VDP and Web-to-Print — the next hype?

By Guest Contributor, Frank L. Schelfaut

Graphic arts supplies often offer business solutions to printers based on the hardware and software products they sell. There are many ways for a printer to improve business results, of course. Optimizing workflow is one of them, and at Drupa 2004, investing in JDF-enabled equipment was heralded as the magic formula for doing so.

Now, it appears that VDP (Variable Data Printing) may become the next focus of trade show hype. This time, however, solutions are not just in the hands of the supplier and the printer. There is also a third party involved -- the Print Buyer, "he who owns the data." So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise when VDP is promoted hand in hand with “Web-to-Print,” where the print buyer orders on demand via the Internet and keeps control of the variable data to be printed.

So, what exactly is Variable Data Printing, and how eager are today’s print buyers and their marketers to embrace Web-to-Print solutions?

Variable Data Printing

Except for the religious texts and masterpieces of world literature, most documents will likely be reprinted with some changes in the content (think of text books, museum catalogues, the Guide Michelin, etc.). The number of duplicates for each edition (which is then synonymous with run length) is inversely proportional to the variability of the content.

"Versioned" documents are other examples of variable data printing, whereby the difference in content between two versions can vary. The number of duplicates (in this case also equal to run length) is relatively high, as conventional offset will most likely be the technology of choice for this application. A special kind of versioning is represented by customized marketing collateral, and this is where marketers are joining in. Wouldn’t it be nice if the content of marketing collateral could be tailored to the specific market segments targeted by the print buyer’s company and then everything could be economically printed in one production run?

The manufacturers of digital printing equipment understand that selling the advantages of VDDP (Variable Data Digital Printing) is a good way to position the capabilities of their printing presses versus traditional offset. Numerous case studies have been published in printing trade magazines about successful marketing campaigns that used the variable data printing capabilities of one or the other on a digital printing press. But marketing gurus, like Kottler, state that “the important thing about segments is that they represent groupings of customers which tend to respond differently to product features or marketing mix variables," and that “to be ultimately useful, the segments should be measurable, accessible, and substantial." So any one print buyer is not necessarily dealing with a large number of different segments his marketing collateral can be tailored to. So why not just offset print segment-dedicated collateral? The digital printing industry’s suggestion to the marketers that they should customize their collateral to the many different user profiles is well taken, but what if these user groups are not “measurable, accessible, and substantial”?

The “killer application” for digital printing is clearly among the print jobs where many different content versions of one and the same document or item must be printed in one pass. Labels and package printing are good examples, especially since they are often produced in small quantities. The same applies to point of sale items and ID cards. Some other well-known success stories have been recorded in the on-demand printing (POD) of uploaded digital photo albums, greeting cards, etc. from templates posted on a digital printers’ website.

In document production, VDDP has its highest potential in personalized communication; that is the printing of documents whose content is tailored to one single recipient; two scenarios are possible for this. First, a distribution company can do a mailing campaign where targeted customers obtain a variable data document that contains only information that is relevant to them. Since this application requires extensive customer data analysis, it can only be used by a limited number of large companies. A second and more likely scenario is one where VDDP is used for personalized lead fulfillment. The assembly of a document with relevant information and personally addressing the recipient is a lot more powerful tool to follow up on sales leads and is a perfect match for the capabilities of digital printing.

Web to Print

For years, a print buyer's role was to check price quotes, place the order and pay the bill, but that time is over. Printers and their suppliers understand that web-based tools can be designed to facilitate the procurement process and to get the print buyer more closely involved in the print production cycle.

It all started with PrintCafe, Noosh, and others offering web-based print sourcing and procurement solutions that were no more than bidding sites in the early stages of their development – interesting for the print buyer but not so much for the printing companies. Soon enough, pre-press and printing equipment suppliers got the message and developed a universal format (JDF) that allows the print job parameters to be specified as meta data that can be attached to the job file and exchanged between all parties involved in the print production cycle, including the print buyer.

Digital print service providers offer templates for photo albums, greeting cards and other on-demand print work on their web site for general consumers. Expanding on the same concept, digital print service providers and printing companies also designed web based e-procurement systems geared to the production of collateral with variable data content. At the time of production, the print buyer submits the variable data on line and specifies the required quantities for each version. This is an interesting concept since we’re not far from seeing offset presses equipped with digital printing modules to handle the flow of variable digital data in the document, otherwise printed in offset.

The common denominator in all these solutions is that they are tools in the hands of the printer who uses them to tighten his customer relations with the print buyer. From a production viewpoint, this is a logical approach since the printing press is the central element in the print production cycle and no two printing companies operate the same way. From the print buyer’s viewpoint, however, things may be a little different. The web-to-print initiatives taken by printing companies nicely accommodate a convention print procurement model whereby a company orders their collateral from one or more dedicated print shops. But what if the print buyer needs distributed printing of versioned collateral in several countries and electronic delivery of personalized documents to individual recipients, e.g. for leads fulfillment?

For such applications, the print buyer may benefit from using a web-based variable data solution that provides editing possibilities and is geared to various levels of publishing, ranging from electronic delivery to traditional offset printing. Entering “web to print” or “variable data printing” in a web search engine will easily get you to a host of solutions that have been conceived from a designer’s perspective, such as “Dialogue” from Exstream Software, Bitstream’s “Pageflex”, “Agilis Storefront” from Saepi, and others, but recently I’ve come to an interesting and so far unpublished solution named "PrintFlo."

PrintFlo is designed by Digital Media Partners (www.dmp-int.com) and based on their “Flo” engine that plugs into Adobe’s InDesign. One of the Flo applications is PrintFlo, used to convert InDesign documents into editable templates. The user can define how and which parts of an and an InDesign document can be customized. Once the template is made (at a one time cost), editing is possible at user level. Being XML-based, several meta data can be added to accommodate the desired level of publishing – electronic delivery (and output on office printer), digital printing, or offset.

The future of VDP

The future of variable data printing is in personalized communications. Marketing professionals most likely will be the most frequent users of VDP, provided they have quantitative customer data at their disposal and much of the variable data communication will be delivered electronically (as email attachments) or by means of distributed printing, which forms the biggest opportunity for digital printing.

Rather than engineering their own, printing companies should also look into more universal web-to-print solutions, conceived from a designer’s perspective, that allow variable data editing at the user level. If the printing industry wants to benefit from these “web-to-publish” solutions, the challenge will be to allow their specific printing parameters and meta data - related to imposition, color management, ink densities, etc – to be merged with the editable templates. Maybe this is the next mission for JDF?