Page 16 - Packaging News July - August 2019

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PACK & LABEL PRINTING www.packagingnews.com.au
July-August 2019
LEFT: Scott Thompson (right) educates guests on Esko’s workflow solutions.
BELOW: Chris Barry shows off the company’s software offerings.
Rethinking printing
The Esko Open House at its Melbourne headquarters gave an insight into the comprehensive approach of the packaging solutions giant. Tim Grey was there for PKN.
It was this workflow that Esko sought to introduce at its Open House event in Melbourne. Scott Thompson, along with his compa- triot Chris Barry, Esko’s knowl- edgeable application sales manager, walked attendees through its cur- rent – and future – offerings.
Again, rather than a single product, it was the sum total of Esko’s solutions that highlighted the breadth of the company’s vision. Its focus latterly has been Automation Engine, the flagship pre-press soft- ware. With 3000 installs worldwide, it is also the premier product on these shores. Thompson told the crowd that since launching 12 months ago, 300 million workflows have been initiated (though the abso- lute number is probably twice that, given many users’ unwillingness to report data back home to Esko).
Barry said that beyond many and varied benefits for designers and printmakers (like accurately esti- mated print costs, live links between pre-press and press inspection, and simplified flexo processes), perhaps its most exciting application is its approach to the approvals process. Using simple browser-based soft-
ESKO is an interesting company. Most businesses try to sell you a thing, some product that will do a task faster, smarter or at higher-resolution. The folks at Esko don’t think that way; instead, they are re-imagining
how an entire industry works, and are designing a fully integrated sys- tem that links up everyone from the art department to the print-room, plus clients, stakeholders, market- ers, copywriters, and sales staff, giving brands complete oversight.
According to Esko, the most sig- nificant barrier to true efficiency – and true creativity – is lack of connection. Esko’s regional market- ing and channel manager Scott Thompson told us that remarkably there is only somewhere around 37 per cent of the packaging industry that is genuinely digitised, leaving the majority of tasks and processes to some overworked middleman.
One of the obvious downfalls of this analogue approach is that,
generally, it takes on average 190 days to get a packaging change from the designer’s Mac through to the supermarket shelf. That is far too long in these days of on-de- mand everything.
The solution to this problem – as far as Esko sees it – is to digitise the work- flow process as much as possible, al- lowing stakeholders to share and re- view creative while leaving computers to handle the technical details.
37%
of packaging industry is genuinely digitised
– Scott Thompson, Esko