SGIA Survey Shows Retail As Leading Market for Imagers

"The survey shows strong evidence that specialty imagers - garment decorators and graphics producers alike - are exploring new markets and opportunities as a way to bolster their businesses," said Dan Marx, SGIA's Vice President of Markets and Technologies. "Further, the survey shows how specialty imaging companies are using sales, management and production initiatives to strengthen their competitive advantage."

According to the US report, about 71 percent of imagers agree that referrals are a very effective way to attract new customers, while only about 3 percent rely on online directory listings for new business. To increase their competitive advantage in production, 37.6 percent of all imagers are adding finishing capabilities to their businesses - up from 29.1 percent in 2009.

The survey also concludes that retail (direct and indirect through ad agencies) continues to be the leading market for graphic imagers (75.7 percent). For garment decorators, educational institutions (77 percent) and corporate branding (72 percent) are among the primary markets served.

Quark Promote Update

Quark Promote — a new direction for Quark (read full article)
This is a follow-up on an eariler blog posting regarding Quark Promote. Check out the new improvements to the Quark print partners program!

Managed Print Services

Many of you have heard of Managed Print Services, or MPS but I would guess that many of you have not thought about the effect that MPS will have on your business in the near future.

As a way of providing you with a frame of reference for MPS in general, take a look at the graphic above. It’s from the research firm, Photizo Group, and helps explain important aspects of the future of MPS.

Things to keep in mind:

• First, the overall market for professional print services isn’t projected to grow that much in the coming years.
• Second, while the market isn’t likely to grow as a whole, it will be changing dramatically. Over the next four years, your customers will be aggressively converting from buying and managing their own printers, to outsourcing all print services through MPS. How aggressively is the market likely to convert? The graph above shows that $50 billion of the traditional print services market will be moving to MPS by 2013!
• Third, this means that your share of the market will come under attack from other print providers, especially equipment manufacturers and equipment resellers who will tell your customers, “Hey, we do all your other printing, why don’t we throw in your wide-format work, too?”
• Fourth, wide-format printing is only a small part of this overall market, so even though the market isn’t growing, your share of the print market can increase dramatically by pursuing MPS. Why? Because for every wide-format printer in a typical office, there are frequently 10 additional small format or multi-function devices!

The observations above go a long way in answering at least two fundamental questions about your strategic direction with regard to MPS:

Q: Why should you consider pursuing MPS?
A: The overall print services market isn’t projected to grow aggressively. As such, you need to defend the market share you have, and grow aggressively inside the overall market. You can do this by converting the FM business you have to MPS, and leveraging your strengths to capture new business through your MPS offering.
Q: Why is there such a sense of urgency on MPS?
A: The conversion of the market is happening fast — $50 billion of converted business is projected in less than four years. If you don’t capture this business, someone else will take it from you.

* At its simplest, MPS is managing hard copy device fleets (copiers, printers, multifunction devices, and fax machines) in a unified fashion. Essentially, this means a client outsources ALL of their printing resources to you – you run their on-site printing, off-site printing and document management & storage.

Thanks............Shaun

Sell Software to Grow Sales and Profits

As the economy continues to linger in the doldrums many reprographers are struggling to make ends meet. For some reprographers, revenues are down as much as 50 percent from the industry highs of 2008 and profitability, of any amount, is becoming difficult to realize. What more, Reprographers are struggling to develop strategies to survive. The AEC clients reprographers serve are fraught with the same economic realities and are dramatically changing their organizations in size and the ways they do business. Demand for traditional printing and other services are down as your clients continue to adopt digital workflows to save costs and improve productivity.

Recessions become catalysts for change -- for everyone and every business. If you do not realize that you need to embrace change you have the prospect of becoming irrelevant when the economy returns to somewhat normal. As business leaders, it is extremely important that you strategize on ways that you can re-position your company’s message and resources so you will be prepared to offer the right products and services that your marketplace with need after it experiences the paradigm shift that will result.

