Score for Ricoh at Clarion University . Why wouldn't every school do that?

It seems like such a no brainer that it should go on the front of a postcard .

6,000,000 black and white copies & 250,000 color copies.
Before: .06 to .12 per black only copy & .15 to .32 per color
After: .03 to .035 per black only copy & .08 to .09 cents per color

You do the math.

Call or email if you would like to chat. xxx-yyy-zzzz or ABC@xyz.com

Much lower cost of sales than scheduling meetings and getting into a fight with the IT people.

Send the postcard to whoever is in charge of keeping the ship afloat. Send the same postcard for week after week after week. If they don't respond, keep sending out the same postcard to lots of people that might. Week after week after week.

The hard part:
Answer the call if and when it comes on the second ring or the email within an hour.

Printer changes saving Clarion University money:

"Led by President Joseph Grunenwald, the administrative offices in Carrier Hall are leading the way for campus. Most all of the desktop/personal printers, including those in the president's office, have been removed. A Ricoh central printer/copier/scanner, for use by the entire floor has replaced the personal printers. One centralized networked printer will serve as backup per department.

The analysis was eye opening. There were roughly 540 print devices (mostly Hewlett Packard) on campus, which used $60,000 a year in print cartridges. Clarion spends $12-15,000 per year to purchase printers and an additional $4-5,000 per year to maintain the devices. The cost to print from these devices is six to 12 cents per black and white copy and 15 to 32 cents per color copy.

During 2009, a switchover started. Ricoh Equipment installed 27 color/black and white and 44 black and white only copiers on campus. The copy volume during the first year for these 71 machines was almost six million black and white copies and 250,000 color copies. Factoring in the cost of toner, maintenance, and other supplies, the cost per copy was .03 to .035 cents per black and white copy and .08 to .09 cents per color copy.

Erasable Paper from Xerox. Is the perfect for present customers the enemy of the good enough for huge new markets?

Erasable Paper was announced sometime in 2006. It seems to some like a very long time ago. My guess is that in corporate time it was the day before yesterday.

No doubt it makes "good sense" when viewed from the corporate offices, it needs market research, focus groups and feedback from the channels. Perhaps that is crux of the GUI, Postcript, and Ethernet problem that the awesome engineers at Xerox Research continue to face.

What if a separate business unit were established to bring it to market tomorrow. Will it put stress on legacy business? Yes. Will the purchase of ACS and setting up EPS put stress on present business? Yes.

Clay Christensen has detailed the real problems and real solutions for a global bringing disruptive innovations to market. I have to wonder if the Board and Managers at the mother ship have taken the time to read his stuff.

Metro - Go, go (green) gadgets!:
Published 01:30, December the 3rd, 2009

Bill McKee, of Xerox Canada talks about the erasable paper his company is developing.

How much can we save?
Estimates [say] more than 30 percent of printed office documents will be discarded right after being read.

What is the next step?
The team created a reusable paper that self-erased in about 16 to 24 hours. Customers wanted images to last for more than 24 hours. So, the team currently is working on a second version where images last 3 to 5 days."

The unique value of Print in formal education is about compliance. A culture of compliance is step one.

Most of the conversation about improving high school education is about content, curriculum and the role of teachers. What is under appreciated is that without a safe orderly school culture none of these issues make much of a difference.

The explanation of a disorderly school culture is now finally changing from "blame the customer."In the world of education at the bottom of the pyramid in the States this most often manifests as the "these students come from dysfunctional ..." Or "these students have learning disabilities." While it is true that some very small percentage of students have medically derived learning disabilities, most of those diagnosed as such do not.

At the middle and top of the pyramid the problem most usually presents as drug or alcohol use. Again there are a very small percentage of students who have significant problems. But the fact is that most are kids who get into trouble when they are bored. If they are not identified very early, the cascade of bad decisions get them into very bad situations.

As in medicine so it is in education. The most sustainable, fastest and least expensive solution is early detection. As a culture of compliance builds, it is easier and easier to have the time for early detection of going forward sub optimal paths.

That's where print connected to the web comes in.

3 tweets
For the role of Print in edtech see min 3:53 of this vid. http://ilnk.me/ca9 "we will have an Ipod Use contract that goes to parents."

Only Print (and TV) mediums enable shared communication events. For compliance in K -12 the act of signing a document creates culture.

When print is connected to the web with 2d codes that can be clicked with a cell phone, it can emit behavioral data for early interventions.

The Medium is the Message
The way I read McCluhan is that the medium creates an experience separate from the content communicated in the medium. The experience of signing a contract on iPod use in the classroom creates the shared experience of parent and child that says "I agree to these rules. And you (the kid) know that I expect these rules to be followed."

When the person with less power in a situation knows that the person with power expects something to happen AND has a piece of paper that will exist and can be easily referred to in the future, it's the first step to creating a culture of compliance.

The second step is to create the plausible expectation that failure to comply will be seen in very close to real time. That's where print connected to the web through 2d codes comes in. The very first signs of non compliance in attendance or homework compliance can trigger just the right intervention, early enough to make a difference without heroic efforts.

Printers are in the infrastructure business. It's a good business.

from Printweek.com
Cats Solutions acquires LDSI to create £15m-turnover group

Cats Solutions, the digital print and print management company, has bought the business and principal assets of Legal Document Services International (LDSI) to create a £15m-turnover group.

The equity-based acquisition, the details of which have not yet been disclosed, is intended to create a "market leader in the provision of managed print, scanning and electronic data discovery services to the legal sector".

Since at least September, 2006, I've been on the same little soapbox.

