Cary Sherburne:  Hi, I’m Cary Sherburne, Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink.com.  I’m here with Bill Parker, who is Chief Marketing Officer at GMC Software Technology.  

Bill Parker:  Hi Cary.  

Cary Sherburne:  So you have, you’re in the process of introducing a new product which is built on the old platform, but new product, right?  Inspire?  

Bill Parker:  GMC Inspire, yeah.  We’ve put together this solution because we need to actually extend our reach into new markets and we felt that with the word “print” in our existing solution name, you know, and that sort of limited the opportunities that we actually have.  And we have a number of customers who are actually sort of really beyond print.  And so the new solution actually really reflects this whole, any thoughts of moving beyond print and actually sort of really engaging customers for continued conversation.  

Cary Sherburne:  And typically, you know, you’ve been in the transactional market, you’ve had a lot of focus on printers.  What are some of the differences that you’re seeing going forward in terms of your market focus?  

Bill Parker:  Well, the one thing we’re not going to be sort of seeing is that print is actually not going to go away.  That’s actually still going to stay.  

Cary Sherburne:  It’s not going away?  

Bill Parker:  It’s actually not going to go away.  

Cary Sherburne:  You heard it first here.

Bill Parker:  Yeah, it’s not going to go away.  

Cary Sherburne:  Okay.  

Bill Parker:  Yeah, it will still be there in one form or another, whether it’s actually acknowledgement of something, but there will still be paper.  But I think the big difference is that, there’s going to be more communications because companies need to actually engage with their customer, not just a single conversation every period… over a period of time.  They need to actually sort of be in constant contact.  And that engagement needs to be instantaneous in real time so that it’s more a case of talking and also listening to the customer.  So when they hear something from the customer, they need to be able to actually engage and actually sort of, you know, converse again with the customer.  

Cary Sherburne:  Now, a lot of your customers are actually the enterprises.  So how does that sort of fit into the whole eco system?  

Bill Parker:  Well, of course, you know, enterprises, they have various types of communication within their industry.  They have multi-communications, there’s transactional communications, and also service and sales communications.  And what we’re sort of seeing is that there is a trend where these are all starting to merge.  So the concept of customer communication is becoming a single point for the enterprise.  So it’s no longer about, this is a multi-communication, that’s actually a transaction, it’s going to change.  And I think, you know, from an enterprise point of view with GMC Inspire, it allows them to sort of do this because that will actually enable them to integrate all of their communications at any point of the conversation.  

Cary Sherburne:  And then they may choose to print in house or they may choose to, if they’re going to print, they may choose to partner with a printer or however… 

Bill Parker:  Exactly.  Exactly.  And the key thing here is that they can actually have control of the process.  So they can control which part of the process they want to have, they can also actually then partner with printers and also other service providers to actually sort of do the, you know, the pieces that is not core to their business process.  

Cary Sherburne:  Now, of course, you know, on the current platform, on PrintNET, I found it interesting that the grocery chain in Sweden, Eka?  

Bill Parker:  Yes.  

Cary Sherburne:  They actually have your software and they just send a print stream to the printer.  

Bill Parker:  Exactly, yes, exactly.  

Cary Sherburne:  And they want to take control of that and… 

Bill Parker:  At the end of the day, the enterprise is the organization that actually really has the understanding.  They know their business.  Yeah?  And what Eka have actually been able to do is actually really master their data and actually use their data, but at the same time, actually do that in such a way that they’re not having to learn something that’s actually not core to their business.

Cary Sherburne:  Yeah, and I think they were kind of an early adopter in some of the like mobile communications and you know, sending their coupons out via your phone and… 

Bill Parker:  Exactly.  Yeah, and I think that really comes down to what I personally call outsourcing the third option.  

Cary Sherburne:  Okay.  

Bill Parker:  Because what they’re sort of saying there is, you know, we can do things ourselves, yet we’re in the we outsourced or we didn’t.  Now they can actually have a choice on how they do that and it’s like you say, some of the communications they’ll actually handle in-house.  So maybe mobile is something they do, but again, the print can be outsourced.  

Cary Sherburne:  Okay.  Great.  Well, it’ll be exciting to watch this unfold.  Thank you for sharing with us.  

Bill Parker:  Okay.  Thank you.