Drupa: Digitisation also creates opportunities for the print industry

What is the impact of the internet on print? The 2nd Drupa Global Insights report, based on research amongst 741 managers from the drupa expert panel, has the answers. The objective in the report is to identify how digital technology is both changing the demand for print but also allowing fresh print applications to create growth opportunities.
The demand for print has decreased over the past few years, partly because of the recession and partly because of digital media. The same technology that causes this at the same time creates new opportunities for print. So there is definitely a future for the print industry, but only if the industry adjusts to the fundamentally changing demand.

Data are crucial

The conventional way of doing business will dominate the market for the foreseeable future, but digital print in combination with automated workflow will become more important to enable flexible production. Investing in workflow automisation seems to be the best option, especially since the success of print applications will depend on the way (digital) print will be combined with mobile or online applications, data management, processing and automated workflow are crucial.

Return on investment
Not all cross medial product launches are successful, according to the survey. Print companies that invest in planning, application integration and well researched product launches, spend more money, but see an increase in their net results. In general an investment of 70,000US$ results in a turnover of 176,000US$ with a 63,000US$ net profit.
There is also a difference in ROI times. Investment in on-demand book products are generally recuperated within a year, whilst investment for small quantity (batch) book productions this time is more like 2 years.
Return on investment for branded printing is twice as long as for example for multichannel marketing applications (combination of printing and mobile/internet) which is only a year.