Expert Advice on the Path to Production Inkjet

After his opening keynote at the fifth annual Inkjet Summit in April, conference chair Marco Boer, VP of IT Strategies, moderated a panel discussion with executives from Canon Solutions America, HP, Ricoh and Xerox, the conference's keynote-level sponsors. They talked about advances in inkjet technology and its role in multichannel communications.

Eric Wiesner, GM at HP PageWide Industrial, HP Inc., noted that the Internet has largely been a failure as an advertising medium because of its poor click-through rates. This creates opportunity for direct mail and other printed marketing materials.

Printers can seize the opportunity with the help of production inkjet systems, Wiesner said. He counseled printers that when they get into digital inkjet printing, they actually are entering the data business — data management is the key to success in digital print workflows. He also advised them to be clear about the total costs of owning and operating production inkjet equipment.

We are seeing a resurgence of interest in print among consumers in general and Millennials in particular, according to Mike Herold, director of Global Marketing Inkjet Solutions at Ricoh. He said that a key question for inkjet adopters who want to capitalize on it is, “What is your strategy independent of the technology?”

This means temporarily removing technology from the decision-making equation and concentrating on the culture of the business into which the inkjet press will be introduced. Only after intentions and objectives are clear should a choice of platforms be made. There is no advantage for inkjet systems manufacturers, Herold said, in selling inkjet presses to printing companies that are not ready to be successful with them.

Robert Stabler, senior VP and GM of Xerox’s Continuous Feed Business, noted that his company’s commitment to inkjet goes back to early experiments with the technology at its legendary PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) facility. Today, Xerox is focusing on making inkjet more accessible with entry-level platforms and solutions that help inkjet equipment to be better at running standard offset papers.

Stabler said that because there is no shortage of competition among manufacturers in the inkjet space, printers have a plentiful selection of inkjet equipment to invest in. He predicted that the fast-turnaround production of books on inkjet presses will reduce the offshoring of book work by making it more cost competitive to produce at home. He also foresaw growth in catalogs, which, thanks to content printed variably for individual recipients, could emerge as 1:1 marketing media in their own right.

What today’s print buyers expect from their print service providers are “tactical, relevant marketing metrics” that demonstrate ROI for the print spend, according to Eric Hawkinson, senior director of marketing with Canon Solutions America Production Print Solutions. He encouraged printers to “revolutionize” their business by embracing inkjet, which offers their customers precisely this kind of value.

He urged adopters to be certain that they have enough volume to justify investing in high-capacity inkjet equipment. Another consideration, Hawkinson said, is finding operators who are qualified to run these sophisticated devices.