One thing I noticed really taking off at drupa 2008 is the ability of the exhibitors to frame their solutions not from the perspective of the speeds and feeds of the big iron—though clearly there was lots of big iron there!—but rather in the context of a business problem the print service provider can offer its customers. More specifically, these are being portrayed as specific applications. Many are running those applications live on the show floor, and provide materials that help visitors understand what infrastructure—hardware, software, media, etc.—is required to successfully produce each application.

This is a critical business approach that should be adopted by print service providers as they work with their customers. Hanging out a sign that says “We Do Print” is just not cutting it anymore. And adding “Value-Added Services”, while a start, is not the answer either. Customers don’t necessarily think in terms of mailing or fulfillment or web-to-print. They think in terms of getting orders to their customer quickly, or making materials available for easy access by franchisees, remote sales personnel or agents. And they are always looking for new, different and better ways of getting their work done.

From a truth-in-lending perspective, I need to disclose that I spent ten years at Xerox, and was lucky enough to be involved as a sales person in Silicon Valley when the DocuTech was launched in 1990. One thing the company did very well with that product was to position it in the context of the applications it could produce more efficiently, or new applications that could not have been produced until the advent of the technology. Being in Silicon Valley, I—and my customers—benefited from the work behind defining the best way to execute print-on-demand manuals. By the time I moved, on, we had installed some 150 DocuTechs running about a half a billion pages of tech-doc on demand each year! We solved a business problem for these companies, and they ate the dogfood, big time!

At drupa, I saw that Xerox had taken this concept to a new level. The stand was organized around 50 real customer applications. Not only were they showing HOW they were produced, but they provided a nice spiral bound booklet where each page identified the goals the customer was trying to achieve, the workflow that was used to produce the application, production notes, sales tips and green advantages. These 50 applications were divided into several application areas: Books and Manuals, Collateral, Digital & Offset Together, TransPromo and New Business Applications. This made it easy for visitors to quickly migrate to the area of most interest to them for their business. And each area was equipped with a comfortable Conversation Station where visitors could speak one-on-one with experts to get their questions answered. I spent time in the Books and Manuals area and spoke with John Conley, who ran the books on demand operation for RR Donnelley prior to coming to Xerox. So these were truly experts!

I am pleased to see suppliers to the industry making this shift, and congratulations to Xerox on its benchmark performance at drupa!

Cary Sherburne
Whattheythink.com
Sherburne & Associates
www.SherburneAssociates.com