In an increasingly competitive print industry a hybrid offset-digital approach will sit firmly at the heart of future-focused printing businesses. Incorporating smart hybrid print solutions will be the key to operating more efficiently while tapping into business growth opportunities.
With the rise of digital and personalised marketing, customers of printers are demanding flexible and adaptable solutions for creating high-impact, cost-effective printed marketing materials. Run lengths continue to reduce as marketers get smarter about cost-savings, no longer committing to large volumes of print brochures.
The good news for commercial printers is that print remains an important component of the marketing mix, with 68 per cent of retailers saying it is critical to their marketing strategy. However, the days of high-volume, long-lead, offset printing are diminishing with the growth in personalised print.
A 2014 report found one-third of marketers believe personalisation will be the most important marketing capability in the future; a statistic that will continue to have a profound impact on the commercial printing industry. The trend will drive higher demand for short-run, variable print jobs as customers develop more targeted and relevant print materials.
Accordingly, digital printing is bucking the trend in an otherwise shrinking printing industry. According to a report from Smithers Pira, it is predicated to grow from three per cent of total print volumes to five per cent by 2019, so almost doubling, and globally, digital presses will pump out 1.5 trillion pages by 2020.
While most print-houses offer digital print capabilities, and the industry largely agrees digital printing is the way of the future, introducing this technology into an offset environment has traditionally posed a number of challenges. Because digital and offset printing workflows are completely different, they have existed, until now, in their own specialist domains. To merge the two disciplines requires a significant investment, staff to double-up on skills or the use of two different specialist teams, creating issues with managing print-floor efficiency, re-tooling, and balancing staff rosters.
The two different workflows have historically produced different colour output and resolution, making it difficult to produce consistent colour quality across digital and offset jobs. This can make it difficult to service short-run jobs cost effectively.
For example, a customer may order a large run of brochures, which are produced using offset. If the customer places a follow-up, smaller order that is best suited to a digital printer, the colour output between the two orders may not match precisely. This will require the team to spend time reworking the files and testing to deliver a consistent output.
Similarly, a customer may order a large run of its annual report, but their PR firm requests a personalised cover with each shareholder’s name. To fulfil this order using both digital and offset presses creates a range of issues such as colour matching, pre-press, post-press and double-handling.
Advances in digital print technology are seeing these barriers to adoption disappear. Manufacturers have largely addressed issues with colour quality, range of stock and application-types. Digital printing now handles such a wide range of media, and offers such high-fidelity colour ouput and consistency, it’s largely matching offset’s print qualities. Variable costs for running digital printers are also steadily declining.
The next evolution is hybrid digital-offset printing, bringing digital and offset workflows together. Ricoh recently launched the TotalFlow Print Server, which enables barrier-free offset and digital printing. By integrating industry-leading offset workflow solutions (including Heidelberg’s Prinect, Kodak’s Prinergy and Agfa’s Apogee) with digital workflows, TotalFlow allows print jobs with large volume requirements (such as the internal pages of a brochure) and smaller-volume requirements (such as targeted brochure covers) to be easily moved between digital and offset. Each file is handled just once, and a decision made about where to run it – digital or offset – based on turnaround times and costs.
By combining offset’s print-volume efficiencies with digital’s short-run and variable-data capabilities, a host of new time-saving and market opportunities open up, allowing commercial printers to enhance existing investments and provide value.
Breaking down the silos: a hybrid offset-to-digital model
Bridging the gap between offset and digital printing does not require replacing offset printers. It means knowing when to complement offset with digital by shifting short-run jobs (where the target volume is not profitable for offset printing) to digital.
Imagine an approach that uses smart workflow technology to move easily between digital and offset printing, delivering jobs cost-effectively and with no compromise on quality. Hybrid technology allows commercial printers to easily transition their businesses to a flexible, agile model that can respond quickly and cost-effectively to changing print needs as the marketing environment evolves.
