● A NEW STUDY
The Current and Future Impact of Digital Technologies and Market Dynamics on Printing and Publishing Workflow. We've given this study and projects related to it a shorter name. We call it Digital Roadmaps
The comprehensive Digital Roadmaps project has had several elements so far. It wasthe basis for an informational display at the Chicago Convention Center - McCormick Place during the exhibition in Chicago last year. We were pleased to see that many thousands of people did in fact pass through this display and have the chanceto explore, ask questions, and get familiar with some of the basic concepts of Digital Roadmaps.
In the display, we distributed a series of seven individual maps, which describedin detail how networked digital workflows will affect a specific segment of the communications business. We also devoted a general session at PRINT97 and CONVERFLEX-USA to the topic, offering seven different speakers with very different approaches and opinions. Finally, we continue to seek out chances to educate the industry and the public about digital roadmaps through magazine articles, seminars, and participation in conferences.
DIGITAL ROADMAPS
Digital roadmaps are action steps for business success. They're not abstractions,not theory, but real development in the real marketplace....developments with important consequences.
[Print is alive and well]
First, far from disappearing as has been so often predicted, print is alive and well. Second, both the types of printing being done, and the means being applied toproduce printing, are changing profoundly. Our new study forecasts the ways in which print's role in the business world will change in the next several years.
About two years ago NPES members heard, at our annual economic forecasting conference, a prediction that print document volume would double between 1994 and 2004. Print's share of the communications market would remain constant, this speaker said, but the market itself was about to expand remarkably. Certainly this expansion seems well underway. Our expectation, for the next several years, is that we'll see more documents being created, we'll see color image being obtained from a variety of sources beyond the traditional scanning of originals and most important, we'll see rapid growth of high speed data networks that will position print in a broader business context.
[Wake-up call]
With this foundation, we describe the findings of our study as a wake-up call, an exhortation to graphic communications businesses to get digital, get networked, and re-engineer their processes for the new millennium. Those high speed data networks we predicted a few years ago, in other words, are coming on strong. They're now the basis for workflows in many setting, and offer opportunities both to turbochange existing markets and to create new ones.
[Key Conclusions]
The study concludes that the economics of conventional workflows for printing and publishing are deteriorating. After all, the most sophisticated direct digital printing press is fairly pointless without a productive digital workflow leading to it, and from it.
"The dynamic of evolving media demand is about new ways to reach the right person ( or group) with the right content, in the right place, in the right from ( or media), and with the right economics. While conventional print is not going away any time soon, the next five years will be a period of accelerating experimentation with new workflows, new ways of printing, and new forms of media delivery ".
Established models of distribution are breaking down. The old pattern was print it, store it, then distribute it. That's giving way to a pattern of print it - distribute it across networks - display it - and print it if and when we need to. The future of printing and publishing, our study says, is in business to business communication over networks. In this environment customers, providers and suppliers will all be linked across networks and their systems will share data and functions freely. Major advances in file portability, spurred both by national technical standards efforts and by the commitment of leading vendors, will be a major contributing factor in print's ability to be integrated into enterprise-wide digital networks.
