Xerox Walks the Talk: Announces Seminar Series to Promote the Production Color Value Proposition

By Cary Sherburne, Senior Editor

March 8, 2005 -- The digital production color market has really begun to come into its own as the quality and price/performance of digital color presses has continued to improve. Nevertheless, there is still a significant market education effort that must take place to educate buyers of print on the value proposition of color print-on-demand and variable data applications. To those of us immersed in the industry every day, this seems like old news, but in reality, there are still a large number of buyers of print—and even print service providers—out there who have not gotten the message and translated it into what it could mean for their own business acceleration efforts.

It is this market education effort that must be deployed to build a wider market awareness in order to see the type of wide scale market growth in digital color and variable data printing that pundits have been predicting for years. Xerox has again stepped up to the market education plate with the announcement of an innovative series of production color seminars that the company is calling Digitally Cool. The series is being conducted in partnership with Creo, EFI, Pantone, Toppan and XMPie.

The agenda for these events falls into three topic areas:

• The Value: A discussion of industry trends, workflow, and examples of 1:1 marketing in action (Speaker: Roger Gimbel of Roger P. Gimbel & Associates)
• The Quality: Born out of collaboration between Xerox and Pantone, and the efforts by another Xerox partner, Toppan, to develop closer integration between digital and offset, managing quality in a hybrid environment (Speakers: Doris Brown of Pantone; Gavin Jones Smith of Toppan)
• The Solutions: A discussion of Xerox digital color offerings including the DocuColor 6060 and 8000, and, of course, the iGen3.

While it is important to get this type of content out into the market, what is really exciting about the sessions is the way Xerox is marketing them—by walking the talk relative to the value of one-to-one communications and a multichannel communications model. Potential attendees will be invited to the session with a personalized invitation printed by Toppan on a 22” sheet. This will be a poster suitable for framing on one side, with information about the event on the other side. And it will be mailed in a bright red tube to draw attention to its contents. Recipients are directed to a personalized web site to register for the event, and to register for the prize drawing. “Digitally Cool” prizes, including a Fuji Digital Camera, a Blackberry and an Apple iPod, are designed to attract attendees, who must be present to win.

The Digitally Cool campaign will be used as an example of how one-to-one, multichannel communications campaigns can deliver real results, and the personalized web site will be interactive, featuring a questionnaire that will allow the gathering of more information about participants.

The company has scheduled 19 events in North America and Europe, starting with Atlanta on March 19 th. More information can be found on the company’s web site. We hope that Xerox will publish the results of the campaign as a definitive data point in the ongoing effort to bring one-to-one communications truly into the mainstream.

Nuvera Update

Xerox also announced updates to its Nuvera line of monochrome production systems, including the addition of MICR-enabled models (Nuvera 100 MX and Nuvera 120 MX Digital Production Systems), as well as the addition of native ingestion of LCDS and PPML data streams supporting the convergence of publishing and transaction printing. The Nuvera line will also now feature an optional built-in stapler/stacker and a finishing transport to other production online finishing, including a booklet maker, thermal tape bind and the Xerox Book Factory.

This announcement brings the number of models in the Nuvera line up to six:

• Mid Production
• Nuvera 100 Copier/Printer
• Nuvera 120 Copier/Printer
• Full Production
• Nuvera 100 Digital Production System
• Nuvera 120 Digital Production System
• Nuvera 100 MX Digital Production System
• Nuvera 120 MX Digital Production System

iGen3 Update

There is no question that the iGen3 has met with tremendous market success, including the company’s recent announcement that Sumitomo Mitsui Card Co. Ltd., one of Japan's leading credit-card firms and the pioneer in issuing the Visa Card in Japan, has unveiled a new service in which millions of full-color, personalized credit-card statements will be printed on-demand on 24 iGen3 Digital Production Presses. Xerox continues to expand the platform, and in its most recent announcement, unveiled the iGen3 110 Digital Production Press with SmartSize Technology.

With this announcement, Xerox has enhanced the throughput speed for 8.5x11”/A4 sheets to 110 ppm, and 120 ppm for 7x7” sheets. This enhancement also brings the speed for large sheets (14.33x22.5”) to 40 ppm. The maximum sheet size has also been increased, from its former 20.5” to 22.5”. This is a significant productivity enhancement for iGen3 users—available through a field upgrade—and means, for example, that the iGen3 with SmartSize Technology is capable of producing 6x9” book pages at the rate of 180 ppm in full color. In North America, this upgrade will be available April 1, 2005, for an upgrade fee of $20,000 for existing users, although there is a promotional rate for existing customers through July 31, 2005. This brings the new base configuration price of the iGen3 to $580,000 in North America.

This report was written by Cary Sherburne. She can be reached via email at cary@sherburneassociates.com, online at www.sherburneassociates.com and by telephone at 603-430-5463.

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