Richard Romano: Hi this is Richard Romano from WhatTheyThink.com. And we’re here at the latest Oce Wow Event in Boca Raton Florida. And we’re talking with Francis McMahon, who is the VP of Marketing for Oce North America. So thank you very much for talking to us again.
Francis McMahon: Hey Richard great to see you. Thanks for being here.
Richard: Now the focus of this event has been inkjet printing and as Howie Fenton pointed out in his keynote address, there have been 500 inkjet press installs in the past couple of years. Tell us a little bit about Oce’s overall inkjet strategy and your leadership position in that market.
Francis: Well at the event here, we’ve had a lot of questions about the transition from toner to inkjet and really what that means, and about our portfolio, and inkjet continues to be a driver in some key applications around book publishing, transactional printing and direct mail. So here in Boca Raton today we are pleased to announced the new Color Stream 3500 and we also introduced two new lines in additions to our Jet Stream portfolio, the 1400 and the 3000. So at this point of time we’ve really rounded out our complete inkjet portfolio, we can now offer our customers a wide variety of solutions to meet all those new demanding applications.
Richard: Now we’ve spoken in these EVS videos before about the Press Go Program. How does that work with some of the inkjet initiatives you’ve been pursing?
Francis: It specifically, and I just mentioned it a moment ago, there is this quandary that the markets in right now which is where do we go today from toner to inkjet and how do we make that switch, how do we make that transition. So what we’re trying to do is provide them with the relevant information and not just the relevant information but the relevant people to help them make that transition. For example, we have a solution architect organization led by Guy Broadhurst and a part of what they do and the professional services team is go in, analyze a current environment, see what customers are really doing around their applications, where they want to grow and make recommendations around our portfolio in different ways that we can help the customer grow their business.
Richard: Now one of the themes of the keynote was early adopters versus late adopters. Where do you think commercial printing is now in terms of the adoption cycle of inkjet? Is it still early in the process or is it still kind of late in the process.
Francis: Oh, I think it’s safe to say at this point we’ve crossed the chasm. There should be over a hundred inkjet units sold this year in North America alone and we’re a big proponent or competent of that. In fact, worldwide Oce has a 32% market share around inkjet. We did that in a very short period of time. We’ve been in the business for about three years and, again, with our expanded portfolio with the 1400, the 3000, and now the new Color Stream 3500, we expect to capture a broad variety of that share this year in 2011.
Richard: Now tell us about the Transactional Printing Advisory Council. What is that all about?
Francis: Ah, TPAC. The Transactional Printing Advisory Council, the transactional side of the business is something that Oce has been involved in for very many years. In fact, on a continuous feed side of our business we have approximately 58% share in that market. However, that market continues to grow, it continues to evolve and we need to continually learn from our customers bring a broader perspective of that customer input into our development cycle, into our business strategy. So what we’ve done is we’ve established and put together 13 industry experts from around the United States from a variety of different enterprise type accounts running these applications to help us design and implement our business level strategy here at Oce North America and production printing.
Richard: Thank you very much.
Francis: Hey Richard, thank you.