Was 2015 a good year for print? How do you measure success?
2015 was the year of HP’s Giant Digital Leap Ahead. We introduced new products and watched as our customers surpassed 130 billion pages printed using HP PageWide Web Presses. By any definition of success, that is a great achievement for our customers and for the HP PageWide Web Press team. Overall we are seeing print grow in several key markets, and we are seeing our customers offer smart print solutions for book industry, newspaper industry and marketing collateral sectors that help their clients make the best decisions for managing their printed product supply chain. Publishers are learning to embrace the power of high speed inkjet to meet their rigorous deadlines without overprinting. Newspaper publishers are adding new products based on hyperlocalization. Marketers are moving more of their output to high-speed inkjet to take advantage of hypersegmentation and personalization when appropriate. 2015 was a very good year.
What challenges did you face in 2015 and what did you learn from them?
Every year bring unanticipated challenges from global economies and on-going pressures from brand owners, publishers and other content owners who are looking for differentiation. In 2015 we certainly saw some economic challenges, but some of the biggest challenges for us involved meeting the demand for our presses. After listening carefully to the market demands we announced our High Definition Nozzle Architecture, which we refer to as our HDNA technology, and that attracted a great deal of interest as we showed the new capabilities to content owners who in the past had not been sure that inkjet could meet their needs. With the growing number of paper options paired to the opportunities created with the HDNA technology, we are having many new conversations in the market. We have learned that there is a growing group of print professionals who have big visions and we are excited to be providing technology to help them realize those concepts.
How are you implementing what you learned during 2015, into 2016?
This is a drupa year for the industry, and it is also the second year for Jetcomm, the industry’s first and most dynamic inkjet community user group. For 2016 we are taking what we have learned in our close cooperation with our customers to inform the plans for our next Jetcomm conference on April 13-14, and also using it to inform our presence at drupa. One thing we know is that finishing is a differentiation point, so we are adding even more finishing relationships to our portfolio and we’ll be showing a lot of those options at drupa.
How do your products and services help create relevancy, and why is that important for print in 2016?
The HP PageWide Web Press team links our high-speed inkjet web presses to workflows and finishing equipment to meet the needs of our very demanding customers and their visions for how they will grow their businesses. Our job is to ensure that our customers are as well informed as possible on their options so that they can guide their clients toward creating the most relevant print products to meet their needs. Our customers touch most facets of printed material, from trade and education books to general commercial output, marketing collateral that is put into the mail or delivered by hand, and a wide range of transaction and regulatory communication. The power of the high-speed inkjet web press is that they can deliver jobs in full color where every page is unique, and they can do it at speeds that help them to meet their customer SLAs.
What are three things (not including your products and services) that the print community should have on their radar in 2016… and why?
Every customer should be looking at their infrastructure for color management, data management and finishing options. These are the three things that will keep their offerings relevant when paired with their print production environment.
What is the best way for people to learn more about what you do, and how you can help them?
Visit our site hp.com/go/pagewidewebpress, come and meet us at industry events, follow us on twitter @HPGraphicArts, and on Facebook and YouTube. HP has taken Hall 17 for drupa (May 31 – June 10 in Dusseldorf, Germany)!
David J. Murphy is the worldwide director of marketing and business development for HP’s PageWide Web Press division. David and his team drive the division’s worldwide marketing strategy, future product marketing, current business management, business development, and long term business planning. He leads his team to work intimately with customers to help transform their business models, accelerate their growth, and maximize value to their clients.
In his 20-plus-year tenure in the graphic arts community, David has held leadership roles in marketing, sales, and business development. He is an advocate for production inkjet and digital print and the graphic arts industry, having served on numerous association boards and committees.
David holds MBA and BS degrees in marketing and he makes his home in San Diego.
