In-Plant New Product Opportunity for 2009: TransPromo Printing
In-plants have moved aggressively in adopting digital printing technologies. Initially most of the applications have been shorter run, stagnant replacements for lithography. While articles and conference topics have trumpeted variable data applications for nie on a decade or more, the actual adoption has overwhelmingly been limited to mail/merge and addresses. In the near future more and more in-plants will be targeting an altogether new variable data niche application, Transpromo printing.
The answer is simple and two-fold. First, IT Data printing does not have to justify the hardware since the in-plant already has it and it is grossly underutilized! And secondly, IT along with Finance and Accounting can maintain control over the product by adding little specialty software, virtually all of which is totally compatible with their existing legacy software.
Transpromo printing received major acclaim at Drupa 2008 as one of the obvious future high volume applications for the next generation high speed inkjet technology. The promise and hype of transpromo printing has been discussed in recent years as the sophisticated software has matured and digital print engines have realized the necessary speed.
Adding color and selling advertisements to fill remnant white space in periodic transaction statements that consumers expect to receive seems like a drop-dead winner for all concerned. The idea is simple, but the execution a little more complex. Hence, the theme of this year’s TransPromo Summit 2008 as articulated by Conference Chair Barb Pellow, InfoTrends Group Director, in the featured keynote presentation was “The Ultimate in Simplexity.” Borrowed from a book by the same name penned by Jeffrey Kluger, Pellow explained the analogy of “simple things complex and complex things simple” is so apropos for converting transactional documents to transpromotional communications. The customer sees a simple, elegant watch, but is unaware of the complex inner workings. The Google home page and the iPhone were other products accentuating this same “simplexity” principle.
Attendance at this second annual Trans Promo Summit in New York City August 13 & 14 and several other conclaves on the topic are reporting spiking attendance with a growing contingency of International participants. Drupa, only a few months earlier, was inundated with the digital print engine and software manufacturers’ hype for TransPromo. The new high speed, high quality, low cost inkjet technologies seem ideally suited to drive this innovative product offering. But appropriately so, to be termed successful these conferences must peal away the onion layers of the hype to offer a plethora of successful “how to” case studies. This forecast will describe the key and often common elements of many of these neat applications.
