Page 32 - Print 21 Magazine Nov-Dec 2018

Software Conference
Expanding markets for printers
As they fight for a place in the multi-channel media landscape, commercial printers are raising their game, entering new fields and selling new services. Building e-commerce websites, enabling cross-media campaigns, and refining variable data marketing are some of the ways printers are transforming. XMPie is an important element in enabling the change, reports Patrick Howard.
One to one in one
There can be no more telling indication of
the increasing diversity and sophistication of successful commercial printers than the rapt attention and eager engagement of the audience at the two-day Queensland event. As XMPie software and marketing experts from around the globe steered them through the sometimes arcane twists of e-commerce and website creation, the industry professionals – 80 per cent from commercial printing companies
– challenged them and kept up. Most of the audience were members of the XMPie Users Group, an independent organisation that is helping to shape the future role of print.
According to Kavanagh, the industry is finally catching on to the importance of web-to- print and integrating print into e-commerce.
“I used to say in 2008, ‘be online in 2009’. That’s how long I’ve been pushing the story. The whole web-to-print thing has been going around since 2000. It’s an old fashioned term now.
“Is print the start of the conversation? Not necessarily. It could be the outcome. It goes round and round. You can send
a catalogue with a call to action that drives people to a website. You can also let someone search for you online, chat with them for a while then send them a PDF.
“When we talk about how central print is to us, ask the question: why did Xerox buy XMPie? Because it future proofs digital clicks, it’s the offset of digital transfer. What was Xerox’s business problem in 2006? They needed a strategy to drive digital volume. So they did an analysis in the US and in Europe. They found that customers with production engines and XMPie servers were printing 42 per cent more volume than those without XMPie servers.”
Software is not only driving increased production efficiencies within printing factories, it is also broadening the scope and influence of print providers beyond the printed word. Addressing
the growing marketplace for cross-media and variable data marketing, printers are looking for ways to deliver such services to their customers. Expanding on their existing skills in handling large data flows, commercial print enterprises
are evolving into becoming true digital marketing businesses.
This is the revolution XMPie is helping to drive. Whether enabling printers
to support and create variable data
print (VDP) campaigns, or design and deploy cross media and omnichannel marketing, the Xerox-owned software provider is spanning the gap between
print and the digital universe. With a strong legacy in print and an ongoing engagement – 85 per cent of its systems are installed in commercial print companies – it has built its Adobe-based software into a sophisticated environment that powers the full range of ecommerce personalisation as well as the requirements of contemporary printing.
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Who and why XMPie?
The recognition that commercial printers are foundational partners lies at the
heart of the inaugural regional XMPie Innovation event at Palm Cove, north of Cairns, hosted by Enda Kavanagh, Asia Pacific sales manager. Founded in Israel
in 2000 by Scitex and EFI veterans and bought by Xerox in 2006, XMPie is a unique software provider spanning print-based communications, as well as e-commerce and marketing automation.
According to Ayelet Szabo-Melamed, the Israel-based vice-president marketing who headed the XMPie team that flew into Palm Cove, there are no other companies operating across the same spectrum.
“The truth is there is no one vendor that has the breadth of solutions that we do. If you ask us who is our competitor in VDP,
it’s a question of what kind of VDP? In high volume transactional VDP there are a few vedors that specialise in that. But do they also do marketing animation? The answer
is no. When we talk to analysts, they tell us we’re in the top two in web-to-print, we’re in the top five in e-commerce. They also tell us there is no competitor doing as much as we are across the whole spectrum of one on one communication,” she said.