WhatTheyThink - Printing Industry News, Commentary & Analysis

October 6, 2006

I was a little surprised that Bill Lamparter and his Executive Committee did not recognize the importance of Internet based e-commerce solutions as being shaping technologies at Graph Expo this year. Of the 8 critical technologies they identify --- MIS, JDF, digital printing, workflow, color management, and postpress enhancements, today's advanced web-to-print solutions have a major impact on 7 of these technology must see'ems.

For instance, Printable Technologies offers solutions that permit unsolicited Internet driven incoming orders to feed information directly into MIS solutions, automatically updating critical areas job related information for scheduling, billing, costing, and reporting. This is accomplished through JDF integration. Along those same lines, Printable uses JDF Integration as way of directing those same incoming jobs directly into Digital Press workflows without any human intervention. At the same time, incoming jobs streamline pre-press and press ready output workflows by totally automating those processes, whether they are directed to CTP or Digital Press. Again, this is all done electronically without any human intervention.

Printable also has addressed the area of Direct Mail. The highly profitable effects that VDP has recently played in the ability to personalize and create one-to-one marketing campaigns has been taken to the next level by placing the entire ordering of these jobs over a Printable FusionPro portal directly by the end user. Internally maintained databases may be attached to drive these campaigns or demographically selected databases may be purchased as a part of the campaign submission process.

Wide Format Printing is simply an extention of Printable's ability to bring unsolicited and unattended jobs into the CSP's digital production workflow.

Therefore, If Mr. Lamparter and his panel wishes to identify "...the show's most important and compelling technologies with emphasis on those developments that are most likely to have the greatest impact on a printer's ability to thrive," they need to include Web-to-Print technologies to their list of "Must See'ems!"

Thank You,
Robert C. Bliss Printable Technologies

Responding to: http://members.whattheythink.com/news/newslink.cfm?id=24536

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