Digital Printing Hot Spot

Before joining Xerox, I was a customer that participated within the Xerox Premier Partners Program. Now having the opportunity to manage our Premier Partners, I wanted to develop an online portal to help partners network with like providers, understand best practices from around the world and provide a channel for demand generation to our Premier Partners for their services.

Building on my own experience as a Xerox Premier Partner as well as feedback from our Premier Partners Global Advisory members, this portal has come to life!



More than 800 leading print providers from 48 countries can connect with each other in a peer-to-peer social platform that is an open web forum where they can share ideas and educational opportunities, and connect with current and potential customers to help them grow business and capture new revenue opportunities.

One of my favorite features is how print buyers, marketers and creative agencies can search for leading print providers based on criteria such as location, applications, variable data and finishing capabilities, certifications, and services.

There is also the ability to access Premier Partners from mobile devices such iPhone, Blackberry and Droid— The application integrates Google map technology, guiding the buyer to the selected Premier Partner. We are helping to direct business to our customers.

Another exciting component of the program is a section dedicated to Xerox companies and business partners, including GMC and XMPie, where Premier Partners can learn about software trials, and other exclusive event opportunities.

Providing the ability for our customers to connect with each other online has been a consideration of ours for a while, and something many customers have asked us to do. I want to encourage our Xerox Premier Partners to visit and join our new Xerox Premier Partner Global Network. And if you are interested in becoming a Xerox Premier Partner, visit the portal for details and the membership form.

I hope you enjoy this new Xerox Premier Partner Global Network and I’d love to hear your thoughts!

We recently launched a Lightweight Paper Kit for our Xerox 650/1300 Continuous Feed Printer: We can now print on substrates, in some instances, as light as 27# or 40gsm!

The addition of lightweight paper capabilities is very important to book printers who want to get to a lighter book that weighs less and costs less to ship, as well as those printing transactional and TransPromo documents looking to save on postage. This lightweight paper can be used as packaging outsets and inserts (such as the instructions for pharmaceuticals), classified advertisements, financial prospectuses, and many more applications. Books, booklets, and directories can all be printed on this lightweight media so you can complement or even free up the offset presses for more appropriate work and volumes.

Getting the toner from digital printers to stay on lightweight media has been a common obstacle and when you go to a lightweight paper, you can run the risk of wrinkling it. We have been able print on media as light as 27# (or 40 gsm) with the image quality and flat sheet output. Customers that have seen the system run at our Gil Hatch Center for Customer Innovation in Webster, NY or at our Continuous Innovation Centre in Paris, France and any one of our recent Trade Shows, have been impressed with how well this stock runs.

One reason we can print lightweight using our continuous feed printers is because they use flash fusing— a technology that uses light, not heat to fuse toner to paper. The flash of light doesn’t have any impact with the paper; instead, the toner absorbs energy from the light and adheres to the media. The toner stays; and no wrinkles are formed. Flash Fusing technology also allows the Xerox 1300 Continuous Feed Printer to successfully run specialty medias like integrated cards, adhesives, tip-on cards, pressure seal and more. Whether you run light, standard or heavyweight media – you will see a high quality, flat output sheet that runs more reliably through post-processing devices like folders, inserters, etc.

The Lightweight Paper Kit allows you to use more media types and weights to run more types of applications on a Xerox 650/1300 Continuous Feed Printer with the same image and output quality expectations in shorter turnaround times. And you will be able to better utilize your complete print shop capabilities while staying competitive in the market and capitalizing on new opportunities! If you want a print sample of this lightweight paper from one of our Xerox 650/1300 Continuous Feed Printers, be one of the first 10 readers to comment below about your business need (or potential uses) for lightweight paper and I’ll send one to you!

Digitally printed packaging is an emerging application that is in an early adopter phase. First movers can still gain powerful advantages in a worldwide market that is expected to grow from $580 million in 2005 to $6 billion by 2015, according to Pira International.

Digital printing delivers a nice set of competitive, cost and environmental advantages when compared to traditional package printing technologies, and it’s surprisingly well suited to many packaging applications. Digital print production can use the just-in-time, print-on-demand approach; and with shortened setup requirements and automated makeready, short runs are typically less expensive on digital presses. And variable data printing can bring new value through personalization and customization for regional versioning, novelty items and for meeting pharmaceutical and healthcare needs for individual and custom-made packaging.