Dual offset-to-digital solutions give pre-press operators the same powerful tools for both offset and digital workflows, and cover everything from imposition and colour matching, to data capture, job management, output, and finishing. By automating and auto-programming a host of repetitious printing tasks, commercial print houses can streamline production activities with a single set of simple, powerful, and interoperable tools that will vastly improve print-floor efficiency.
Most importantly, the hybrid digital-offset approach eliminates the tricky steps of learning a new workflow, or reduce the need to outsource, making it easier for print-houses to evolve to a more flexible and agile business model. Print operators simply need to learn how to operate a new output device.
By using smarter technology, users can make print decisions based on individual specs and printer capabilities, enhancing print-floor visibility, helping to avoid expensive mistakes and ensuring the print-floor processes run efficiently.
A hybrid approach also enables commercial printers to capture and manage source data from a variety of sources, such as web portals, and utilise data analytic and variable print tools to better meet the needs of personalised marketing.
Businesses that adopt dual printing technology can open doors to new markets and capitalise on opportunities available for high-margin personalisation, web-to-print services, and new and emerging variable-data print services.
Managing the transition to hybrid printing
The transition to hybrid digital-offset printing requires supplementing a core offset business with a flexible and agile digital print capability.
The key to success is working closely with business stakeholders and a trusted supplier to analyse the business. Consider what offset work can be migrated to digital, where the business is missing out on opportunities for short or variable runs, and how it can meet the growing demand for quick turnaround jobs. Identifying these pain points and working closely with a trusted partner can help to develop a targeted growth strategy, using the right technology and solutions for your business.
Scalability is critical, which is why it is important to choose a solution that can be designed to suit your exact requirements to ensure you don’t over-invest in new systems and processes. By selecting a flexible and interoperable solution, you will be able to easily add modules and plug-ins as your business grows and changes.
Ricoh is committed to working with industry leaders to deliver innovative solutions that deliver efficiency and cost savings for commercial printers. A strong partnership with Heidelberg, dating back to 2011, provides the commercial print industry with integrated printing solutions that meet the needs of long and short print-runs. Strategic cooperation and mutual investment has facilitated integration with Heidelberg’s industry-standard workflow solution, Prinect, and the launch of TotalFlow in Australia.
Digital upheavals are common in every industry, and printing is no exception. With innovative solutions such as TotalFlow, Ricoh is demonstrating its commitment to enabling print businesses to seize the digital opportunities while sidestepping the challenges.
GREEN & GOLD SUCCESSFULLY INTEGRATE DIGITAL AND OFFSET PRINTING
Green & Gold Printing in the Sydney suburb of Artarmon was seeking a new solution that would allow it to meet growing customer demand for short-run jobs within their digital business. With a Heidelberg Prinect offset workflow already in place, Green & Gold introduced the Heidelberg Prinect Digital Front End (DFE) – the enhanced Heidelberg version of the Ricoh TotalFlow Print Server. The solution was to complement their existing print environment and create greater synergies to support business growth with their Linoprint CV digital system.
“The new DFE has been a fantastic step forward for our digital workflow and business, because of its superior functionality when compared to a standard digital rip,” says Ross Clark, general manager at Green & Gold Printing.
“The DFE interface is almost a clone of the existing Prinect workflow, with its own powerful processing capabilities and a great package of tools in the cockpit including imposition and colour management which has the ability to remap colours via colour tables and PDF tools.
“This gives us the capability to push files directly to the DFE for flight checking and direct printing without the need for Signa Station to create impositions. Because of the high level of the PDF rip in the DFE, we have no issues processing difficult transparencies and layered files.
“The outstanding colour management capability also means we can easily align colour with offset printing, giving us the flexibility to respond quickly and produce cost-effective short-run jobs. With the Heidelberg DFE, we not only have a great software package but also the support of Heidelberg with their expert capabilities in colour management for both offset and digital, with hardware service support from Ricoh.
“Our productivity has improved because of the DFE. Ease of workflow and the DFE’s ability to deal with files on the go, with no need go via pre-press, means they are pushed directly through a digital device. This is reducing the time spent on each job and we are certainly seeing cost savings across our business as a result,” says Clark.
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