What business are you in? is a multiple choice question.
A. Infrastructure
B. Personal service
C. Creative

It's interesting this is another case of a "print management company" doing the buying. Makes sense if the "value is the network." It's consistent with the most successful users of digital marketing techniques have been mailing houses that clipped on the print manufacturing. Or a company like Color Central that prints for Lulu.com. Everybody gets the hype about lulu. Color Central gets the clicks. Infrastructure is about clicks not hype.

The recent "market service provider" meme was a very wrong turn. If you already supplying a market service buying or partnering with a printer is easy. The wrong headed notion is that printers should fundamentally move away from the skill and experience they have earned in manufacturing print, at scale and on time.

Many in the industry have been taken in by the noise of "marketing" "internet blabla" and have been blind to the defensible value of manufacturing. As America is finally moving back to a manufacturing, business model innovation powerhouse, this meme should quietly fade away.

Score for RR Donnelly! Gets Verizon statement printing.

RR Donnelley Verizon Deal -
| Graphic Arts Online:

"RR Donnelley wins expanded $100 million contract for Verizon Wireless statement printing. RR Donnelley says its proprietary high-speed inkjet printing technology helped it win a $100 million multi-year extension on a contract for statement printing with Verizon Wireless.

Verizon Wireless, a joint venture with Vodaphone, is the largest U.S. cell phone and communications company, claiming 89 miillion U.S. customers."

What happens when the grownups in Tokyo get together with the grownups in Venlo?

In my not so humble opinion, they will act on the reality that in the new normal global economy the value is in the network and commodities. That could mean that there will be a business strategy that unlocks the value of the DNN and 1 to 1 newspapers.

Canon has product dna. Oce has product dna. They both make killer app products. Oce is the box and production infrastructure for Niiu in Berlin. If you've visited my blog before, you probably know that I think that Niiu is the best example so far of connecting the mass of content on the web with the power of hyperlocal print delivery.

It is the next big thing for Print.

Oce has a huge lead in global digital book and newspaper production.

My bet is that while everyone is still running after the shrinking pie of direct mail, the new Oce division of Canon will go after industrial strength infrastructure printing. When the grown ups are back in charge, the game changes.

Consider what's going on at the Federal level in the States.

Another score for Xerox ( UK). Insource, outsource. Doesn't matter if you get the clicks.

On October 25, Printweek posted

Manor Creative changes hands under MBO
Manor Creative print and design company has been taken over in a management buyout (MBO). The MBO team, led by new chief executive Graham Brownett, brokered the deal with the help of the Royal Bank of Scotland's Structured Debt Solutions division.
Brownett told printweek.com that the new team would ring the changes at Manor Creative, starting with the environment. "We are doing a lot of work on our environmental policies towards gaining the BS 8555 environmental standard," he said.

Today I found the following:

Manor Creative moves into digital with iGen4 buy
"Manor Creative has brought digital printing in-house with an investment in a Xerox iGen4 and the launch of a new division. Manor Digital will offer an on-demand printing service for its clients and service contracts that were previously outsourced.

Nice Xerox story about Biz Development

The value of the globals is their networks of smart. As boxes get better and better, the competition drives margins lower and lower. The defensible value is the network that surrounds the box. More smart is much nicer than less smart.

Found this one by Gina Testa at Output Links

Progressive Communications, based in Florida, had its light production Xerox DocuColor 242 Digital Color Printer/Copier just six months when it recognized a larger opportunity. . .

According to Xerox Business Development Consultant Mickey Call, they also needed to do the necessary planning and training to make the investment pay off.

..Call began helping them prepare well in advance of the Igen3’s installation.

He met with the Progressive Communications sales team for three months preparing them to use the more consultative approach that’s required for selling personalized communications programs.

Their business is doing so well that they are adding a second iGen press.

RISO is more interesting every day

Riso got on my radar a while ago. I don't know enough about CPC pricing in the real world, but if RISO delivers what they say, why wouldn't everyone do that?

From OutputLinks:
With a color cost that is typically one to two cents per page, . . Add to the equation the monochrome cost of less than a half-cent per page and this concept becomes even more compelling.. . a $50,000 ComColor system

MPS in education is not just about cutting costs, it's about a Printer in every school building and education informatics.

I said:
If an independent #MPS integrated zinepal.com http://ilnk.me/b8a , they could offer blogs or wikis in print to the classroom printed on MFP

He said:
zinepal @ToughLoveforX What is a #MPS? I am working on a zinepal.com API to allow others to integrate with it. Looking for good usage examples...

I said:
@zinepal how good to know you are on twitter! MPS is "Managed Print Services" it's the growing part of the print industry. 1 of 2

@zinepal MPS means that every copier is an output device for PDF. That means 1 to 1 instructional collateral produced in the school building.

@zinepal just one more for now. A class does writing on a blog or wiki. zinepal delivers PDFs. The edited writing is output in print.

He said:
zinepal @ToughLoveforX Cool. Sounds interesting. Thanks for the info!

If zinepal is working on APIs for Cloud based translation of HTML content into PDF, he might be a good person to get in contact with. According to his twitter page, he's in British Columbia.

As the Printers in the enterprise are connected to the Printers outside the enterprise, it's another step closer to the realization of true distribute and print, or what might be called a network of printernets.

In the emerging global economy the high margin values are in the network, not the output box. If MPS or EPS brings a new networked delivery system for Print directly into the classroom it should be possible to get to some kind of sustainable margins going forward.

If upload codes are integrated into the PDFs the network can emit the raw material for the only defensible high margin product - predictive analytics. In the education business that means education informatics. Education informatics means real time evidence to improve education with less danger of falling prey to the Flaw of Averages.