XEROX CALLS FOR CONTINUOUS INNOVATION….

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Date: Saturday January 29, 2005 10:19:00 am
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    Xerox Calls for Continuous Innovation to Move Printing Industry Forward

    ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Xerox Corporation (NYSE: XRX) is calling for a transformation in the commercial printing arena, urging the industry to develop a new order where innovation and services move commercial printing out of the marketplace fight of a commodity business.

    At the eighth World Print and Communication Congress, where delegates come to understand the challenges and opportunities facing the graphic communications industry, Frank Steenburgh, senior vice president, business growth, Xerox Production Systems Group, said, “Innovation moves you up into the creation of new businesses, new markets and new possibilities.

    Digital printing is a complement to offset, not simply a replacement. Unlike offset, digital printing is about much more than just printing. It’s about helping customers compete and communicate more effectively with customized content and color on-demand.”

    Frank Romano, professor emeritus of Rochester Institute of Technology’s School of Print Media, estimates the worldwide revenue generated from graphic communications, including everything from content creation to production and distribution, amounts to a $1.2 trillion market, which is more than double the global printing market.

    “If we go beyond the traditional view of printing and align with those who want to do business in new ways, then we are on our way to new opportunities for revenue and profit,” Steenburgh noted. “Today Xerox is working with customers who are leading this transformation in the graphic communications market. It involves a combination of the right business model, the right technology and the right workflow.”

    Steenburgh added that the industry is moving from a manufacturing model to a services model, where digital technologies enable print providers to deliver a broader set of communications services that meet the needs of their customers.

    “It is a change that takes us from make-then-sell to sell-then-make, from mass marketing to mass customization, and from a primarily paper-based world to a Web-based world,” he said.

    Research from Interquest shows that one-third of digital color work will be personalized by next year. By 2010, RIT research states 20 percent of all print jobs will be turned around in 24 hours. And today, 78 percent of four-color jobs are shorter than 5,000 pages, as indicated in a study done by Dr. Joe Webb of Strategies for Management.

    Studies of print operations show that the majority of printing costs and revenue opportunities are locked inside workflow.

    InfoTrends/CAP Ventures reports that 80 to 85 percent of the cost in printing operations is in non-printing activities, such as preparation work and customer approvals.

    Digital workflow is about reducing these costs and capturing the additional revenue opportunities, from creation to distribution. It is for this reason that Xerox is expanding partnerships with Adobe, Creo, EFI and others as part of its FreeFlow Digital Workflow initiative to combine workflow tools based on open, industry standards.

    For example in Spain and Mexico, Publidisa, a print-on-demand publisher, is capturing increased market share in short-run books by using a Web-based e-book store and Xerox automated production operations. Xerox helped them develop not only the application but also the marketing strategy that supports it.

    Steenburgh concluded, “The right business model combined with the right technology and the right workflow can reposition the printing industry to meet customers’ needs and to become more strategically relevant to their businesses. In the process we can breathe new life into an industry that otherwise faces a tough road of cost reduction and price pressures.”

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