Variable Printing A Tremendous Opportunity

In-plants are in a great position to take advantage of the benefits that variable data printing has to offer.

By Regis J. Delmontagne

Since it first appeared on the market in 1993, variable data digital printing (VDP) has gone through a remarkable evolution: From an impressive technology for which few people could figure out an actual use, it has become a central tool in creating an exciting new world of high-powered communication.

When the industry portal WhatTheyThink.com staged a webinar on the subject, it reported the largest participant registration it had ever had. VDP products were ubiquitous at PRINT 05.

A variety of factors are coming together to create tremendous excitement about the future of VDP, and of print itself as a more dynamic communications medium than ever before. In-plants will be right in the center of all this action.

NPES observes trends in VDP from a dual perspective; we are both an association of manufacturers and suppliers and a co-sponsor of the industry's leading trade shows, Graph Expo and PRINT. These shows have been the venues in which VDP technology has first appeared. Show visitors throughout the last decade have appraised the new options with that age-old question, "Just how can I make money with this?"

The answer to that question has changed over the years. In the process, VDP has become profoundly important to in-plants.

Practical Applications

Allstate Insurance, for instance, has implemented VDP widely to improve its invoicing, policy statements, promotional mailings and a variety of jobs it produces for its agents and offices. Print Communication Operations Director Robert J. Tierney says "variable data applications in the black-and-white world are enormous," adding that he's also seeing more color in transaction documents. In the near future, he says, high-quality full-color invoices and other routine mailings will be part of organizations' branding efforts.

At ING Financial Services, black-and-white VDP is well established, says Teri Patrick, head of the Des Moines-based company's Document Management Center.

"In the last year, we have been doing more color VDP," she adds, saying the company is personalizing brochures, seminar invitations, self-mailers and other pieces. "We're looking to add kit-on-demand."

ING wants to do away with the old practice of inserting separate sales sheets into a folder, and replace this with personalized booklets produced all at once.

"Our goal is to not have any warehoused items," Patrick says, "and to print everything on demand."

This rapid expansion has been made possible by some significant changes in the production environment in recent years.

Faulty Files

From the beginning, complete personalization was the chief promise of variable data digital printing, but few users were able to take advantage of it. The major roadblocks were in the customer's files, where information resided in multiple formats, incomplete records and error-packed databases.

Instead, printers used the new tools for short-run color printing. The next logical evolution was "versioning." While not personalized on a per-piece basis, a versioned document offered quite short runs (often only a few dozen) of slightly different versions of a single master.

Three things are happening that are both promoting VDP and enhancing the value of VDP-savvy in-plants:

1. The data quality logjam has been broken.

2. We're seeing a convergence of transaction documents (like invoices) with marketing documents. The work being done at ING, Allstate and elsewhere goes far beyond the familiar old bill-stuffer. Instead, the invoice itself becomes a vehicle for cross-selling and customer service.

3. Increasingly more organizations are recognizing that personalizing their mailings yields measurably better results and delivers identifiable value to their customers.

Consider, for example, the simple option to print some invoices in large-type versions based on customer requests. These large-type documents don't have to be segregated from the rest of a company's huge billing press run. Instead, they're mixed in with the rest of the run.

A variety of sales messages, coupons and other content can be easily mixed into these press runs. A customer who has recently had a service call, for instance, can find a note on his or her statement asking if the problem has been resolved, and perhaps directing the customer to an online satisfaction survey. Integrated bar codes can help track customer responses to specific content.

A critical factor in all of this creativity is that the document assembly itself is automated. No designer or other person has to "decide" which version of a document is to be printed and sent to which customer. Instead, the company develops document assembly "rules" and keeps its data current and accurate. The CRM and print systems, working seamlessly together, do the rest.

Of course, transactional documents are just one piece of a multiplying pie. Sales flyers, brochures, point-of-sale displays, business cards and other tools can now be targeted more precisely and produce greater communications impact.

Some gaps remain. At Allstate, Tierney says "the biggest gap we are facing is a robust front-end system that ties all of our digital equipment together." He's waiting for a system that will automatically accept orders, determine the right devices for production, assist in file preflight, execute the job and direct kit assembly.

"Right now," he says, "there's no one thing out there of which the industry says, 'this is the answer.' "

VDP opens tremendous opportunities to in-plants. From a technology in search of users to an indispensable key to future print viability, variable data printing has come a long way. The period of experimentation is largely over and this powerful new tool is ready to go to work.

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Regis J. Delmontagne is retiring at the end of this month after serving for 29 years as president of NPES, a trade association representing more than 400 member companies engaged in the manufacturing, sale and distribution of equipment, supplies, systems, software and services for printing, publishing and converting. Mr. Delmontagne has also served, since 1982, as president of the Graphic Arts Show Company (GASC), which owns and manages the international PRINT exhibitions, the national Graph Expo and Converting Expo shows, as well as regional exhibitions like the VUE/POINT Conference.