Make money with a digital press: learn to walk before you run after variable colour

Print Action, Mar 2003 by Littrell, Rick

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The business climate is fragile at best in today's graphic arts industry. But there are emerging trends, currently obstructed by doom-and-gloom forecasts, with the potential for printers to grow business in a meaningful and long-lasting way. One such opportunity can come from implementing a variable-data-capable workflow into a digital-press environment. This opportunity will extend into the foreseeable future, meaning that printers once again can take the initiative to develop a business strategy with going concern.

Digital colour printing has the highest potential for growth in the graphics industry (as Chart 1 illustrates) and if a printer can simply maintain the average growth, the company will be successful. Much of that success will come from utilizing an efficient and reliable variable-data workflow to perform digital colour printing. And if you happen to do such a good job of implementation that you grow at a rate better than average, well, then life is good!

Variable-data-capable digital presses are now stable and widely available. But, the promise of the variable-data application has not met expectations. This is primarily due to how naive both vendors and users are about the requirements to successfully implement such a capability. It is very easy to oversell and under-deliver. Both the presses and the workflow of variable-data technology started with very high expectations, only to crash back to earth once people realized what it takes to create a real-world production environment. Success in this market is predominantly not a technology issue, but it requires a focused effort to learn how to walk before you learn to run.

One foot in front of the other

There are many levels of complexity to leverage the capabilities of these digital presses. Start with the easiest applications first, then grow your infrastructure and expertise as you become more comfortable and knowledgeable with the technology. To realize where your comfort level currently rests and where it can climb, it is best to begin with an overview of the applications and workflows that are possible, from the simplest to the most complex (as outlined in Chart 2).

Your starting point should be represented by the ability to comfortably deliver a job day in and day out. From this simplest job, you then grow into the more complex applications. Many companies try the more complex applications immediately and it is a struggle from the beginning to the end of the project - if they can complete them at all. I would compare the misguided applications by some companies on their new digital presses to when optimistic printers buy new 6-colour presses and the first jobs that they print are hexachrome, with a crew of apprentice press persons. This is a recipe for failure. Many do not learn from their mistakes because they blame the technology, instead of looking at how they implemented the initial project.

Look, you are walking

Each complexity level outlined by the chart, has its own unique requirements. The static short-run printing is just short-run print-on-demand: no variability, no databases and no internet integration. Just build the pages the way you do now and print them in low quantities (less than 500). This is the beginning of the learning process. It allows you to learn how to implement your shop calibration and quality requirements, as well as teach sales people how to position the output relative to other capabilities, develop pricing, and understand the time required to produce a job. These areas are important and must be firmly in place before beginning to take on more complex applications. The typical examples to use for this type of product would be flyers, brochures, and presentations.

The next level is version printing. Now you will begin to learn how to build pages that can easily change, without significant work done in a database. Build on the experiences of static short-run printing with an expansion of page layout knowledge by learning to build a page that will be versioned, and then how versioned pages can be easily managed. Remember you are still taking baby steps at this point. A common example of this application can be seen in event marketing brochures (same event, multiple times or locations), sales data sheets that are versioned for the specific representative or dealer, and multiple language versions of the same product brochure.

Now, you can grow into personalize printing applications. This product will have a common design, with simple name and/or address changes. With this level of variable data printing, we are beginning to develop the capability to integrate a simple database with a layout. For this, you will have to expand your understanding of the proofing requirements related to every page being a unique job. And you will have to become proficient at developing error recovery procedures when situations like a paper jam occur. How do you restart the job or output only those products that were destroyed? In a conventional printing application, you plan to print more (approximately 10 percent) than what was required by the customer. Now, doing that in a variable-data environment would mean printing the job multiple times to be able to deliver one version. This approach is not practical with variable-data applications. You must have welldefined error recovery procedures in place to be successful with variable data printing applications. The product types that would require this capability are personalized newsletters, holiday cards, business cards, and direct mail or promotional mailings.