Last week in London, England, I had an opportunity to visit several print shops and the mood was very bright! It was clear to me that the UK (or at least London) was not suffering through the same economic issues that southern Europe (i.e. Spain, Portugal and Greece) has been struggling with.
This week, that very positive mood prevailed in Milan, Italy, where Xerox hosted its annual Premier Partner Congress. This event brought together 170 of Xerox’s best Graphic Communications customers. Perhaps it’s a function of the folks that come to events like this, but it was great to hear them talk about how their book of business is very strong and year over year growth was in the 10-25% range.
The folks that I spoke with had one thing in common; they had all moved beyond just “putting ink on paper”. Despite their roots in litho, a greater percentage of their business now comes from digital printing – and all had some form of cross media/variable data capability. They really had bought into the message that Infotrends’ Barb Pellow delivered in her keynote speech at the event: “print is the ultimate direct response enabler”.
Among this elite group of 170 companies, those enjoying the highest growth rates seemed focused on being that “one stop shop” for their customers, offering a wide range of services, including creative/design, large format, mail and fulfillment. That strategy, of course, has a number of executional challenges associated with it, namely how to effectively manage the workflow of these different lines of business. Enter the tools and applications from the 28 Xerox partners in attendance!
This was most attendees first look at Xerox FreeFlow CORE and the demos were very well received. People were also impressed that FreeFlow CORE and Avanti Slingshot can share data in real-time to bring the Production workflow (preflighting, imposition, color management) together with the business workflow for job costing, stock control, tracking and billing.
Interesting to note, Web-to-print was a given for all of them – not a competitive advantage but something that their customers have now come to expect – the message they are hearing from their customers is clear:
“if you want to do business with me, you better make it easy for me to do business with you, including providing me with a “24 by 7” way of communicating with the shop to submit jobs, track those jobs and have real time access to the key pieces of information that l need to do my job - like job status, job costing, fulfillment/inventory levels and billing information”.
Special “shout out” to Warren Werbitt and Pazazz, who were the only dual recipient of a “Best Of The Best” award, handed out at the Gala dinner held at the Museo Nazionale Della Scienza e della Tecnologia. Congrats Pazazz!!
Ciao!