Environmental advantages
Packaging accounts for as much as one-third of solid waste in U.S. municipal landfills, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, making it a visible target of green activism. Today’s environmentally preferred packaging uses minimal materials, which are recycled or made in environmentally responsible ways, and which are biodegradable and easily recycled or reused so they aren’t dumped in landfills. Digitally printed packaging plays well with green packaging strategies to meet growing demand.

Among its environmentally sustainable qualities are these:

On-demand production—Orders can be placed in the precise quantities needed, eliminating or reducing warehousing and associated cost, energy requirements and waste from obsolescence.

Electronic job ordering and submission, paperless workflow, and soft proofing— These processes reduce paper usage and associated costs while boosting efficiency.

Green paper choices—Offer recycled paper or paper with chain-of-custody certification designating it has been produced in a supply chain that promotes responsible forestry practices from harvesting to packaging. Some customers are willing to pay extra for green paper and board.

Eliminate varnish—Varnish is required for offset printing and adds cost and, in the case of UV varnish, an environmental hazard, small amounts of ozone that need to be ventilated. Offset ink takes 24 hours to dry and harden, so it needs a coat of varnish for mechanical handling and to seal the surface of the inks, preventing bleeding and smear onto the back side of the next sheet in the stack. In contrast, digitally printed pieces have a dry and hard surface immediately, with low risk of scratching and color setoff, making varnish necessary only to achieve visual effects.

Non-toxic glues—These are available for most binding techniques, eliminating the need for ventilation of toxic fumes and waste management issues.

Distribute-then-print—Minimize environmental impact by distributing electronically to your print center or partner nearest the customer for printing and the fastest, least environmentally disruptive delivery.

As stated in a previous post related to sustainability, there are several applications that can deliver profit and growth opportunities for print providers, cost savings, improved business results for their customers, and environmental advantages as well. Packaging printed using digital press technology easily inherits the environmental advantages digital printing already brings to the table.

Xerox digital presses have tight front-to-back registration, but I’d be a liar if I said image shifting never had to happen on jobs. When you are printing business cards, postcards, and other applications that require cutting, both sides need to match up perfectly… so I’m going to highlight a feature on our digital presses that allow you to make minor registration adjustments easily.

Our production digital presses have what is called Alignment Adjustment Profiles. At the printer’s User Interface, these profiles allow you to make adjustments to not only control image movement from left to right or top to bottom, but for side-to-side skew, paper stretch, and perpendicularity:

Skew: Adjusting for skew is nice if your images are coming out slightly rotated on the page. (Is your image coming out crooked? No problem!)

Paper Stretch: Paper stretch (magnification) adjustments can be necessary if you need to make an image on one side slightly larger or smaller. When the paper goes through the fuser, the pressure can actually stretch the paper —and therefore the image— a slight amount usually unnoticeable to the human eye. When this same paper goes through the digital press for the printing of the second side, the image is now being transferred to a stock slightly larger than it was when the first side was imaged. That’s where a paper stretch adjustment may come in handy.

Perpendicularity: If your image looks like a parallelogram, this can help bring it back to an upright position. (And to be honest, I’ve never had to adjust for perpendicularity, but the option is there if you need it!)

Once you make an adjustment, you can do a test print right from the printer’s user interface to verify adjustments you just made. You don’t need to go back to the RIP, run the job, and see if you need to make another adjustment. And when making a profile, the user interface visually shows you which way the image will move. From the image below, you can see that I can adjust side 1 and side 2 up to 2mm each. That means I could fix a mis-registration of up to 4mm. Fixing registration issues has never been easier!

Why would I do an image shift at the User Interface?

When you make a shift using an Alignment Adjustment Profile, it gets applied to a paper tray. Then, no matter what job you send through that tray, it will apply the image shift automatically. With this registration technology, you are able to customize up to 20 different alignment profiles to enhance registration control on a substrate-by-substrate basis. Then every time you run that particular job or substrate, you simply retrieve your adjustments.

At trade shows, we may print posters, business cards, and postcards all on the same 110 lb. Cover (300gsm). If I see the front-to-back registration is off by 1mm or more, I’ll make an alignment adjustment profile, assign it to the tray we are running the cover stock out of, and then submit and run all of those jobs without thinking about it again. It’s easy, convenient, and efficient! With these alignment adjustment profiles, complete control is given to the operator, ensuring more uptime. You don’t have to wait for service to come in and do these adjustments manually, which was the case on some of our older digital presses.

