According to Canon PlanetPress has earned an unparalleled reputation because of its cost-effectiveness and its support for both transactional printing (such as printing bills and statements) and variable data printing (such as for one to one direct marketing). The solution has also developed a loyal following because it can use a PC, a server or the printer’s own intelligence to manage the task of merging a database with the master document.

PlanetPress uses the industry standard PostScript to communicate with printing equipment, meaning it does not tie the organisation to one vendor’s devices. This freedom to use virtually any printer also means organisations can allocate print jobs across their machines according to their availability, capabilities and running costs.

Steven Brown, market segment manager at Canon Australia says, “At Canon Australia, we know the future of our industry lies in the services and software that we provide as part of our vision of helping organisations form deeper connections with their customers. In turn, we are increasingly delivering on that vision by forming deep partnerships with like minded suppliers, as well as each customer we partner with.”

“We understand the basic principle that every customer is different, and the power of providing each with their own message is beyond doubt,” continued Mr Brown. “Likewise, no two Canon customers are the same, which is why we’re backing this software with Canon professional services, allowing us to build a unique solution for every organisation.”

The customers who will embrace PlanetPress will include traditional printing enterprises as well as marketing departments and communication agencies. Other organisations are likely to include universities and councils, driven by their need to print regular bills and statements. In particular, the solution will appeal to organisations currently printing colour forms commercially and then using their in-house laser printers to overprint them with data for each customer. It will also appeal to organisations that have outgrown their existing direct mail solution, either because of its age or complexity, or because of their growing need for deep consulting expertise – a hallmark of Canon Professional Services.

The components of the PlanetPress 4 suite are:

# PlanetPress: create dynamic documents that can automatically reformat themselves according to your variable data

# PlanetPress Watch: monitor and automate print processes and the distribution of your transactional and promotional content documents

# PlanetPress Fax: send faxes automatically, as part of the overall print and production process

# PlanetPress Image: automatically generate PDFs

# PlanetPress Search: quickly find text within archived PDFs

# PlanetPress iWatch: connect with IBM iSeries servers and AS400s

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