There was no lack of networking opportunities for the media folks covering On Demand and the question I most often asked of vendors and suppliers was How's the show for you? And the response was emphatically and almost unanimous Great!
Kinko's, for example, described On Demand 2004 as their coming out party. And it's obvious; these folks are no trade show slouches! For their debut at On Demand, Kinko's had a big booth and a big presence. At a media luncheon on Tuesday, March 9, the company formally introduced Kinko's Commercial Solutions a suite of customized document solutions and business services for corporate and institutional customers:
- Kinko's Managed Services on-site, near-site, or distributed document outsourcing solutions
- Kinko's Professional Program a corporate account program providing contracted nationwide pricing, and 24/7 access to presentation materials, printing and copying services, conference rooms, video conferencing, WI-FI, and other services
- Kinko's DocStore an online, on-demand print solution that includes an online catalog of frequently printed documents
- Kinko's ImageX Business Stationery Print System an enterprise-level stationery print procurement solution providing a customized e-catalog for ordering, managing, and distributing branded stationery and business cards
- Kinko's Document and Business Services offering digital printing and copying, large-sized prints, posters, signs and banners, laminating and mounting, and point-of-sale (POS) displays
Announcing a variable-cost model for document outsourcing, Kinko's described a process that enables customers to evaluate their total print spend, turn fixed costs into variable costs, and reclaim real estate and warehouse space. Said John McDonald, Kinko's senior vice president of sales, We will definitely be at On Demand next year. We would have been happy going home with only yesterday's leads for the whole show. We are very satisfied!
Lorne Spark, Avanti Computer Systems, was clearly satisfied with this year's show, This is one of the best, if not the best show yet for us! Lorne and the rest of the Avanti crew were demonstrating print management systems for commercial print shops, in-plant shops, and on demand printing companies.
For RFQ, order entry, order query, and inventory query services, Avanti offers a smart appliance that resides behind the printer's firewall for security. The company also delivers an electronic accounting and scheduling system specifically designed to work with Xerox DocuTech and DocuPrint printers.
Tony Caudill, Sales Manager, Pace Systems Group, was equally satisfied with this year's show; On Demand is second only to last fall's Graph Expo for results for us!
The ePace solution is a turnkey solution that includes a complete suite of print management software modules and an integrated e-commerce offering delivered as a fully configured server.
Caleb Tower, CEO of P3Software, reminded me that P3Expeditor is not a spec and bid product and certainly not a print auction system, but a management solution for print buyers to manage their print quotes and vendor responses. P3Expeditor provides a database for a print buyer to manage his or her work and improves the buyer's productivity.
Rather than being a competitive bidding or auction site, P3Expeditor saves a print buyer about an hour on each job they send out for quote buy standardizing specification information and simplifying the distribution of quotes. If a buyer sends out 100 jobs for bid a year, they can save 100 hours or about 2 ½ weeks time using P3Expeditor. At $30-$50 per hour for labor, that's a $3000-$5000 savings on a $300 investment for the service.
So how was the show for P3Software? While Caleb's company targets print buyers, sharing a booth with the Print Brokers and Buyers Association (PBBA) and an announcement of a partnership with Print Buyers Online ( www.printbuyersonline.com ) made for great synergy.
Not only did the folks from Printable Technologies have audiences hanging on every word with the JDF Tour, the company had a strong presence in the HP truck showcasing a JDF workflow linking variable data print products in a Printable catalog with HP Production Flow. Last year, customers were asking what about JDF?' This year they are telling us what they want to do with JDF, said Joe Fedor, Printable Technology's Product Manager. Workflows that printers like LaVigne are using today deliver the true end-to-end promise of JDF.
Digital Marketing Symposium Success!
For a first year effort, the Digital Marketing Symposium was deemed a success. Lisa Wellman, who with husband Terry is one half of the dynamic duo that make up the Digital Marketing Corporation, organizers of the symposium, said, Great time in the Big Apple. We were thrilled with the Symposium. Seth Godin and Tom Peters were amazing. Lisa, with her nearly unlimited energy speaks in bullets!
