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Achim Carius (executive director of motio); Ed Avis (managing director of APDSP); and Thomas Ingendoh (president of Image Access) discuss important international reprographics business during the motio conference in Bad Neuenahr, Germany, May 10-11, 2019.
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Emitis Pohl, president of ep communication in Cologne, moderates a panel on the power of print.
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Dr. Wolfgang Ziegler discusses the importance of digital archiving and document management.
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Panelists discuss the scanning, digitizing and archiving market.
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Cruse 3D scanner
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Attendees visit the historic Old Town of Ahrweiler
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Attendees tour the former government bunker deep in the mountains around Ahrweiler.
APDSP Managing Director Ed Avis visited the annual conference of motio, the German reprographics association, May 10-11 in Bad Neuenahr, a small town in western Germany, south of Cologne. Below are three ideas and three products he picked up at the conference:
There is probably a lot more potential in digital document management than most reprographics firms are aware of, especially as artificial intelligence becomes more widely available. Dr. Wolfgang Ziegler, a professor at Hochschule Karlsruhe, explained in a seminar that any modern technologically advanced product – and this could include a building, though he was referring to manufactured goods – has thousands of pages of documentation attached to it, much of which changes as the product moves through design and production. Being able to quickly access the right information – perhaps within a system that uses artificial intelligence to “learn” what documents are being sought with a given information request – is the key. A reprographics firm with the right tools could provide that service. Ziegler was not promoting any given software product, but he mentioned TopicPilot (https://www.docufy.de/en/products/topicpilot/) as one content delivery tool worth investigating. (Also read about StarFinder below.)
We need to be asking questions now about the future of data, because scanning old documents is a service that won’t last forever. This was the topic of a panel discussion that included five leaders of German firms involved in scanning in one way or another – Thomas Ingendoh (Image Access); Rainer Wagener (Scharlau GmbH); Mike Riegler (OMG GmbH); Andreas Boenke (Rosenberger GmbH & Co.); and Dr. Ilka May (LocLab Consulting GmbH), and moderated by Carolin Bosbach. The group acknowledged that there is still a good many years of scanning work available, and that work may even accelerate as technology improves and more customers become aware of the necessity of having their archives digitized. But eventually the mountain of paper will get whittled down and new paper documents will no longer be created, so that aspect of a repro firm’s business will eventually come to an end. “Other businesses have been forced to change as technology changes,” noted May, who mentioned taxi companies (affected by ridesharing); hotels (affected by AirBnB); and camera companies (affected by digital cameras). Warned May: “Some of those companies stayed in their industry and survived by innovating, while others went out of business.”
There’s still value in paper when it comes to marketing. That was the conclusion of a panel discussion on the growth of printed marketing material that included Herman Meyersick (Stroer SMD); Elmar Schatzlein (IGEPA Group); Christian Luther (MbO Consult Berlin GmbH); Georg Hollenbach (Electronics for Imaging) and Emitis Pohl (ep communication GmbH). “I get emails all day long, but when a beautiful letter lands on my desk, it sticks in my mind,” noted Pohl. Other key points the panelists made:
- Good service is always a selling advantage for small firms, and the ability to innovate quickly is attractive to many customers, Meyersick said.
- There are many niches that a printer can tap. “We learn from our customers,” said Hollenbach from Efi. “For example, a trade show booth made entirely from digitally printed pieces is a new application we have noticed.”
- Specialization does not need to be limited to a market type, Luther said. You could specialize in time-sensitive work, for example.
- Don’t let a sales conversation end with the price; instead inspire your clients with innovation. “The only border is the imagination of the customer,” Hollenbach said. “As long as people are innovative and making investments, printers have a chance.”
3 Interesting Products
The motio convention was accompanied by a trade show. Many familiar names exhibited their products, including Image Access, Es-Te, Ricoh, and Canon. Among the many interesting products were these:
Cruse 3D scanner – The Cruse name is familiar to many APDSP members who remember the giant cameras Cruse sold in the U.S., often for pin-register work, and later for high-quality, large-format color photography. Today the company specializes in super high-end scanners. The company demonstrated a 3D scanner that resembles a giant breadbox – you put the object you want scanned inside, slide the lid closed, and the camera takes photos from all possible angles.
easyPlotDesk – This PDF workflow software contains more than 80 functions that make it easy to work with PDFs in a professional environment. It accelerates PDF editing and clean-up; conveniently groups documents; easily handles multiple versions; and much more. A powerful tool for anyone dealing with thousands of archived PDFs.
Starfinder – This software product from Netcontrol GmbH makes archiving and retrieving digital documents easy. Among the many features of this system is the ability to archive any type of document, from an email to a photo; the ability to group documents that have some relationship; a workflow management process for documents that need to be handled by various people; the ability to set “reminders” on documents that have some kind of deadline; and much more. For a repro firm, an advantage is the multi-company mode, which makes it easy to separately manage documents belonging to various clients.
Networking
Naturally, the motio event included a variety of networking/socializing opportunities. The highlight was the Friday night reception in a rustic-but-elegant cabin set in a hillside vineyard. Attendees got to know each other better by participating in a series of wine-related games, such as a race to put together a disassembled wine barrel and a blindfolded follow-the-leader game.
Attendees also visited some of the local sites, such as the historic old town of nearby Ahrweiler and a former government bunker that was designed to withstand a nuclear blast.