Digital printing is not about costs but about widening the range of services it can offer printers. By Rod Hayes.

　　The dilemma facing printers in the small to medium enterprise (SME) end of the industry in deciding whether to invest in digital printing is difficult to resolve. Looking to Heidelberg for inspiration is unlikely to prove overly helpful, for despite the astonishing success of its monochrome Digimaster series and the ever widening acceptability of the NexPress, this success has in the main been achieved in a very narrow, clearly defined sector.

　　Where sales come from

　　Chris Matthews, Heidelberg UK's head of digital sales, freely admits to knowing exactly where the sales of its black and white 110 pages per minute and now the 150 pages per minute Digimaster presses have come from. "We have gone out after Xerox customers, and though we have grown our market share to getting on for 20%, there is still a lot to play for as Xerox still has most of the sector." But it should not be overlooked either that this sector is expanding. The story in colour is little different, though it is not Xerox customers this time that Mr Matthews is focusing on, but on a particular type of Heidelberg customer. In his sights are printers with a large investment in B1 machines.

　　Spin off value added work

　　A good example would be the Anton Group. Turnover approaching £31m, garnered mainly from direct mail and facilities management services, it found favour with the NexPress because it can match the litho presses as a perfect supporting unit to handle spin off value added work.

　　Workflow issues are key in both the black and white and the colour segments, and often the investment in the type of workflow is as important as the press. Mr Matthews adds: "Ultimately the choice of machine is driven by the application. Look at short run books for example, the opportunities are growing in this area for turnkey installations, but the infrastructure and business plan has to be in place before the press investment is made." Heidelberg's digital press offering is very narrow and superbly focused, but no matter how you look at it, Heidelberg has little to offer in the way of digital presses to interest a busy B2 installation at the crossroads. High speed black and white is not his bag; the NexPress investment would have to have a business plan based a good deal on future speculation rather than positive assessments. Besides all this, we are talking here of an investment in excess of £500,000 by the time a new workflow is incorporated and additional finishing and converting is installed.

　　For a smaller scale, toe in the water digital press investment, it is probably better to look elsewhere, but where do you go? Xerox has the range of digital equipment ideal for a transition investment but many suggest its understanding of the SME litho sector is also transitional and has yet to mature into an understanding that bears comparison with Heidelberg.

　　Kevin O'Donnell, Docucolor product manager, disputes this. "I think Xerox is perfectly placed on at least two counts to give advice. One, we have a range of printing devices that start off with a small inkjet printer ranging in steps through to the IGen3. This leads to the second reason why Xerox is a good first port of call. We want printers to make money now and in the future, so we have what we call the MPP (Marketing Partnership Programme)".

　　MPP is designed as a step by step assessment of a printer's business and takes a pretty intensive three days. There is a fee for this service, (though to be fair, relatively modest) and Mr O'Donnell explains how MPP works: "Initially there is an assessment of where the printer is now and if there is no business plan, help is available to draw one up, but the overall goal is to settle on a starting point and decide where the printer wants to be in three years' time and then formulate a strategy of how to get there."

　　He sees MPP as doing the risk analysis before the investment, not afterwards. He adds: "A Docucolor 12 could be an ideal starting point, and at around £200 a month it is an ideal machine to start on what we call the 'New Business of Printing'. This term covers making money in a familiar market place but in a different way."

　　Path to growth

　　Xerox will certainly look to using MPP as its path to growth, and will follow up the initial MPP on a regular basis, perhaps quarterly, perhaps longer. "The DC12 could become the Docucolor 6060 or the IGen3, but it is the printer's business success that will give our growth."

　　It can be seen already that the dilemma facing sheetfed printers on whether they should progress into digital colour does not really boil down to a question of choosing a NexPress or an IGen3. It is not even cost per page that is the issue. It is much more fundamental than that. There is a variety of suppliers out there with machines all capable of printing to a high standard and this drives the cost per page down and the quality up. As Mr Matthews says: "The choice is application driven." In other words, fit the tool to the job.

　　A good example to take is the Canon 3200. Now to an offset purist this machine's output is probably distinctive and recognisably toner-based, but so what? When put into an application driven format its colour is very acceptable and cost-effective.

　　Far from ideal

　　Formara at Southend-on-Sea has one and Frieddie Kienzler, its managing director, says: "When I joined Formara four or so years ago, the industry transition of ever smaller run lengths, jobs with fewer copies but printed more often, and greater numbers of documents were beginning to get into stride. At the time digital was far from an ideal solution, particularly colour which had a garish slightly oily look to it, but it was clearly where the future lay."

　　As it was then and possibly as it is now, much of Formara's output was produced offset. Blanket to blanket Ryobi 3200s took care of black and white short run, a four-colour Shinohara and a two-colour GTO all looked after the longer run lengths.

　　"What has transformed us is the installation of two Canon IR110s monochrome printers and the Canon 3200 colour machine. The colour has a realistic appearance similar to offset, but the workflow exploits the value of working digital," says Mr Kienzler.

　　The Canon IR110 is a variant of the Heidelberg Digimaster but the workflow at Formara is from EFI. Formara has incorporated Velocity Split and this allows colour work to be preprinted on the Canon 3200 and then placed into the IR110. During the printing of the black and white, Velocity will draw from the bin in which the pre-printed colour sheets are stored and insert them into the appropriate place within the document at 110 pages per minute.

