WEEK 08

FINISHING

Overview: The finishing industry is experiencing the impact of the paradigmatic shift away from mass manufacturing to mass customization. This will impact on all aspects of post press and finishing.

Technological convergence and its impact on post press and finishing

Technological convergence is impacting on the post press and finishing industries in a number of different and important ways. The uptake of digital information systems is resulting in an increasing ability to reduce the cost of inventory. An example is the rise of the electronic order, print on demand book selling industry. See for example: Trafford Publishing (www.trafford.com). This becomes manifest through greater emphasis on production on demand of which digital printing on demand is one manifestation. The overall trend is towards shorter run lengths and greater customization of content for specific stakeholders. This trend is occurring in both the in-house and commercial printing sectors.

Trends in the in-house print sector and the impact on sales of finishing equipment

The uptake of digital printing technologies is resulting in the migration of printing activities closer to the source of demand. In-house printing has been increasing substantially resulting in the significant sales opportunities of manual finishing equipment directly into offices. Equally, dedicated in-house printing departments have been making procurement decisions to reduce the manual costs of finishing. For example there are examples where a premium is paid for digital printing equipment with an ability to implement in-line binding for sheet fed digital printing equipment in order that manual finishing functions are eliminated entirely from in-house print production lines.

Trends within the commercial finishing sector

Dedicated post press and finishing businesses are having to deal with the increasing complexity of smaller and smaller print runs and increasing customization of finishing solutions. This is requiring that production staff in both commercial print organisations and their outsourced post press service organisations work closely and in collaboration. There are emerging signs that electronic scheduling systems can ensure there is a greater efficiency in production planning and implementation, resulting in shorter and shorter turn around times and reduced handling costs.

Obstacles to selling high quality post print and finishing solutions

The value of high quality finishing and, for example, customized book binding solutions has the potential to be leveraged in significant ways. For example, large organisations might pay a significant premium for personalized books of specific interest to particular customers. This sort of opportunity is probably not being realized to the extent it might because most sales and marketing activities occur directly by print organisations to their customers. The focus is on selling print solutions, not finishing solutions. The extreme competition for business in the commercial print sector is probably resulting in an over-investment in sales and marketing activities of commercial print organisations. Similarly, the publishers of print-on-demand books deal on-line directly with book authors and book customers - and thus bundle the entire workflow within the one organisation. Other than establishing an on-line presence and catalog, the publisher leaves most of the book marketing to the authors who receive a fixed royalty for each sale.

Opportunities for dedicated post press and finishing organisations

Dedicated post press and finishing organisations have the potential to create new sales and marketing models that are different from the ones currently prevailing in the commercial print sector. For example, a new type of service system model could be developed where by a finishing company could:

work closely with publishers and large complex enterprises with specific publishing requirements to provide customised production services;
coordinate manufacturing services based on an intimate knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of local and overseas print manufacturing organisations;
warehouse print collateral and use this print collateral to create customized books only at the time orders are received.
collaborate with other parties to consolidate purchasing of input products, particularly paper;
create a channel through which new investment in state of the art binding facilities might be made;
develop new export and import replacement markets for coloured book production.

KEY IMPLICATIONS

The selling of high quality post print and finishing solutions is being hampered by the over investment in sales and marketing activities of commercial print organisations.
The demand for high quality post press and print finishing solutions may not have been fully tested in the market.
New networked service models that would aim to create clustered production models to service both publishers and printers have the potential to leverage the activities of dedicated post press and finishing businesses.
New networked approaches to customer engagement are likely to be required to support the development of new and innovative approaches to post press and finishing sales channels.