InkJet Age

MAR 2014

Inkjet's Age, a print supplement to Quick Printing, is a business and technology brand dedicated to corporate and senior management and focusing on issues surrounding inkjet printing technology in all its forms. Inkjet's Age covers the industry news,

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quality and more generally the overall quality of the finished piece." Also, transaction environments require secure data generation and formatting solutions married to auditable print and finishing envi- ronments. "The printing requires the ability to print sharp text and accurate color at a speed sufficient to meet finishing and mail insertion deadlines," says McGrew. "In most transaction print environments, there are severe financial penalties for miss- ing a mail insertion slot, putting the wrong pages into an envelope, or fail- ing to get pages into an envelope." Ricoh refers to transactional docu- ments as critical communications. "This type of work involves long- term contracts with repeatable, pre- dictable work," explains Chris Reid, director, Software Product Marketing, Ricoh. "That predictably makes it a little easier to manage, but it has to be done right—you can't ship an extra book or send a critical communication document to the wrong person. Commercial is much less predictable, jobs are bid, and volume and regularity are unpredictable. " Adds Reid, "Where we see the two en- vironments intersecting the most is when commercial printers move into critical communications, like healthcare enroll- ment kits and marketing collateral materi- als. As commercial printers move into these unique applications, they may also need to move into new equipment." Workflow Challenges The classic workflow concerns for a transactional printer remain speed and productivity, and ensuring the data-driven documents are delivered error-free. Taking the workflow from receipt of data forward, however, is no longer enough. As simple black-and-white statements go by the wayside, transactional printers are expected to be able to deliver higher qual- ity and even higher complexity documents. "Color management, spot color support, and advanced PDF document standards are all areas that are now within the scope for transactional workflows," says Horey. "In order to increase document value, advanced data mining and targeting now has to be combined with advanced document editing and composition. The ability to dynamically create and process advanced marketing mes- sages within a classic transactional workflow is now required, as transpromotional work- flows become the new norm." To streamline the process, pro- duction may be accomplished in a hard-wired "Automated Document Factory" configuration, a virtually connected configuration of varied print and finishing equipment, says Sheri Jammallo, corporate en- terprise segment marketing man- ager, Canon. "No matter how the document is distributed, the goal is to reduce costs and boost end-to- end productivity from job submis- sion through tracking, reprinting, indexing, archiving, and customer reporting and billing." Like other players in the graph- ics arts sector, today's transac- tional workflow must be able to efficiently handle multi-channel communication. "There needs to be automation and integration with multi-vendor technology, the ability to support different types of applications and data streams, and differ- ent types of output," says Reid. "They also have to be able to provide PDFs as part of a multi-channel platform. There is no end customer today that is looking for just print. Transactional printers need to be able to dis- tribute to both print and an electronic plat- form. And everything needs to be tracked." More and more, transaction documents include variable messaging, graphics, pURLs, QR codes and other dynamic con- tent potentially created by marketing agen- cies or colleagues on the graphic arts side of the business, notes Jammallo."Transaction printers have to start thinking about auto- mating workflows that safely integrate the creative process with the mission-critical production process." An overlooked hurdle for transactional printers as they add workflow solutions and capabilities to their operations is the effort and complexity of integrating multiple disparate systems, says Horey. "Whether it's a print server or an upstream workflow solu- tion, don't underestimate the value of solu- tions that have been verified and certified to work together." Vendor Offerings Canon Solutions America With the advent of extremely versatile high-speed inkjet printing systems, such as the Océ Color Stream 3000 series, it www.MyPRINTResource.com MARCH 2014 • INKJET'S AGE 19 HISTORICALLY PRODUCED on black-and- white equipment, high-speed color inkjet printing innovations have transformed the transactional printing market. THE CANON Océ ColorStream 3000 Twin series full color inkjet printers feature speeds of 157 or 417 feet per minute for 344 up to 1818 letter images per minute. QPsupp_18-20_0314 Trans.indd 19 2/18/14 11:43 AM

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