　　Value lies elsewhere

　　The cost of the Canon 3200 is little more than a half-decent ctp system, but its value lies elsewhere as Mr Kienzler explains. "We are now winning orders for work that wasn't even conceived of a few years ago because it would have been possible economically. Pie charts, screened images are not possible on the Ryobi perfectors." The success of going digital has had a surprising effect. Formara has installed a four-colour Shinohara with ctp and is about to replace its ageing GTO with a new B3 two-colour machine. Mr Kienzler sees a virtuous circle. Both conventional and digital generate work for each other.

　　Formara clearly as a business model is worth a look, but Mr Kienzler had to make many of his investment decisions off his own bat and chase after his requirements as he perceived and defined them. In doing this another very distinctive dilemma arises that is being addressed by Chris Baker, marketing and commercial manager, Konica UK.

　　Konica is one of a number of suppliers bringing colour digital printing machines to market able to produces print of a quality the equal to offset at a rate of between 30 and 70 copies per minute of which every sheet can be different.

　　His dilemma is a vexing one; he has a good story to tell but to whom He says: "Our ultimate goal is to go after the lower end of the commercial offset sector, a market well away from our traditional sector of print for pay and large corporates." His machine and others like it are good enough to go after commercial offset. The Mr Bakers of this world know it, but the SME printer does not. In other words it would seem that Konica has little choice but to join forces with a partner already with strong links in the SME print sector. A search which could be difficult.

　　Apex Digital Graphics could be a possible partner; a strong presence in B3, good presses, ctp systems and a DI press and Robert Usher, joint director, says: "Digital printing systems are like all new developments; we keep a watching brief.

　　The market is shifting

　　"A few years ago we were maintaining over 200 Ryobi 3200 perfectors in the London area. Now this is down to single figures. Sales of DI machines, whether Heidelberg or our own, are not that strong, so the market is shifting. But I am not convinced yet that colour digital printing devices are quite good enough yet quality wise, or cost-effective in a business sense, but we are open to discussion," he says.

　　Mr Usher is not convinced there is a need for change, and he is not alone, but sales of digital equipment by Heidelberg, Canon, Xerox and many others suggest the print community is beginning to waver.

　　Facing the facts is the key to good investment

　　Whenever a business is considering investment or how to deal with the way market forces are affecting it, the most vital ingredient is knowledge. Having a good idea of the available options facing a business is not what knowledge is about.

　　Knowledge is hard facts. Turnover, where it has come from, how profitable the revenue stream is, where the skills of the business lie, percentage revenue generated by each client, are examples of knowledge. If you cannot run out salient facts such as these few elements then any future investment is built on sand.

　　And this is the dilemma about whether to invest in digital. If there is no core knowledge on how the business is performing, where its revenue streams are coming from and what percentage a customer is spending with you, then how can the future be planned?

　　Those SME printers investing in digital printing systems are not throwing out one technology for another, but are creating an articulated lever not unlike a bolt cutter to open a client's wallet.

　　When litho and digital presses work together new business is created where none was before and prices can be charged more closely to the value the customer places on the work, not on what it costs to produce. Xerox calls it the 'New Business of Printing'and Heidelberg has used these concepts masterfully to win business off Xerox clients. But in so doing Heidelberg has actually created a bigger market.

　　Runners and riders

　　An increasing number of suppliers are involved in digital colour printing, offering products that might appear to be derived from the office world, but are capable of commercial quality colour, albeit with reservations over repeatability, productivity and per page cost.

• Ricoh touches at the bottom end of the industry with digital duplicators and black and white printers. In colour it has the Aficio CL7000, a 28ppm colour laser printer which is used by the likes of Cats Solutions for on the spot colour printing.
• Minolta runs to 31ppm on its colour machines and has access to polymerised toners which have allowed this low end technology to make a leap forward in terms of image quality. Monthly output on the CF3102 is rated at 60,000 pages. Minolta also works with Micropress to offer higher productivity through cluster printing of multiple engines.
• Konica is a third player in this area and is launching the 8550 imminently as a 51ppm copier with on board finishing. Konica's printers are used by KBA as a proofer with its 46Karat. Konica and Minolta are currently in the process of merging to create a more competitive player. Print and imaging products comprise the largest division of the new entity.
• Canon is the father of the colour laser copier which with a Fiery Rip offered a first cheap digital proofing engine and then a copies for sale product. Its most significant product is the CLC5000 with 50ppm output on paper to 250gsm. The CLC1000 offers 24ppm printing.
• Océ is a late entrant into colour digital printing with the CPS700, a 25ppm printer which uses seven colours imaged directly to a toner drum and claimed to provide consistent litho equivalent quality.
• Hewlett Packard is unquestionably a heavyweight with an imaging and printing business worth $20bn a year, most of which is in desktop and smaller inkjet printing. However, it also owns Indigo which provides a litho engineered digital print engine, but comes with a litho-like cost as well.
• Xerox has the widest range of engines, which is as it should be. It also understands the workflow process and business models that have worked over the years. This is what is bundled into the new business of printing concept. Probe this and the new business of printing is not so different from what smarter printers have been doing for some time.
• Heidelberg as the dominant force in offset could not ignore the challenge of digital colour, but is so far present only at the upper reaches of the market. It has been successful in litho by offering entry level machines and encouraging customers to grow into larger and more sophisticated presses over time. It may have to do the same to be truly successful in digital.

[时间：2004-03-15  作者：Bisenet  来源：Bisenet]