A happy medium
Xeikon’s Danny Mertens advocates the use of transpromo as an integrated, high
quality part of a company’s branding; a happy marriage of transactional printing
with promotional or marketing content.
Advances in digital print technology
have eliminated the need for
the combined use of digital
and offset printing, enabling full-colour
personalisation of statements without
having to rever t to offset pre-printed
colour shells. More and more we see
that the quality of printed transpromo
documents need to be at the same
level of all other printed documents like
brochures, catalogues, direct mailings etc.
As pioneers and trendsetters in the
digital printing arena, Xeikon counts a
number of high-profile service bureaus
and transactional and transpromo printers
among its customers. Over the years
Xeikon has gained a deep understanding
of the needs of the transactional and
transpromo markets and developed
technology and solutions to meet those
needs. Perhaps more so in these than in
other markets, today’s keys to success are
high quality, workflow performance and
environmental responsibility.
More, better, faster
The future of transpromo lies in the
intelligent combination of data and print.
Direct marketing in general will be triggerbased
and this means that, quality being
a given, speed and productivity will be
of the essence. This is where Xeikon
can be of help.
Per Larsson, sales and marketing
manager at Xeikon customer Parajett, says:
‘When we were contacted by one of our
big customers to develop a sophisticated
transpromo application for six million
fully individualised A4 full colour prints
and ensure a turnaround of five or six
days, it was immediately apparent that our
existing solution combining offset printing
with black-and-white variable-data printing
was not up to the task. We needed, and
found, an alternative solution that would
help us produce a much more complex
and data-intensive application, but within
the same deadlines.’
The production of such complex,
high-quality, high-volume, micro-versioned
campaigns not only poses challenges in
terms of print quality and productivity,
but also in terms of data processing.
Indeed, while simple black-and-white
personalisation limited to the recipients’
contact details generates message
files of just a few gigabytes, full-colour
individualisation requiring the merging of
variable high-quality graphics and other
data causes file sizes to increase to several
hundreds of gigabytes, presenting a great
challenge to the entire workflow.
Fully integrated digital workflow
Xeikon was one of the first to develop
fully integrated digital workflows. The latest
generation of the X-800 digital front-end
is the result of continuous improvement
and innovation. The X-800 digital frontend
enables the implementation of fully
automated workflows in any production
environment and has been developed with
productivity and performance in mind.
The
X-800 fluently processes PPML and PPML/
VDX files allowing you to easily manage,
process, and print complex variable data
jobs. For complex transpromo applications,
the Xeikon IPDS Controller handles the
IPDS input data stream directly without
any conversions in-between and allows
RIP-ing on the fly, maintaining rated
engine speeds. ‘This is exactly one of the
reasons why we have chosen the Xeikon
800,’ explains Larsson. ‘It has a great
performance and Xeikon has a unique
knowledge of IPDS. It is no use providing
fast equipment if you cannot control the
IPDS flow.’
Fast to the finish
As the cliché goes, no job is finished until
it is finished. By design, Xeikon engines
can be part of vir tually any workflow and,
by design, the X-800 can work seamlessly
together with any third par ty application.
So, while we have no impact on the
speed and performance of the finishing
equipment itself, we do make sure our
equipment smoothly integrates with any
third-par ty finishing solutions, be they inline,
near-line or off-line. |