Another option for image shift is at the RIP as a global shift or exception page. Image shift can be applied per job or at a Queue level so it will apply to all files printed using that Queue. For example, if you print a lot of business cards, all the operator has to do is create the queue with an image shift and send all the business card applications to that queue– You don’t have to remember what the image shift needs to be. But whether you are doing image shifts at the RIP or the printer’s user interface, you should always choose one way of doing it and avoid making one correction at the RIP and another at the UI for a job.

If you have ever experienced problems with registration, then you’re truly going to appreciate the Alignment Adjustment Profiles. It’s always nice to maintain operational efficiencies and achieve optimal performance and quality.

In a highly competitive environment, more than 600 Xerox Authorized Sales Agents across the United States face the challenge of marketing their small to midsized businesses with limited resources. And because Xerox product users hail from all types and sizes of business; sales agents prefer a variety of messages to reach them. They also want to be able to communicate easily and inexpensively. Agents’ sales goals range from motivating customers and/or prospects to renew leases, to trade up to more advanced products, to consider moving to digital color or to switch from non-Xerox products.

To help our agents out, we try to design unique materials for them to communicate with customers and prospects. Looking back at previous direct mail campaigns we’ve had, I found one related to our agents that was a series of self-directed mailings. It was used to satisfy the marketing needs of our sales agents, each with different customer bases:

Get the customer’s eye and you’re halfway home
We asked our design agency partner to develop a series of colorful, impactful and exciting large-format postcards that agents could customize. Each quarter, two postcards would be offered for their use—one aimed at customers and the other to non-customers.

Over a year’s time, offers could range from low-cost leases and significant price reductions to special trade-in deals and free software. Postcards were made available on a co-op web site where an agent had to just check a box to opt in to participate in the program. The agent then would choose the quantity and type of mailer to be sent and the Xerox centralized marketing team would mail to the target audience.

Minimal agent effort required
This approach was extremely beneficial for agents who lacked the time or resources to implement a campaign on their own.

The agent’s main responsibility, after making the initial choice to take advantage of the program, would be to follow up with customers and/or prospects who received postcards.

For many new agent owners, this program was a great way for them to get a campaign going while they focused on other business issues. It exposed agents to the benefits of direct marketing and prepared them for the next level of involvement in customer development.

The Results: Using the mail, working the phones and making it happen
During an 18-month period, Xerox sales agents ordered an average of 200,000 postcards for mailing in each quarter.

Tracking results for 600 independently owned agent businesses centrally was not possible; however, even the minimal Direct Marketing Association (DMA) average response rate of 2.5 percent would equate to more than 30,000 leads.

According to anecdotal feedback from agents, the mailings have indeed resulted in numerous substantive contacts, face-to-face meetings and sales; so I’d consider this campaign a success!

When private data is breached for malicious intent, both a loss of reputation and revenue is at stake. There is no doubt that information is an asset that brings immense value to an organization and its protection is critical. At Xerox, the FreeFlow Print Server support and development teams are very sensitive to the concerns customers express about protecting their private data.

So, is private information printed on a Xerox Digital Press completely safe and protected? Absolutely, as long as the proper decisions are made when incorporating devices onto your network.

Some of the major considerations when planning for securing private information printed on Xerox printers with the FreeFlow Print Server is the physical location of the digital printer, who has access (remote and local), and the workflows required to facilitate the printing of private information. The FreeFlow Print Server software can be configured to close all application ports that are not required by a customer printing workflow. Those application ports left open to support workflow can be restricted to trusted remote hosts and users defined by the customer. When you restrict the workflow access in combination with strong encryption methods for those that can access the FreeFlow Print Server system, it makes for a strong level of confidence that private information is protected against malicious intent.

The decision to incorporate printer devices— that receive private information on our intra-network— is extremely important to security conscience customers, and especially those that require compliancy to such standards as PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), HIPAA (The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), or US Government standards. The FreeFlow Print Server’s software incorporates a very rich set of security features with custom controls to lock down network and local user access, and prevent access to private information printed on Xerox printer products. Xerox has successfully gained the confidence of many security conscience customers in the financial services, health services, universities, and government agencies.

Because the management of network and device security can be very complex, it requires strong knowledge of computing and network technologies, and can cause anxiety for those responsible for managing private information that must be protected at all costs; the FreeFlow Print Server team is committed to making our security conscience customer comfortable. Our development teams and highly skilled technical professions focus on security features and customer concerns on a daily basis.

Xerox realizes that the protection of private data is in the best interest of our customers, and our reputation as a world class printing solutions company. We are excited about working with our customers to protect their private information as an important asset, because private data should be kept private.

So what do you think? Are you seeing new security challenges out there today that still require our development teams to focus on? Are security concerns impacting how you do business today? We would love to hear from you!