The profiles of the companies that survive the recession will likely be smaller but more efficient. If you agree with this conclusion then you might want to develop a strategy for your companies to offer solutions that will allow your customers to do more with less. This is where software becomes an ally to your business strategy. Offering a range of tools to help your customers to do things more efficiently with less labor has significant value to companies. Take Microsoft, Google, Apple, IBM, Salesforce.com and a host of other software vendors they are all growing at astronomically rates during the recession. Why? Do they know something that you don’t? I believe they know that people today and in the future will want convenient tools that are internet enabled to conduct business any time and any place. People are willing to pay to use internet enabled tools and this is where reprographers need to make a leap to selling software as a new revenue generating area for their businesses.

The beautiful thing about selling software it is very profitable and in some cases requires very little cost to sell. The trend in software today is selling Software as a Service (SaaS). You might ask, what is SaaS? Software as a Service is the idea of selling the use of software that runs over the internet and users subscribe or rent to use of the software by a user/seat licenses on a per month or per year basis. The software can be acquired immediately with minimal costs and IT infrastructure for the customer.



More and more companies want SaaS. Users want to be able to use technology when they want it, where they want it. The revenues from SaaS are often reoccurring and can add significantly to your company’s profitability month after month; year after year.

If you are interested in learning about software products you can sell to your AEC clients attend one of the PEiR Group’s webinars by visiting this link.

Don’t let the current economy make you numb and unable to develop strategies for your company’s future success. Take a few moments to see the world as it is changing around you, look at the trends, make some conclusions and take some action.

Best

Shaun Meany

PEiR Group 2010 Executive Conference Recap

Last week The PEiR Group held its 2010 annual executive conference in Palm Springs, CA. Given the economy and the location we still had a good turnout, about 30 companies and over 40 attendees at the conference. Even though many of our members could not travel to Palm Springs this year (for various reasons) we were pleasantly honored by having several of our international members in attendance: Tony Militano , Tony Smith and Gerry Brust of Carbon Copy, in Calgary Canada, Kieran Obrien of HOBS in the UK and Frank Veltman of Creffield Digital Print in Melbourne Australia.

Outlined below is a summary of some of the key topics, presentations and discussions that took place.

The meeting was held right after the IRgA Convention at The Renaissance Palm Springs which was a beautiful resort. It made for a long week for some of us who attended the IRgA but the weather was fantastic and there was plenty of time to socialize with others from our industry. As usual I got the opportunity to play some golf at one of Palm Spring’s most famous courses, The Classic, where the PGA’s Bob Hope Classic is played.

By the way the PEiR conference was way better than my golf game!

The first day of the conference we had a special welcoming from Suri the CEO of ARC to share with us his vision on the future of our industry. Suri talked about the unprecedented declines in print volumes for reprographic companies and what he believes are the revenue opportunities for reprographers in the future. Specifically Suri discussed the costs of technologies and that these costs need to be recouped by our industry if we are to survive. He stated “If our revenues are only related to print and print services (and we include the technology with the price of the print) the future does not look so good. But if we realize that printing is declining and our technology investments are growing we must stop and think about the way we charge for our technologies! Suri stated that ARC will begin to focus on selling technology for its own benefits and will not be including the technologies with the print services for free. He basically projects that there will be six major revenue buckets for reprographers: (1) Printing, (2) Digital and Content management services, (3) FM & Managed Print Services, (4) Software Licensing and (5) Outsourced Technology Services (like CAD, R2V & BIM) and (6) Equipment and Supplies.

After Suri’s talk, several of our vendor/partners, who were in Palm Springs for the IRgA, stayed and shared some ideas on what they are doing to help PEiR members generate new revenue opportunities. Spiral Binding, Nashua, Océ, KIP, Canon and Wynit all had some interesting products and services that you should look into. The vendor/partner presentations are located in the Member Resources/Executive Library on the PEiR Group’s new web site.

Kumar Wiratunga closed the Friday night session with an introduction of PlanWell Collaborate that is planned to be released to PEiR members in the 4th quarter of the year. PlanWell Collaborate will use a SaaS (software as a service) licensing model. Licensing will be sold on a per seat basis, something new for our industry but a growing trend in the software world. Keep a lookout for webinars and other announcements on PlanWell Collaborate as we get closer to general release.

