requirement for Lean Six Sigma techniques. The implementation of an Automated Document Factory is also selected by 25 percent of the respondents as a implementation project for within the next two years. The Automated Document Factory is still valid solution, although the modern ADF requires electronic distribution capability, optimization based on Lean Six Sigma and integrated with ERP, CRM and other business applications.

The report (190 pages) is unique within the Enterprise Content Management, Output Management market research and analysis space. The first part of the report describes the history, market trends en developments in Output Management. Based on the discussions and on-line survey results a set of innovative solutions are discussed. The nature of these solutions is the practical usage and the quantifiable business benefits. The first part is ended with a template project plan and planning as support for the implementation of the discussed innovative solutions. The second part of the report describes the vendors who can deliver the technical and/or software components needed for the implementation.

You can download results from a user survey conducted as part of the study here.

The full report can be purchased from Strategy Partners.

Everybody wants to “go green” these days, and the printing industry has a compelling story to tell. But I have to say, we’re doing a pretty crummy job at it. Do a search on “green printing” and see what comes up. You’d think that printing on recycled paper was all there was to it.

I’ve been writing for a blog called “Greening Print Marketing” on The Inspired Economist (http://inspiredeconomist.com/), which focuses on “green” issues in the corporate world. Just for fun, here’s a list of the posts I’ve written to date. Thought it might spark some ideas:

• Greening Print Marketing: Getting Serious About Greenhouse Gases
• Forest Stewardship Council Files Suit Against U.S. Government
• Greening Print Marketing: Does Sustainability Matter to Print Buyers?

(more…)

Last week Beyond-Print published an article on the results of a poll at Swiss print portal Mediaforum on adoption rates the deployment of Web-enabled print services for customers.

200 respondents answered the question “Should printers offer their customers web-to-print solutions?” with:

• 29%: Yes, as soon as possible
• 45%: Only if the customers express a need for it
• 2%: Wait to see how the market shapes up
• 11%: It is only appropriate for niche markets
• 1%: No, there’s no market for it
• 12%: What’s web-to-print?

71% are playing wait and see or have not considered implementing a Web-enabled workflow.

So what do you think? Take the poll below, and share your experiences with Web-enabled Print in the comments.

 Loading ...

If you answered yes, what was your deciding factor? And did choose an off the shelf product or service, or did build your system?

Whenever new technology is introduced, adoption typically takes place in predictable phases—first in value-added high-margin niches. Once it gains a foothold, it eventually goes mainstream. Such is the case with digital printing technology. In every segment where digital printing technology has enjoyed success, there is a recurring theme: print producers want technology vendors to show them that
the new product can produce print quality that is equal to or surpasses the incumbent
technology.

The 8X loupe test

This practice, which can be called the “8x loupe” test, maintains that you must be able to replace the dominant, existing technology with something that delivers comparable performance and quality. In most cases, digital print technology vendors have done exactly that and have successfully met print quality criteria.

However, when you look at the offset-to-digital-migration, there are exceptions where digital has successfully ousted offset. Most notably, this has been when digital does not threaten core high volume market segments, where the focus is more on lowering production costs and improving productivity and less on quality or where there is a requirement for higher value personalization.

In these cases, the tradeoff clearly favors digital. Consequently, digital print has tended to thrive in environments and applications that require short runs, versioning, distribute-and-print, and printing of variable data intensive documents like direct mail, personalized collateral and invoices and statements.

However, digital printing technology vendors have thrown down the gauntlet, introducing digital technology that is more mature, delivers better quality and is advancing to the point where it can compete in the higher-volume territories of commercial offset printing.

Digital technology becomes a viable option for the newspaper industry

Given recent advances in digital technology, and changing requirements in the newspaper industry, it’s not surprising that the case is building for printing newspapers digitally. Océ, and other vendors have developed systems that are suitable for this very application. And, while digital printing platforms may not yet meet the productivity and cost requirements for producing large-circulation newspaper runs, there are significant opportunities in printing niche products and local and smaller circulation papers.

Certainly the newspaper industry faces significant challenges—dwindling readership and circulation, high costs, competition from alternate media like cable TV and the Internet. One way to address these issues is considering how digital printing technology can help newspapers generate new business and revenue streams. Digital technology offers unmatched flexibility for printing color on demand, without incurring the costs of additional plates, while enabling all content and advertising to be dynamic. What’s more, with digital technology, run length is less of an issue—print runs of one are as cost-effective as run lengths of 1,000.

Leveraging core strengths to create a new business model

Clearly, a perfect storm is gathering in the newspaper industry. The Internet has wrought havoc on publishers, weakening the underpinnings of the industry. Taking an “if-you-can’t beat-’em, join-em approach” many newspapers have successfully adopted Internet strategies and have been able to capture an increasing share of the Internet advertising spend. However, simply adding a web version of the paper isn’t enough to staunch the bleeding or halt the erosion in circulation and advertising.

