DIGITAL Digest

On Demand Keynote Speakers Set

BOSTON—Details are being firmed up for the 2007 AIIM and On Demand Conferences & Expos, which will bring the event to the Boston Convention & Exposition Center for the first time. The event will run from April 16-19.

Show days will be kicked off by a series of free keynote addresses. On Wednesday, April 18, John Schwarz, CEO of Business Objects, will present “The Parallel Evolution and Convergence of Enterprise Content Management and Business Intelligence.” He will be immediately followed by Jeff Teper, Microsoft’s corporate vice president, Office Business Platform.

“Freakonomics” author Stephen J. Dubner will lead off Thursday, April 19’s keynote addresses. Dubner will illustrate how economics is the study of incentives, or how people get what they want or need.

Additional speakers are still to be announced. For more information, visit www.ondemandexpo.com.

Data Drives Digital Smart Factory

ORLANDO—Just 10 short years ago, the group now known as the Research & Engineering Council of NAPL held the first conference in its Digital Smart Factory series. At that 1997 meeting, the hot topic was CIP3, introduced at Drupa 95 just two years earlier.

In subsequent meetings, vendors, printers and consultants have worked to iron out problems in the evolving software and electronics, and move toward the automation necessary to remain competitive in an age of electronic media.

Last month, the group held its eighth conference in the series. The meeting began with a tour of direct marketing colossus DME, in Daytona Beach, FL. The 11-acre DME campus boasts inbound and outbound call centers, a video studio and several digital presses—providing clients with complete integrated marketing campaigns. As DME Vice President of Creative Strategies Alin Jacobs told the group: “DME is not a printer that does direct mail. It is a direct marketer that happens to do printing.”

The DME tour set the perfect tone for the conference, which subsequently focused on how printers can use technology—particularly databases—to provide services needed by modern marketing clients. A corollary subject throughout the meeting dealt with how database specialists have become printers as a logical extension of their core businesses.

Keynoters Barb Pellow, of Pellow & Partners, and Joe Novak, director of technology at Williamson Printing, provided marketing and technology perspectives on the current state of the industry.

Michael Murphy, president of Japs-Olson, in describing his company’s expanded use of data, emphasized the extensive cultural change wrought by the adoption of new technology.

Ron Snyder, of mailing firm Direct Group, told how the company defines, tracks and reports on the 1.5 billion pieces of direct mail it prints and processes annually. Using advanced data gathering and reporting techniques, Direct Group now monitors operations in real time, whereas printed reports from its previous MIS solution provided data 24 to 28 hours after the fact.

Zarik Megerdichian, president of Web-to-print trade printing specialist 4Over Inc., told the group how his company took a database concept and developed it into a highly automated operation relying entirely on brokers and print distributors rather than a captive sales force.

Presenters at the 2007 meeting seldom spoke of prepress, pressroom and bindery functions, clearly demonstrating that the industry—or at least part of it—is taking a much more holistic view of business. Many of the companies represented on the panels and in the audience could hardly be termed printers; instead, like DME, they run other businesses that happen to print. Those seeing themselves only as printers should take note.

Direct Mail Needs to Be Personalized

NEW YORK CITY—How much one-to-one customization is necessary for direct marketing campaigns to break through mailbox clutter? This and other questions are addressed in a new white paper—“The Impact of One-to-One Marketing on Consumer Response”—from Winterberry Group, a strategic consulting firm serving the marketing industry. Three other firms also contributed to the research initiative—Vertis Communications, Mintel and Responsys.

Winterberry Group identified a number of what it says are key trends in the current one-to-one marketing communications environment. These include:

• Media fragmentation and the proliferation of marketing “clutter” are threatening response rates and forcing marketers to adjust their tactical mix to stand out.

The report cites research from the Direct Marketing Association that compared direct mail and e-mail response rates. Direct mail showed gains in its ability to spur direct ordering, while response rates for traffic building held steady and lead generation results dropped by half. Slight to sharp declines in response rates were found in all three areas with e-mail messaging.