Dinner on Friday was at a local steak house, The Falls, we had a great time and based on the comments from the group the food and wine was delicious.

Saturday was a full day. We began the meeting with a presentation from the President of the SGIA, Michael Robertson, who shared some interesting trends and applications in LF color imaging or display graphics. Michael showed research that indicated that UV Curable technology is the hottest growing technology in wide format color. FYI, the PEiR Group will be attending the SGIA Expo in Las Vegas, October 13-15; so if you are looking to expand your sales in wide format color you will want to consider joining other members at the SGIA Expo. More details of this event will be coming in the near future.

Following Michael Robertson’s discussion, was a presentation from Paul Stout, a seasoned construction PM who discussed the Paradigm Shift taking place in the construction world and how this paradigm shift could create opportunities for reprographers who offer technology and support services to the AEC marketplace. Many of the members commented that this was a very enlightening presentation so please take a few moments to review Paul’s presentation; it is located in the Executive Library as well.

Océ presented on wide format color. They did a group exercise that I thought was very educational and helpful in illustrating the benefits of using more color in the AEC workflow; they handed (2) sheets of the same architectural drawing to each group. Sheet (1) was a B&W drawing with some toilets and sinks. They asked each of the groups to count the number of sinks. Each group concluded various counts almost all varied from 7-11 sinks. Then they passed out sheet (2) the same drawing that highlighted the sinks in color. Each group easily counted the exact number of sinks. The conclusion, color helps users become more accurate and efficient. Talk to your Oce rep about this exercise and show it to your customers as well. Maybe you can start generating more demand for LF Color output with ideas like this one, from our friends at Océ.

After the Océ presentation, Beth Dobson (Meridian-aka Prolog) and Kumar Wiratunga introduced Meridian as a strategic partner for PlanWell and the capabilities that the PlanWell Prolog DataBridge will offer our members who use PlanWell Enterprise. Many of the members were extremely excited to learn of the opportunities in selling to some of the AEC world that uses Meridian products like Prolog and Proliance.

After lunch we had a presentation on Managed Print Services (MPS) from Jon Styrlund, who shared his vision as to where reprographers can position themselves in this rapidly growing printing trend. Jon said that MPS is growing so fast that if we do not respond to this trend by becoming MPS providers we will lose many of our customers to the vendors that do. Who are the vendors you may ask?

Here is just a small list:

• Oce
• Xerox
• Canon
• Konica Minolta
• IKON
• Ricoh
• IBM
• ARC
• HP
• Almost every copier dealer

The final session of the conference was presented by Mahil Maurice and he discussed the future and what is the cloud and what is cloud printing. As more and more content is on the internet (cloud) there will and is a growing need to have printing on the cloud. There are currently several cloud printing technology solutions becoming mainstream and ishipdocs has the potential to be positioned as a major player; only if reprographers can get a grasp of the concept and understand what it can mean for their businesses. This is an area we will be spending more time to help our members understand in the months ahead.

What a conference. Here are some of the comments we received from those who attended:

• “MPS and Prolog are the two areas that will impact my business immediately!”
  
• “Webinars and market insights is great, helps small shops keep up with what the rest of the world is doing!”
  
• “Suri’s presentation was excellent. Overall the PEiR Conference was better than the IRgA.
• The Océ presentation; showing differences of color vs b&w was excellent!”
  
• “Paul Stout of Power Summit was Excellent! He was not a sales pitch or skewed statistics. He was real, from the field/industry and informative…made the whole trip worth my while!”
  
• “I have always appreciated the transparency of ARC. I mean the way ARC shares their vision of the industry and what they see down the road!”
  
• “Congrats for putting together another excellent conference!”
  
• “Everything discussed regarding color was fabulous!”
  
• “Beth from Prolog was Excellent!”

If you want the presentations from the conference just visit the PEiR Group’s website and go to the Member Resources/Executive Library and download the 2010 Executive Conference presentations that you are interested in.