Still, there is reason to be optimistic. Core strengths, like local knowledge, rich content, market research, advertising and distribution are significant competitive differentiators that newspapers can use to compete against other forms of media. However, publishers must find new ground: they must simultaneously embrace change and work to leverage these strengths while fundamentally transforming their businesses.

Surviving this period of transition requires developing strategies that move away from the broad-reach circulations dictated by underutilized fixed assets. Instead, newspapers must move towards desirable and relevant content products that deliver significantly higher performance to advertisers (higher margin as well). Obviously, this won’t happen overnight and most publishers won’t concede their broad-reach positions. However, at some time in the future, there will be an inflection point where broad-reach, highly rich and relevant content meets high-performance advertising. This is already occurring with electronic communications and will evolve in print as well.

Innovating new business models and working collaboratively with customers is a key element of the Océ business ethos. Our strengths in high-volume automated print manufacturing, expertise in data-intensive applications, and a fiercely customer-first culture, position us to partner with the newspaper industry to facilitate this transformation. In fact, Océ has been engaged with the newspaper industry all the way back to the turn of this century with the development of the Océ Digital Newspaper Network. Today, we are actively engaged in dialogues with major newspaper publishers to help them overcome the challenges they face, to explore new business models and opportunities by leveraging technology to change the way they do business. We look forward to continuing this path of innovation and transformation as today’s newspapers evolve into tomorrow’s highly personalized information delivery media.

WhatTheyThink, the leading online media organization serving the printing and publishing industry, announces the immediate availability of Inkjet Printing Primer: An Overview of Inkjet Printing in the Commercial Printing Industry. This 56-page report provides an easy-to-read rundown of current state of inkjet printing systems for wide-format graphics, digital commercial printing, and proofing in the U.S. commercial printing industry. The report provides a clear explanation of the various inkjet technologies—piezo, thermal, continuous—a “cast of characters” or a list of the manufacturers and systems currently on the market, a look at the applications (packaging, variable-data printing, transactional printing, industrial printing) for which inkjet systems are being developed, and conclusions and recommendations. The report also looks ahead to technologies and systems currently in development, such as MEMS-based inkjet printing systems.

The list price for the report is $195. If you sign up for the Digital Nirvana newsletter before next Tuesday you can save $25. After signing up you will receive a welcome email with instructions on how to get the discount.

If you already subscribe to the newsletter, next Tuesday’s edition will have instructions included too.

Sign up for the Digital Nirvana newsletter

Is digital printing a production technology? Or a marketing strategy? “Digital Printing: Transforming Business and Marketing Models,” part of Heidi Tolliver-Nigro’s Marketer’s Primer Series, argues for the latter. It presents digital production not as technology in the domain of print buyers and production managers but as the foundation of a comprehensive strategy for changing the way marketers look at document management and marketing.

This report is broken down into five sections.

Section 1: What digital printing is, along with its benefits and drawbacks from a marketing perspective. Examines traditional “sticking points,” including binding and finishing and the availability of substrates. How these characteristics drive key marketing applications.

Section 2: A closer look at each of these applications. Each discussion includes a series of short case studies in each of eight marketing classifications that provide key insights into how these applications are used in the real world.

Section 3: New ways of evaluating cost critical to digital printing success, including cost per piece, cost per lead, and ROI. Hypotheticals are used to drive the points home.

Section 4: Five “critical success factors” that enable marketers to take maximum advantage of digital printing technology. Includes key insights into helping marketers choose the right service provider.

Section 5: Final conclusions and additional resources as a next step.

The goal of the report is for marketers to be left with the understanding that the importance of digital printing has nothing to do with the technology—its costs, its output capabilities, or the applications it can produce, although many of them are discussed. It’s about transforming how they think about marketing.

The important thing is not digital printing technology itself, but the way it can be combined with other technologies (particularly databases, email, wireless, and the Internet) to create broader solutions that make a real difference in how business market their products, as well as how they communicate with customers on a short-term and long-term basis and present their brands.

The information is presented both from the perspective of small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), as well as large corporate marketers.

Single-user versions of the report can be purchased from the What They Think store, as well as from the Digital Printing Reports website. Licensed versions for internal and external distribution can be purchased from Research and Markets and Market Research, as well as from the Digital Printing Reports website.

“Digital Printing: Transforming Business and Marketing Models” is part of Heidi Tolliver-Nigro’s Marketer’s Primer Series, which also includes “1:1 (Personalized) Printing: Boosting Profits Through Relevance” and “Web-to-Print: Transforming Document Management and Marketing Models.” All three primers are designed both as authoritative primers for marketers and as internal training tools for printers.