• “Simple” personalization—most commonly the addition of a recipient’s name, address or basic personal information to a message—no longer provides a competitive advantage. However, according to a Vertis survey, personalizing the envelope with the recipient’s name is still a leading factor affecting what mail gets opened.

• The benefits of targeted communications are being embraced by the marketer community, though few have adopted the full solutions mix needed to achieve “optimized” one-to-one relationships.

The white paper is available for complimentary download at www.winterberrygroup.com/research/.

Ricoh, IBM Form Joint Venture

ARMONK, NY/TOKYO—Ricoh and IBM have formed a joint venture company based on IBM’s Printing Systems Division. The deal calls for the new InfoPrint Solutions to become a fully owned subsidiary of Ricoh after three years. It is expected to remain based in Boulder, CO.

While the business is said to be “very profitable,” IBM realized it couldn’t continue to grow and change the business at the rate needed, according to Nick Donofrio, executive vice president.

As consideration for the transaction, IBM will receive $725 million in cash upon closing, which includes a management fee of $35 million.

The general manager of IBM’s Printing Systems Division, Tony Romero, will head the new company as president and CEO.

digital bytes

FOSTER CITY, CA—EFI’s ColorproofT XF proofing solution now supports the HP Designjet Z2100 and Z3100 series color printers, which have embedded spectrophotometers.

HUDSON, NH—Presstek Inc. has announced the first part of its 2007 schedule of local open house events, which feature demonstrations and presentations on the company’s DI color presses and chemistry-free CTP systems. To view the current schedule and register for an event, visit www.presstek.com/events.

CYPRESS, TX—Looking to cut its outsourcing of offset work, the International Center for Entrepreneurial Development (ICED) has brought an Océ CPS800 digital color printer in-house. The organization is offering this production capability to its franchise operations, including Kwik Kopy Business Centers.

SALT LAKE CITY, UT—AlphaGraphics is deploying Proof-it-Online’s Web-based, on-screen proofing solution across its network of 260 business printing centers located throughout the United States and in eight other countries.

LA VERGNE, TN—Lightning Source, an on-demand book producer, is the first digital printing operation to install the Lasermax Roll Systems LX Stack system. The company has an LX550 unwind unit feeding paper to its HP Indigo press w3250 digital press and is using the LX562 cutter and LX566 stacker to cut and stack printed color book blocks.

PRESTON, ID—Bear River Publishing has installed a Screen (USA) PlateRite News 2000 thermal computer-to-plate (CTP) solution. As a division of Pioneer Newspapers, the shop prints three daily newspapers and one weekly, along with doing commercial printing work.

KANSAS CITY, MO—Thanks to its MarComZone e-commerce solution, Henry Wurst has received a multi-year contract from Sun Microsystems to provide customizable print-on-demand services, along with managing the distribution of Sun’s static forms, stationery and business cards.

FOSTER CITY, CA—Set for release at the 2007 PODi Applications Forum, EFI’s new Fiery FreeForm Kit was developed to help customers implement personalized marketing campaigns. It includes application examples, as well as sample databases and instructions for producing the pieces.

In other news, EFI says it is the first vendor to pass all parts of PODi’s PPML Test Suite. PPML (personalized print markup language) is an open, device-independent standard for variable data printing.

ALEXANDRIA, VA—IDEAlliance (The International Digital Enterprise Alliance) will host a Proofing Systems Summit on March 5, in conjunction with the Publishing Executive Conference and Expo, at the Marriott Marquis in New York City. The day-long event will highlight the new Proofing System Certification Program that moves off-press proofing “to the numbers” and address the SWOP and GRACoL specifications. For more information, including fees, visit www.idealliance.org/proofsummit/.

BOULDER, CO—To meet its customers’ variable data printing needs, IBM has added Exstream Software’s Dialogue software suite to its product offerings.