We present part two of our interview with printCafe Co-CEO Marc Olin. Part one focused on operational and financial areas surrounding printCafe. Part two covers the sales, marketing and adoption rates of printCafe’s solution.

Marc Olin is Co-CEO of printCafe. Marc served eight years as President of Prograph Management Systems, a software company he cofounded. Prograph developed the first publisher-to-printer job specification system and co-developed all of the major buyer-to-printer transaction standards. He is currently a director of the Graphic Arts Technical Foundation and the Graphic Communications Association. Marc received his B.S. degree from Carnegie Mellon University.

printCafe, Inc. was created last year through the combined initiatives of Prograph and CreoScitex, a division of Creo Products, Inc., a world leader in solutions for the graphic arts industry. printCafe solutions are installed in or hosted for over 7500 print buyers and printing facilities worldwide, including 19 of the 25 largest printers in the United States, and 48 Fortune 1000 companies.

Marc, we have seen releases about the 2001 user conference. Tell us more about the event and expected attendance.

We’re anticipating between 1000-1200 registrants at printCafe’s second annual users conference, Connect2001. The event is June 14-16 at the Walt Disney Dolphin Hotel in Orlando and we are very excited that we already have several hundred registrants.

Connect 2001 will emphasize sessions and tracks specified by our customers – topics they’ve asked for to help them maximize use of their printCafe print management systems. Our goal is to help printer attendees identify the means to, and value of, integrating their print management system with suppliers, customers, and production processes. Printing technologies and business relationships are both changing as processes become digitized and networked. We’re bringing together our customers to share their perspectives on change and learn how we can help them grow and be successful moving forward.

Many are impressed by the lead role printCafe has played in education. Describe how successful this process has been and your plans to continue.

Because printCafe is not just an Internet company and we’re not new on the scene, industry associations and event organizers seem to recognize the value and insight we have to share. We’re fortunate that they’re anxious to include us in thought-leadership forums. Our management team and the companies that created printCafe have long histories in the printing and publishing industries. We know our customers well – we’ve watched their businesses evolve over decades and we’re listening hard to what their challenges are and what tools and technologies they need to be successful moving forward.

Provide an update on PCX?

We have taken the approach with the development of our Web site and management systems that they will continue to evolve together to become a single architecture. As part of this architecture, our printer private-label sites serve as the Web integration platform for our management systems. Third party Web sites which wish to integrate to our platform may do so using PCX via these private label Web sites. We have spent over 8 months joining the architecture of our various management systems to our Web site platform so that we could facilitate a single point of integration. The updated versions of our management systems, which support this approach, are now installed at almost all of our customers.

Our efforts to date have been concentrated on integrations that our customers have identified as critical - these have included integrations with Ariba and PeopleSoft using standards such as cXML and JDF. Since we receive many requests each week for integration into our platform of one sort or another we must, of course, prioritize these by what we believe is most important. We understand that many printers need to make critical business decisions to service their customers and this is exactly why we have developed an architecture that provides a complete solution across the supply chain.

Can you give our subscribers who "buy printing" a specific example of what printCafe can offer their firm in terms of automation and real savings?

Some of our current print buyer customers are seeing significant savings --- reduced labor costs by as much as 40%; shortened the print procurement cycle time by as much as 60%; reduced hard costs by as much as 25%. Obviously, each company's print buying needs are different. We recently unveiled an analytical tool called PrintIQ, which is designed to measure your anticipated ROI from the implementation of printCafe's ecommerce solution.

Can you give print providers the same example in their space?

Printers that invest in our complete infrastructure solution have a unique opportunity to change the way they do business. By expanding their platform to the Internet, printers have an opportunity to service their customers better, improve the speed in which they quote, reduce the error rate in the jobs they produce, reduce the cycle time in the order process, improve their content management and grow their business.

printCafe solutions are used by over 7500 print facilities and print buyers worldwide. Is the sales effort focused on rolling print vendors into the full-blown printCafe system?

Our printer customers are in a variety of phases of evolution when it comes to adopting technology – and we’re sensitive to that fact. printCafe is very committed to continuing to develop and enhance our ERP print management software. Some of our ERP customers will integrate an ecommerce solution in the short-term, others are not considering implementing an Internet solution at this time. We’re experts at designing unique and customized solution that meets the needs of each individual customer.

How are you reaching out to print buyers?

In parallel with our printer-side sales efforts, printCafe recently initiated a broad and exciting Global print buyer sales effort. Forrester Research estimates the annual Global 1000 print-buy spending to be $240 billion. This is a large market in search of an e-procurement strategy customized for print and printCafe’s solution is attracting a great deal of attention. Our customers like AOL Time Warner, The Hewlett-Packard Company, and Conde Nast-UK are very excited about the potential for streamlining and cutting costs in the area of print procurement.

How long does it realistically take for a new customer to implement printCafe?

Implementation times for printCafe solutions can vary widely depending upon the type of Web site the customer is implementing and the level of detail they wish to configure. With our EnterpriseSite solution for large print buyers and our PrinterSite solution for printers, we offer a configurable solution that can be tailored to the needs of the individual organization. This has the advantage that once the system is configured, the buyers can work in the terminology.

Examine Part 1. Thank you Marc. You have been very generous with your time and the community thanks you!