Thanks for your continued support and have a safe Memorial Weekend! Shaun Meany

Update on 2010 IRgA Convention

The IRgA Tradeshow and Convention opened this week in Palm Springs with about 400 people attending, including vendors. Attendance was roughly flat to 2009’s event in Pittsburgh, but there were more reprographers than vendors this year than last.

While the show ended up being more about industry relations than a sharply focused sales environment, there were a few notable things to talk about from vendors, including the PEIR Group’s PlanWell Collaborate, Sub-Hub, AbacusPCR, ishipdocs and KIP’s introduction of a new FM-oriented machine – the 700m, which has Abacus built into the controller – and new products from HP and a few of the scanner vendors on the floor.

The event got raves on its education program.

One of our members pulled me aside and told me he thought it was the best curriculum he’d seen in years, and several others from other company's echoed the sentiment. I sat in on several sessions, and I’d have to agree. Even the economist was a good speaker! Many of the presentations will be posted to the IRgA’s website in the coming weeks.

The CREST Foundation – Children of Reprographic Employees Scholarship Trust – co-sponsored the opening night reception and Janine Brandel’s opening remarks impressed the crowd with the number of kids the organization has helped, and emphasized how passionately the foundation believes in the cause. I’ll post some of that information in a future post.

The IRgA announced that next year’s event will be in Las Vegas.

The PEiR Group Launches New Web Portal

In our on-going quest to keep our members informed and up to date on the latest trends, opportunities, events and technologies that impact the reprographics industry we are pleased to announce the introduction of our new web portal.

Our new portal incorporates the latest technologies in web features and functions and will allow us to communicate in a more effective way. The new site is the same web address as before (http://www.peirgroup.com/) but with a whole new look and feel.

Notice you will see a user login on the right side and also a new feature called: My Profile. This new feature will allow all of our members to interact with the web portal as well as with others in the PEiR Group Community

We will be hosting several orientation webinars in the next few weeks; after we return from this week's IRgA Convention and The PEiR Group's Executive Conference in Palm Springs. For those who are adventurous and want to get to know the new web site now; we are sending out usernames and passwords this week. So, once you get your username please login and start playing around.

We are anxious to get your feed back; and to make it easy for you, there is a feedback link on the every page that will allow you to comment on the new web site and let us know what you think!

Best Regards


Shaun

$225,000 Dollars Helps Send Our Kids To College

Sending our kids to college is no easy feat. While our children might have the ambition, they don’t always have the money.

But if you’re reading this, you and your peers can offer your kids a good chance at financial assistance for their college careers.

In April of 2008, ARC was the prime mover in starting the CREST Foundation. It was formed to support the educational objectives of the children of our industry’s employees, primarily through financial support.

The CREST Foundation awarded $225,000 in scholarships to 31 recipients over the past two years.
In less than a year, the organization created an independent board of directors that included some of the biggest names in the industry, and established itself as a government-recognized non-profit organization.
At the 2010 IRgA opening reception held in Palm Springs (see article), Janine Brandel, the Executive Director of the CREST Foundation (see photo above), shared some of the foundation’s achievements over the past two years.

• Budget for 2010/2011 scholarships is $150,000.
• Current application session open through May 31, 2010 for the 2010-2011 school year.
• Parents of CREST scholarship recipients work for 27 reprographics companies with a ombined total of 500+ years in the reprographics industry.
• CREST recipients live in 12 states, attend 24 schools.
• All CREST Foundation staff volunteer their time so every dollar of donations goes toward scholarships – every one!
• PEiR Group Members have received $85,000 in CREST Scholarship Funds.
• 100% of donor funds received went to scholarship awards for children whose parents work in the reprographics industry.

Did you know this?

I work with Janine on CREST from time to time, and yet even I hadn’t realized how effective this program has been helping to send our kids to school!
Please spread the word with your peers and staff. It’s such a great program, and the foundation has capacity for new students this year.
For more info, visit the webpage at http://www.crestfoundation.org/. Download the flyers. Post them on your bulletin boards in the shop.
Make a difference in our childrens’ education through the CREST Foundation.