Digital Digest

LAS VEGAS—The number of "dealers" roaming the Bellagio Hotel conference center here from Jan. 15-18 far outnumbered the number of dealers shuffling cards in the hotel's casino. Attribute that to the 1,100 Konica Minolta dealers and company employees who attended the 2012 Konica Minolta Business Conference & Product Expo.

With the theme "Inspire Customer Passion," Konica Minolta Business Solutions revved up its more than 350 authorized dealership representatives and internal work force with a winning combination of expanded service offering announcements, educational sessions, as well as a product expo featuring new equipment, software and financial services available from Konica Minolta and 50 of its business partners.

New managed IT and managed print services programs were unveiled. Through its All Covered division, Konica Minolta dealers can provide managed IT services to small- and medium-sized businesses. And, they can soon offer managed print services to national enterprise accounts as part of the Optimized Print Services (OPS) program. Leveraging Pharos Systems technology, OPS is geared toward offices, central reprographics departments and commercial printers.

Also debuting was Konica Minolta's G7-certified Color Care bundled color management suite and the bizhub C754/C654 MFPs (max. 75 ppm B&W, 60 ppm color) that incorporate the new INFO-Palette 9˝ color touchscreen control panel.

Konica Minolta views production/commercial print as a key growth market. As such, regional commercial printing specialists have been hired to assist dealers in digital printing equipment sales to businesses making the transition from offset to digital production. According to Kevin Kern, senior vice president of marketing, roughly three-quarters of new bizhub PRESS C8000 production printers (80 color ppm) are being placed in commercial print shops.

—Mark Michelson