Digital printing trends in 2017

Balaji Rajagopalan, executive director- technology, channels & international distributor operations, Xerox India, shares the technology trends for 2017 and Xerox’s strategy this year. While the printing business across the globe is stagnant, India’s printing industry is growing significantly. The digital printing industry especially is seeing significant transformation with new technologies and innovative applications providing cost-effective and customized solutions. The office printing segment will continue to grow and there will be an increased demand of MFPs as companies look for innovative solutions to simplify business processes. We shall continue to see accelerated movement towards more integrated work flow solutions.

Additionally, with mobile printing, cloud, advanced security features etc. becoming more popular, we will see more such application development becoming a focus area for companies in the coming times.

Such apps will allow users to control their MFPs remotely and transmit documents to fax, email and cloud hosted services like Google Drive and Dropbox.

Key highlights of our company during the year 2016

This year, from a technology business perspective, as part of our long-term growth plan in India, we expanded our presence in the tier 2 & 3 cities in the country. We have already developed products that consume less power, ranging from 10 – 70 per cent over that of competitive products in that range, offering us tremendous scope to tap the emerging opportunity.

Additionally, we have strengthened our focus on SMB business segment with the launch of Xerox Docucentre SC2020 and ConnectKey enabled iSeries products besides continuing to extend our Managed Print Services to SMBs through our channel partners.

In the production printing space, we have also launched inkjet printers like Brenva HD and Trivor which are equipped with high-end print capabilities such as Smart print heads, Inline density optimization, Ink estimation tool, Object-oriented colour management system etc. at Drupa this year. Brenva HD is one of its kind cut sheet inkjet press which is an amalgamation of cut sheet flexibility at inkjet price points. We maintained focus on our entry to high end digital press segment, be it for C60/C70, Versant series, iGen5 and Color Press 1000i and have not only received a good number of orders but a great feedback from the market.

Roadmap or strategy for the year 2017

In 2016, we had launched multifunction devices like Xerox Docucentre SC2020 and ConnectKey enabled iSeries which were equipped with features that meet the needs of the Indian Enterprise and SMB markets. And also continued push on digital printing segment which is a key growth driver for us.

We gear up for 2017 with some more exciting product launches that will revolutionize the A3 printing market. We are looking at further strengthening our focus on the Office business segment and are looking to aggressively tap into market space where we know we have a scope to improve and consolidate our market presence.

Solutions and digital printing will continue to be a key focus area for the next year. Also, we are going to focus on maintaining our leadership in certain market segments like entry colour to mid production segments.

We will also expand our Managed Print Services (MPS) value proposition to wider segments in the country through our strong channel partner network. This will allow us to expand beyond the top corporate accounts to fast growing and large potential SMB businesses.