Printing prospects

During 2010, as the world recovered from a financial slump, there was much consolidation in the market. The economic crisis imposed challenges on some of the larger companies, and a multitude of smaller vendors and resellers had to reorganise and resize their businesses as customers curtailed spending.

Companies that were least affected in the document solutions market were mainly those that were service-oriented. They became more creative in their offerings in order to gain or maintain market share.

The recession also sparked interest in lower cost and novel ways of doing business, which influenced the spectrum of services on offer.

A feature of the downturn was the increase in demand for automation. With the principle of “doing more with less”, the industry sought out new ways for businesses to fulfil their document needs. Information management, digitised document solutions and business process automation played a significant role in new business strategies focused on cost cutting.

Largely driven by the need to bring costs down, but also due to an increasing and necessary emphasis on the environment and sustainability, many companies began aggressively adopting green technologies in their document strategies.

The focus on reducing power consumption in 2010 is a trend that is likely to remain popular and influential. Many organisations embarked on a drive to reduce paper usage. Technologies such as scan-to-e-mail and duplex printing helped businesses to reduce their carbon footprint and cut costs.

Another factor was the widespread corporate acceptance of solid ink rather than traditional toner. Solid ink printers generate 90% less wastage than toner-based printers, and as such are gaining significant traction, especially among companies that have a commitment to going green.

Digital printing also experienced growth last year. Electronic forms, for instance, can improve internal and external business communication with vendors and customers while reducing manual data input and human error. Furthermore, marketing messages on invoices and alternatives to pre-printed cut overhead and production costs.

Many organisations embarked on a drive to reduce paper usage.

Rabin Ram is MD of the Xerox division at Bytes Document Solutions.

This has led to the practice known as transpromo, or transactional/promotional, where the sunk cost of mail items is used to create highly customised, even totally personalised, communication messages that deliver up to 400% higher response rates than traditional communication methods.

Managed print services (MPS) helped document solution providers to stay ahead of the competition during the economic slump. Not only were costs saved in terms of machine maintenance, but human resources were freed up to handle and deal with other pertinent production issues.

MPS gives companies the peace of mind that comes with having a custom-designed printer fleet monitored and managed by an experienced and credible third-party organisation. MPS, and along with it, printer consolidation, is an unstoppable market trend that is set to confer significant competitive advantage and cost cutting to organisations that go this route.

Today's printers boast improved connectivity and increased functionality, but they also expose companies to security risks. Network printers and multifunction devices have hard drives and run on the corporate network. Embedded drives can contain unencrypted copies of print jobs and faxes, information that can be exploited by hackers.

An increase in built-in security measures, more stringent policies and a widespread awareness of the dangers associated with printing devices was another feature of 2010.

2010 saw several insightful research papers published around the state of the printing and document industry.

Some highlights include:

* IDC Worldwide Quarterly Hardcopy Peripherals Tracker

According to the researcher, the market continues to stabilise and recover from the widespread negative growth experienced throughout 2009 as a result of the global recession. It predicted, however, that the total shipment volume in the EMEA region will increase by 7.6% CAGR over the forecast period (2010-2014).

* EMEA printer shipments rise in Q3 2010

According to market research company Context, printer shipments across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia grew 11.1% from the same period a year ago.

Leading the growth was an increase in sales of copier-based MFPs, with year-on-year unit shipments increasing 32.7% in Q3 2010. This growth is down to businesses consolidating fleets.