The production printing market is booming and the time for dealers to broaden their horizons is now. For those looking to stay at the front of the pack, expanding into the world of production printing is a great place to look. Opportunities for growth to better meet customer needs and help strengthen their bottom line are presenting themselves with a market that is more accessible than ever. The production printing market is booming and the time for dealers to broaden their horizons is now. For those looking to stay at the front of the pack, expanding into the world of production printing is a great place to look. Opportunities for growth to better meet customer needs and help strengthen their bottom line are presenting themselves with a market that is more accessible than ever.
When we talk about the production print market, we’re typically referring to devices that can print in the range of 60 to 300 pages per minute or more when handling jobs on the higher end of the spectrum. These devices have longer duty cycles than office printers and can accommodate large production print runs. Production devices can be color or monochrome and can support a broader range of media and print applications.
The traditional revenue streams from selling production printing devices are related to the sale of production equipment and software, professional services, support services and the volume of clicks each month. Some dealers are offering additional services and products to their customers that help broaden their revenue streams. Among them are:
- Providing managed print services for in-house printing operations.
- Offering clients outsourced print services during peak production demands or through print capabilities that their clients may not have in-house.
- Selling third-party software and specialty printers, such as dedicated envelope printing presses, off-line finishing and mailing capabilities, in tandem with the production print devices.
Going Digital
The transition from offset pages to digital pages is driving a big part of the growth that is being seen in the market. A study by Keypoint Intelligence has found that 640 billion pages will be printed on digital production units in the United States of America by 2021. On top of that, digital production print volumes are projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 2.6 percent through 2021, resulting from the strong increase of color page printing. With those statistics, the digital production print market offers a variety of opportunities for business growth through machine and software sales plus service revenue, in addition to page volume growth.
Over two-thirds of the respondents to a Keypoint Intelligence survey of commercial printers have identified digital printing among the top application or service that they were focusing on for growth. This research finding highlights the opportunity that this market offers for selling digital production printing devices. The range of applications and substantial capabilities that digital printing devices allow is expanding a great deal from the perspective of the end-user.
Today’s digital production printing solutions offer customers flexibility regarding factors such as the types of substrates and media that they can print on, a powerful range of in-line finishing capabilities, and a variety of workflows they can integrate with. These aspects, combined with the migration that is being seen in the industry to shorter run lengths, print-on-demand services and enhanced color are all helping to fuel the transition from offset production methods to digital production methods.
Diversify Your Portfolio
A shift in the needs of office printing environments has provided a reason for dealers to expand into the production print market. With competition intensifying in this market, greater pressure has been put on equipment and servicing prices. To meet these challenges, dealers are looking to become one-stop shops for their customers with nearly one-third of dealers indicating that production print is an area that they are branching into, according to a Keypoint Intelligence survey.
Canon’s imagePRESS C650 is an example of a compact and budget-friendly device for users such as marketing divisions, CRDs, franchise printers and light-volume production environments
At Canon, we have developed digital production printers, workflow software, and dedicated production dealer support services to help ease the pain of entering what can be an intimidating market. For example, our imagePRESS C650 color digital press provides an economic entry point for production print quality and reliability. We also have integrated workflows to help ease the complications of printing operations, which can provide the dealer channel with more possibilities for product sales.
By adding new devices and solutions such as these, dealers can broaden their services and present new options to their customers. In the past, customers may have gone to one dealer for their enterprise services and acquired their production print technology through other means. By offering production print devices as part of their portfolio in addition to their current offerings, dealers can strengthen their own brand and also help themselves can win net-new customers.
Cement Your Value
Before searching for new customers, you can look to your own customer base. Customers who may want to invest in production print technology could already be the customers that you serve in other facets. You can start with the relationships that are already there.
Dependability is important. Customers want a dealer that they can rely on to support them in a variety of area, such as professional services, sales support, maintenance and finance. Forming strong relationships with production print customers is an integral part of the sales process and can help serve as a reference for prospects which is a valuable tool for demonstrating credibility and helping to driving future sales. Customers purchasing production presses can’t afford for devices to be unproductive and demand solid service and support.
Empower Your Customer
By providing access to the latest production print solutions, dealers can give their existing customers a toolbox to offer a wide range of print possibilities in-house. Whether servicing organizations like corporations, hospitals and schools that may have enough existing print volume to justify investing in their own printing operation or print shops and marketing services providers, customers look for the most efficient production print operation that enables them to add value for the print buyers that they serve.
Recognizing the challenges that these environments present to such customers, Canon designed the imagePRESS C850 series of color sheetfed digital presses with them in mind. We position the devices that are a part of this series towards office environments, CRDs and light production shops due to their ability to print a variety of applications including newsletters, presentations, marketing materials, business cards, brochures, envelopes and banners.
Canon has integrated its PRISMAdirect solution with uniFLOW output management software to help end-users optimize their print management and costs to strengthen the efficiency of their printing operation
Successful dealers need successful customers. With production devices, dealers can also illustrate the effectiveness of workflow solutions to help their customers conquer potential learning curves and get the most out of their fleet. For example, Canon has integrated its PRISMAdirect order and production workflow management solution with its popular uniFLOW output management solution to one integrated enterprise-wide workflow platform. Through this and similar solutions, end-users can optimize their print management and costs to strengthen the efficiency of their printing operation.
Now Is the Time
The point is clear: There’s never been a more opportune time for dealers to dip their feet in the production print market.
The market segment is flourishing and customers’ access to high-powered, high-quality production print solutions is at an all-time high. With the printing technology being more affordable and robust than ever, current production print devices offer the ability to produce a variety of applications within one device – which can open dealers up to new customers that they may not have considered before.
The production print wave is here. Dealers can look to make investments in the production print where they can before they are stuck in the sand.
- Keypoint Intelligence—InfoTrends: U.S. Production Printing and Copying Market Forecast, 2016–2021.
- Keypoint Intelligence—InfoTrends U.S. Production Software Investment Outlook, 2017
- Keypoint Intelligence—U.S. Office Channel Survey, 2017
