By Jonathan McGrew, edp
In many ways Print still makes the world go round; if you consider all of the things we print today it is easy to see that it has its place and opportunities—even if the prediction of printing’s demise has been foretold for well over a decade. So I pose the challenge: I speak Print, yes I do! I speak Print, how about you?
See, we started off the year on a quest to bring us Printing Industry folks together. Our mission is to uncover and simplify the complexity of the transactional document area of print, show how it is relevant to other areas of the industry, such as direct mailers or commercial printers—even industrial print. And on our journey we have defined Transactional Print and related it to TransPromo (and more), and discussed the opportunity of a data driven strategy as it relates to print and customer communications.
Customer Communications; I venture to guess we all think of different things when we say those two words. From a print perspective it could be direct mail piece for cross-sell and up-sell or a customer’s monthly statement or invoice or the labels printed on a can (say a nice recipe for chili cheese nachos). In the transactional space where I spend most of my time, customer communications and Customer Communications Management (CCM) has become a popular way of drawing a box around what we do without getting all technical.
For Crawford Technologies our main focus is to do more with a document so that it is produced faster, with better information, provides better tracking and is delivered in the right way and format for the highest level of understanding for everyone. We have placed significant focus on being able to produce customer communications in alternative formats such as Braille and Large Print. Imagine how a customer feels when a company prints their statements, invoices or other critical documents for insurance and healthcare in a format they can actually interact with—without getting help from someone else.
You might ask how this translates across the fields of print. For the last few years new technologies have been displayed at the print trade shows. As we come up on GRAPH EXPO 2014, it is worth mentioning that a last year’s PRINT 13 and the GRAPH EXPO in 2012 brought technology to the forefront that would allow braille printing applications using dimensional printing processes. The application was for direct mail and heavy graphic applications. The link is that we are all looking for ways to communicate better with our end-users. We want them to engage and build a relationship—and adding alternate formats helps facilitate that.
Another example I like to use for the print industry is PDF. We all speak PDF whether we are printing billboards, brochures, high-volume transactional documents or running a few copies at the quick printing center. Ironically though, we all have different requirements for our PDFs and you can set them up in a multitude of ways. A differentiator in the CCM area is PDF/a and PDF/ua. PDF/a is being adopted as the archival format for many large companies and governments. PDF/ua is quickly gaining recognition for being the format that takes into account the needs of accessibility (and compliance with regulation like AODA in Canada and ADA in the U.S.A.).
What is the reach of these? My favorite example today is that the Library of Congress is specifying that all entries have to be in an accessible format so that future generations can use and read them. I think you can guess the format that is the standard.
The point is, I speak PRINT and so do you. The next goal is to look at how we all use it and the innovations we have all developed to drive; then we need to relate that to each of our more niche applications. Yes, you hear poll questions coming to the Print Production Professionals LinkedIn Group! Make sure you tune in next time for the printers guide to checking out GRAPH EXPO…
Speaking of GRAPH EXPO, Crawford Technologies is sponsoring the PRINTERVERSE, so be sure to stop by our Alliance Page and plan to join our events and Solutions Summit during the show!
Jonathan McGrew spent his formative years being exposed to Xplor and the Enterprise Output Management & Customer Communications Management (CCM) industries (read high-volume transactional printing). Today, Jonathan is Marketing Communications Manager at Crawford Technologies and responsible for Worldwide marketing. His experience spans data management, branding, print (hardware, software & design), graphic design and marketing communications with specialization in Business to Business (B2B). Jonathan completed his MS in Marketing from the University of Colorado at Denver in December 2013 and was awarded his EDP certification at the Xplor Conference 2013.
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