Decision Time for Digital Printing

Ipex 2002 will mark the ninth year since production-level digital color printing made its debut at Ipex 93.

Although nine years is a long time in today's printing industry, it is notable that the basic imaging technology on which the first digital presses were founded has stood the tests of time and competition. And although today's machines are much faster, offer larger formats, and are driven by immensely more powerful and flexible digital front ends, most lay down text and images the same way they did when they were introduced.

But if today's presses from pioneering manufacturers such as Indigo and Xeikon are familiar, the environment in which many of them operate is quite different. While Indigo was preparing to release the genie of digital printing from its booth at Ipex 93, the first breezes of the impending Internet whirlwind were reaching the graphic arts industry.

While the industry seized on the print-on-demand potential of digital printing, the Internet created a whole new information-on-demand market for digital's single-most unique selling proposition: the ability to "micro-personalize" print on a page-by-page, image-by-image level that is crucial to today's world of database-driven targeted marketing strategies.

While Indigo and Xeikon remain synonymous with digital printing, they have been joined by a host of other suppliers including Heidelberg and Xerox, both of whom had on display during the Print 01 event their respective new digital color presses. The contest between such industry giants not only sharpens expectations ahead of Ipex 2002, but is testimony to the importance of digital printing in the future.

In recent months, a number of commentators have drawn attention to other battles within the industry.

Taking digital's "killer application"—personalization—as an example, concern has been expressed that many print providers are failing to fully appreciate that buying a digital press is only the first step in securing their future.

In the Internet age, it is essential that digital print personalization, for example, is integrated with parallel developments such as Web and e-mail personalization, as well as integrated customer relationship management systems.

In turn, this calls for investment in training at the sales level, in the creation of solutions and integration teams to work with customers, and in new types of creative skills that combine design expertise with database knowledge. Unless the investment is forthcoming, there is a danger that customers will develop these capabilities in house, using printers simply as digital output bureaus.

How suppliers and print providers are responding to this wake-up call will be among the most fascinating features of Ipex 2002, say the show's organizers. On it may depend on printing's ability to claim its share of the increasingly populated space at the heart of the digital communications industry.