Innovation can open new untapped opportunities for profit and growth, but can also expose dangerous risks that must be evaluated and carefully considered. Typically it is said that the greater the innovation, the greater the risk. LaserTryk.dk struck gold with their company’s completely new offering of short-run books, which won them an award in the Books and Manuals Category of the 2010 Xerox Best-of-the-Best Contest.

LaserTryk.dk decided they wanted to expand their offerings to prospective customers by getting involved in the digital short-run book industry. They felt they could provide publishers with an attractive business model, which would include superb print quality rivaling that of offset, as well as a price point that offered flexibility not seen in the long offset runs. This solution impressed our judges by effectively displaying some of the most underlying benefits of digital printing: quality, flexible run length, cost, as well as environmental sustainability.

As terrific as the quality of the books were, I found the story behind LaserTryk’s splash into the book industry to be even more impressive. Rather than limiting publishers to producing 1,500 copies of their title, publishers could produce 5 different titles, each with a run length of 300. Not only was the quality outstanding, but the cost also remained the same. By bundling these titles together, the publisher was able to reduce start up costs and ultimately get the production price per book to an incredibly low level. This allowed the publisher to reduce the amount of money being invested in their warehouse and eliminated the risk of not selling all of the books.

To help meet the production demands of their new offering, LaserTryk utilized their wide array of Xerox Digital Production equipment, including the Xerox iGen3 Digital Production Press, Xerox Nuvera 100 Digital Copier/Printer, and The Xerox 1300 Continuous Feed Printer. Depending on the scope of the job, LaserTryk could choose among their digital presses to best complete the job. Heidelberg offset presses were also used for covers and contents if the run lengths were long enough to warrant doing so. The Xerox 1300 Continuous Feed Printer, which can print on media as light as 40gsm, was critical to the success of this venture by reproducing the look and feel of an offset print with flash fusing technology and the use of fine particle toner that doesn’t use fuser oil.

To say this endeavor in the book publication industry has kept LaserTryk busy would be an understatement. They have been consumed with book production, printing the equivalent of 350,000 A4 pages a day! To manage the incredible amount of jobs, they rely heavily on the Xerox FreeFlow Process Manager. This helps prepare automatic workflows for each of the possible output formats and specifications, while increasing productivity and strengthening customer relationships. Operating costs are also reduced due to less manual intervention and required training. LaserTryk’s efforts in black and white book production have led to an increased volume in their digital color prints by approximately 700,000 to 1,000,000 A4 prints per month! That is an absolutely astonishing figure that shows how much of a positive impact LaserTryk’s book production business has been for their other services.

After starting their book production business with limited experience and no clients, LaserTryk has since built strong relationships with many publishers after displaying quick turnaround times, flexible pricing, and outstanding quality. The gamble paid off, as the company is now the beneficiary of €150,000 per month in revenue, a large portion of which can be attributed to their short-run book production. As I mentioned earlier, there is a certain degree of risk associated with innovation, as was the case with LaserTryk and their venture into a completely new market. But by taking a chance in trying something new and expanding their business services, they are now reaping the benefits of huge profits, along with an award in the Books and Manuals Category of the 2010 Xerox Best-of-the-Best Contest.

To learn more about LaserTryk’s book production business, please read the case study or watch the video above.

While there are many discussions about electronics replacing printed books, printed packaging is under no threat to go electronic. It is, however, being transformed by digital printing, which meets growing needs for economic short runs, customized and personalized packaging, and interactivity with customers via QR (quick response) codes and other means.

At a recent Automated Digital Packaging Thought Leadership Workshop at our Gil Hatch Center for Customer Innovation in Rochester, New York, digitally printed packaging was discussed by packaging converters interested in learning more about digital opportunities and commercial digital printers looking to establish packaging operations.

One of our guest speakers at this two-day workshop, Bob Leahey from InfoTrends, described the worldwide market for digitally printed packaging to be expected to double from 2009 to 2014 to nearly $4 billion in revenue. More than 90 percent of that revenue is from labels, but the fastest growing segment is folding cartons, which is expected to grow at a 23.3 percent compound annual growth rate. I knew there has been an increased focus in digital packaging, but I didn’t realize how much this market is expected to grow in the near future.


To capture that opportunity, Matti Koski, the director of Stora Enso Media Solutions, described an in-line folded carton printing and converting solution his firm developed for Xerox iGen printers. It enables packaging volumes ranging as low five and fewer to be printed on demand, efficiently and profitably by firms such as Mediaware Digital Ltd. in Dublin, Ireland, which produces software packaging for Microsoft Corporation. (If you were at IPEX, we were printing Mediaware’s packaging solution live at the show!)

