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A Good Year for Software: The New Infrastructure of Your Print Business

WhatTheyThink Print Software section editor Jennifer Matt looks back at the year 2020 in software, some of the trends that emerged from the pandemic, and how software has become an important element in helping print companies adapt and pivot.

Tuesday, December 08, 2020

Try to think back to January 2020 and what you were planning to accomplish in your business, the goals you had set for potential business growth. Now as we are closing out the fourth quarter of 2020, I can’t imagine a single plan you made in January did not get adjusted or thrown out completely.

In looking over the articles I wrote in 2020 for the software section of WhatTheyThink, so many of them had COVID-19 in the title as we all pivoted our approach to the markets based on how the pandemic was uniquely impacting our business. We didn’t have one live event as an industry; we missed our four-year revival (the Olympics of print) in drupa as virtually all business travel was halted.

My view of the print industry has always been through the lens of the software solutions used to run print businesses, enable new print products, and engage with print buyers. 2020 was a good year for software in general. By “good year for software,” I don’t necessarily mean profit for software vendors. I mean that the unique aspects of a pandemic have driven us further into our digital lives all powered by software.


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About Jennifer Matt

Jennifer Matt is the managing editor of WhatTheyThink’s Print Software section as well as President of Web2Print Experts, Inc. a technology-independent print software consulting firm helping printers with web-to-print and print MIS solutions.

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Deciding What’s Important

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This Plant Wouldn’t Run Without Me

In conversations with a label converter recently, the General Manager told me that more than once in the last few years key employees had voiced the core belief that “this plant wouldn’t run without me.” Now, you can take this statement a lot of different ways. My initial reaction is concern for the business because the employee that says this is both likely a key player and potentially a risk. Read More

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