As the end of the year approaches and companies work on strategic planning for the coming year, it becomes helpful to think about the trends that will likely impact the industry of tomorrow. This article offers a top-level overview of three trends that we expect to impact the industry in the near future. These trends are expected to provide sales and profit growth opportunities for commercial and in-plant printers alike.

The first trend was discussed in an earlier article entitled A Renewed Focus on Core Print Services and a Slowing PSP-to-MSP Migration. Our industry is currently seeing a return to core competencies like digital printing, wide format printing, and offset/conventional printing. According to InfoTrends’ 2015 report entitled U.S. Production Software Investment Outlook, the fastest-growing services are not the ones that need to be built from scratch. Services that many companies have been offering for years (e.g., digital printing, wide format printing, offset printing, creative services) are currently seeing faster-than-average growth.

Figure 1: What are the fastest-growing parts of your business? (Top Responses)