When it comes to pre-production systems and workflows, Larry Moore from EskoArtwork talked about how to successfully create a digital packaging file. He created a packaging application right in front of attendees, and showed how you are able to optimize sheet layout and see the graphics on the box folded up on screen. On the Xerox side of the house, Dr. Reiner Eschbach, a Xerox Research Fellow in our Xerox Innovation Group discussed individualized security printing on packaging… which really got a lot of attention. And of course, everyone got to see the Xerox Automated Packaging Solution run live on our demo floor!

A customer, Louis J. Crockett Jr., the president of Keiger Printing Company in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, attended “for the networking opportunities, to share ideas and gain solutions insights from people who face similar issues,” he said. His firm, an integrated marketing solutions provider and member of the Xerox Premier Partners Global Network of leading digital print providers, occasionally prints packaging materials for finishing and converting by partner companies.

“I want to know what the options are for bringing the finishing in house, because I think we have an opportunity to be a more valuable partner if we can do that work,” Crockett said. The Xerox workshop is “something of a safe haven,” he said. “Unlike at trade shows, people don’t feel threatened about sharing information freely here.” And that is true… these workshops are an open forum where questions are welcomed at any time.

About the Gil Hatch Center
Xerox hosts about 50 Thought Leadership Workshops annually at the Gil Hatch Center for Customer Innovation, the world’s largest showcase of digital printing technology, located on the Xerox manufacturing, research and engineering campus in Webster, N.Y. These workshops are focused on specific topics of interest— like Books, Photo Publishing, Marketing Plan Development, Interactive New Media, Direct Marketing, and many others.

If you are interested in attending a TLW, please contact your Xerox sales rep for more information!

I’ve learned many times that the quality of what you get out of a digital press is only as good as what you put in. It can be easy to blame the printer for a poor looking file, but it could actually just be the result of a file designed incorrectly for that technology. When creative agencies are designing jobs for digital print, it is important to know there are many ways to maximize the full potential of digital printing equipment to ensure files are printed right the first time.

To help with this, we’ve created a guide that provides tips and techniques to help creative professionals set up their design applications and prepare their jobs for output. And we cover these top 5 topics:

1. Paper information and recommendations
2. Color settings and soft proofing devices
3. Design considerations for graphics, images, text and variable data jobs
4. Pre-flighting files and PDF creation Techniques
5. Print settings and finishing options

If you often find your files are not designed to the best quality, or are new to digital technology, or just looking to fine tune your skills, this Xerox Job Preparation Guide for Designers could be the tool to answer your questions.

I will send this design guide to the first 15 readers to comment on this post! What do you find the biggest design issues are when it comes to designing for digital, or what is something you are curious to learn more about?

Last year we launched a Domino video campaign, which consisted of a direct mail piece and online marketing. From a social media standpoint, this was the first time we tried to incorporate social media into a campaign like this, and we were really excited to see how many visits came from each of the sites.

This really was a learning effort for us because we had no idea what to expect. So by using PURLs, we were able to determine exactly how many visits came from the mail piece, e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others. By the first month, the direct mail campaign was responsible for 65% of the site’s visits, with social media driving the alternate 35%.

I watched the traffic for about 8 months after launch, and what I’ve found interesting is that the video and landing site for the campaign continued to receive visits from social media sites months afterwards! The life of the campaign lived on.

If you think about it, it makes sense. When someone is bored, they aren’t going to ask you if they can look through your pile of ‘junk’ mail… but they WILL scroll through your profile status updates, blog, and tweets to look at posts from the past they may have missed.

It was a perfect marriage: Our direct mail campaign drove most of the traffic we desired immediately, and social media provided additional touch points and long-term exposure. We jumped in with this first campaign, but from the level of success we felt it had due to the addition of social media, we have since continued to integrate social media into most of our direct mail campaigns and informational pieces.

I feel this really emphasizes the need to integrate print and online technology for effective marketing … not just catering to or entirely eliminating one or the other. To add that additional value to your customers, try to encourage and help them integrate social media into their marketing materials for a well-rounded communication strategy. This will help them not only drive business, but increase their loyalty to you as well.

Now, that may be easier said than done. Do you feel confident in your knowledge in how to use social media for business to share it with customers, or do you feel you are still in the learning phase where you aren’t in a position to advise your own customers on how to use it just yet?