With drupa on us Heric says the days of buying technology in isolation are over.
drupa gives a timeline for new product releases from the vendor community, and you can bet that the print-community vendor offerings will be rife with new tools and solutions. While I can speculate (or more appropriately, violate my non-disclosure agreements) about the new vendor offerings, and how digital will dominate this time.I would rather spend this month’s column outlining the dynamics of pur-chasing hardware and software solutions for the print industry, and to provide an input as to what makes a pragmatic purchase decision or plan when one goes shopping at a trade show.
When we look at the historical nature of what equipment a print facility has had to maintain in the past, and compare it to the future, there are a few important differences that need to be considered when looking at modern vendor offerings for your facility. Think about it: in the old days (20 years ago), one could look at the lifetime of the equipment to be purchased, evaluate a ROI, and plan to amortise it over time. For the most part, equipment was an island, and had little opportunity to interoperate or to be compatible with and “play well with” other equipment in the facility. This made purchasing easy…
“We need this hardware/equipment; it will cost X amount of capital, and it will last Y amount of years.” Enter the computer, and software controlled workflow. All of a sudden, maintaining a modern print facility re-quires an ongoing process of upgrades, computers that become slow in two years, and the willingness to customize a workflow in a periodic and timely fashion. The days of installing hardware and forgetting it for five or 10 years are long gone.
I often have to explain to clients that an annual software and desktop hardware budget has to be developed if you are at all in the “We'll take your file” business. I designate it a “We’ll take your file” business because not all print is as varied as the Service Bureau mentality, but that is a definitely growth segment of that which feeds modern print. It used to be a small-pool of design professionals that learned the Mac, and fed the print community with files. We spent time and effort to train these clients and taught them how to prepare documents properly to feed workflows. Now, I see a large increase in jobs created in a very diverse pool of applications, by many people whom have little or no experience in traditional four-colour offset print. Give the populace Photoshop, and everyone is a graphic designer.
The truth is, that we in the world of professional print services are at the mercy of the content creators, and the tools they should use to create their print job. It is rare that a printery has the luxury of designating what they will take only, and can constrain the variable pool of chaos that the design du jour tools that a typical creative uses.
I have developed a theorem around this:
1. If a designer sees a new version of an application or is offered one from a software developer, they will buy it and they will use it, whether they need the new features or not.
2. They will likely try to implement every new feature whether they know how to use it or need it. (Does the word transparency here bring back any nightmares?) A designer may be adept at Adobe Creative Suite 3, or Xpress 7, but the day the new version ships, they will feel compelled to purchase the upgrade, and use/abuse it for all it can do. We, as print professionals, are at the end of that delivery mechanism, and are responsible to make what they feed us with… print. It is for that reason we must plan for a worst-case scenario and institute a budget for updates to desktop applications and workstations. You just cannot go back to your client and say “Can you save this file in an older format? We have not upgraded yet.” PDF, and it’s broad industry acceptance has helped to alleviate this disparity, but even the venerable PDF file has a myriad of complexities, versions, and variances in the ways it can be produced.
This all boils down to a logical conclusion that when planning for new purchases, the pragmatic approach is that one should attempt to meet the current needs of the client-base, but to plan for future flexibility and compatibility. Workflow capabilities like JDF support, MIS hooks, and estimating systems all require a soup-to-nuts workflow approach, where the benefits can only be truly realized once all entities are capable of supporting them. (A proofer that is not JDF compliant will cause a gap in the automated workflow promise that is JDF.) This means that if you intend to purchase or upgrade to a JDF capable system in the near future, you should be thinking about all new purchases being JDF capable.
If you are looking to implement MIS tracking of materials or estimation, it may not make sense to look at used equipment or clearance solutions that are not compliant with future needs.
This also means that you may have to think about replacing some solutions before they are truly obsolete. This too is a difficult discussion to have to have had with many a shop manager or owner. “We just bought this thing like four years ago” is often the indignant response to a conclusion that update is inevitable. Explaining to them that the reason to upgrade is in order to coexist with their new platesetter, proofer, or finisher; can take some smoothing.
We just do not purchase tools for their individual merits anymore. ‘Must play well with others’ is more important. That is why you will see so many vendors with JDF certified or the like on their
new drupa offerings. I like to think of prepress solutions as ‘needs evaluation every 3-4 years or so.’ When attending major trade shows such as drupa we no longer are buying islands of work items, but we are
buying a river of workflow, and that takes a more complete picture when planning to purchase. It really all boils down to a systematic plan for the transition of your current workflow, to one that can become truly automated, and compliant in the future.
It is a new mindset to have to attempt to predict the future when buying solutions, but I see it more as pragmatism than premonition. It will be no coincidence to me if I see a theme of interoperability, and standards in workflow at this upcoming Drupa 2008.
