The Value Of Color

Color jobs have been on the rise for years. To meet the demand, in-plant managers are increasingly turning to color copiers.

by Mike Llewellyn

Battelle is a Columbus, Ohio-based research and development firm that relies heavily on its in-plant's color copying services. Brian Soppelsa, manager of Publications Management and Production, says his shop had been using a Xerox DocuColor 30 for five years, and has had a Canon CLC 1150 for just over one year now.

"They're busy machines," he observes. "We run almost everything off of them—a lot of proposals, reports, presentations and in-house distribution pieces."

"Busy" is how most managers describe their color copiers. The demand for splashy work is always increasing, and as manufacturers roll out more affordable machines, in-plant managers are finding it easier to cash in on color.

"For us, it has been a matter of cost," says Paul Hughes, Printing Department supervisor at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, in Frazer, Pa. "Once the cost of color came down, the color copying just started selling."

Hughes says his shop, which operates a Xerox 2060, a Canon 5000 and a Canon 1000, has been running up to 400,000 copies per month lately, several times higher than the color volume just two years ago. As he spoke his shop was running 30,000 copies of a company newsletter on the Xerox 2060.

Battelle's Soppelsa says he had to get a new color copier because business demanded it.

The new copier "did nothing but pick our business up," he reports. "Our color volume steadily grows and black and white steadily drops."

In fact, Soppelsa contends that over the past two years, he has watched the volume of color jobs coming into his shop increase by 50 percent.

Carl Zalaznik, supervisor of Printing Services at Fort Lauderdale's Holy Cross Hospital, runs a Canon CLC 700. Zalaznik says color copiers have saved his in-plant money.

For example, he points out, the shop no longer has to worry about having color separations made. Instead, the hospital's in-plant has an on-demand capability that has come in very handy for urgent jobs.

"We're using it to copy portions of patients' medical charts," he explains. "When they need a legal copy of a photograph made, they used to have to go to an outside shop." Now the copier—which the shop picked up a little over two years ago—not only saves money, but provides a new source of revenue. And that's what Zalaznik is especially interested in.

Having a color copier is an essential component at the Holy Cross in-plant, he says, because the machine is used for such a variety of jobs.

"Yesterday I even made four-color labels to put on all the Christmas presents for the doctors," he says.

The broad use of the CLC 700 has him looking to increase his color copying service.

"I'm already wishing we had one that goes a little faster," he says. "We're doing 4,000 to 5,000 copies per month." He adds that the CLC 700 churns out about six to seven pages a minute.

"Pretty soon we'll be stepping up," he predicts.

Up in Cincinnati, the city's Printing Services manager, Steve Howe, says he's also in the process of upgrading—to a Xerox DocuColor 12. Howe's shop will use the machine primarily to handle internal documents, brochures and promotional material, he says. He expects run lengths not to exceed 2,000.

"The new copier will be fully networked," says Howe. "We'll have that capability, and that's critical."

Howe says increasingly more of his clients have learned of the benefits of networked copiers, and now they're looking to the in-plant to provide those services.

Zalaznik says the key to the success of his shop's color copier is its convenience. The executive secretaries at the hospital, he says, are very pleased with the ability to simply e-mail a job to the shop.

"Before we got this, people were going to Kinko's," he says.

Zalaznik says he's happy with the CLC 700 specifically because it is so well suited to the electronic job submissions coming into his shop.

"We're starting to get a lot more jobs in electronic format, over e-mail, which we can now send right to the RIP," he says.

While he's obviously pleased with the performance of the CLC 700, he reports that it's not 100 percent problem-free. Paper jams occasionally bring production to a halt.

"Paper jams happen mostly on a Monday morning," he says. "The reason is that the temperature [in the facility] goes a few degrees up over the weekend."

He says choosing the right paper for the CLC solves the problem.

"Usually just replacing the paper fixes it," he says. "We use Hammermill Color Copy paper."

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Sidebar: Finding The Perfect Fit

Managers agree there's no single color copier that's perfect for every in-plant. As a result, the task of selecting the ideal copier has spawned some effective and clever solutions.

Carl Zalaznik, of Holy Cross Hospital Printing Services, in Fort Lauderdale, advises in-plant managers to be demanding of vendors.

"I would suggest that they try several different machines. Have [vendors] bring it in for a one-week demo," he recommends.

Zalaznik's shop checked out several machines, and would not have chosen a Canon if he hadn't seen it operate in a real-life scenario.

"You never know until you hook it up to your network what kinds of problems you will have," he notes. "That's when we found out that the Canon machine worked."

Brian Soppelsa, publications manager at Battelle, in Columbus, Ohio, says it's important to get assurances from a vendor's client list that the equipment you are planning to purchase is ideal for the shop.

The user list, he says, was supplied by the vendor.

To decide which copier was right for the city of Cincinnati's in-plant, Steve Howe says he organized a very simple—and very effective test.

"We looked at all the major competitors, and we gave them sample jobs," he says. The in-plant then took that output and showed it to a variety of customers to find out which job they thought looked best. He says the Xerox won, hands down.

"And pricing was a big factor, too," he adds.

Sidestepping the purchasing route altogether is another option to consider. If, like Paul Hughes, your shop leases (or plans to lease) a color copier, there are ways to use that agreement to save money and increase efficiency.

Hughes is printing department supervisor at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, in Frazer, Pa. He says his shop operates two leases—one with Xerox and one with IKON for its two Canons. Because he runs the leases simultaneously, he can make the companies compete for his business, thus driving down his costs.

Hughes explains that if one machine goes down, it's not registering any clicks, and that company is losing money. So both companies maintain their machines very well, at very reasonable costs, he says.

And as an added bonus, each machine has a click threshold that, once crossed, drops Hughes' cost-per-copy significantly, translating into higher revenue for the shop.

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