VDP streamlines promotional printing

Johannesburg, 21 Jul 2009

Konica Minolta SA has introduced an on-demand printing service called variable data printing (VDP). It says the offering enables businesses to reduce waste, speed up printing processes and personalise promotional material.

According to Mohammed Vachiat, product manager at Konica Minolta SA, merging variable data into printing jobs allows companies to leverage the full potential of their customer information and customise a wide variety of documents based on individual profiles.

"VDP is a type of on-demand printing in which all the documents in a print run are similar but not identical. Elements such as text, graphics and images can be amended from one printed piece to the next using information from a database or external file, without stopping or slowing down the printing process," he explains.

Promotional communications can be personalised with varying text, graphics, barcodes or entire layouts. This can also be done for transactional and business documents such as invoices and statements, reports, labels, certificates, policies and multi-part business forms. The company says the VDP captures the attention of the customer through a combination of personalisation and reaction.

"The individuality created by VDP enables organisations to get recipients interested in the message, multiply response rates and effectively manage print flows. Personalised messages streamline the interaction between suppliers and buyers, increase customer retention and generate more revenue compared to traditional mass mailings," continues Vachiat.

According to the company, professional VDP software tools are especially suitable for brand owners, design agencies, print shops and marketing services providers, as it allows them to offer an integrated service. “Designers are able to use their own design applications to create dynamic templates for variable data printing jobs, while customers can view their documents, integrate their own data based on pre-defined fields and pre-flight their print run before initiating the ordering process,” says Konica.

The service also has permissions and access rights that can be set per user, so companies can adapt the verification process of submitted orders based on their business processes. According to Konica, users can order and reorder any promotional documents, including static PDFs and complex personalisation jobs, from intuitive interfaces.

"Although in SA, VDP is still in its infancy, personalised marketing is showing huge growth potential for businesses. We foresee exciting times as organisations can become more creative with direct marketing campaigns,” says Vachiat. “It is key though, that businesses going this route remain aware that the success or failure of a VDP campaign relies on how the information entered into the relevant database is managed," Vachiat concludes.