Innovate to Accelerate
Clive Stringer, Business Development Director for Pitney Bowes, finds that It’s a fascinating time for the print, mail and shipping industries as they reshape themselves to cope with dramatically changing market conditions and customer demand. In print, technology has been the main driver for this change, a hugely disruptive, positive force driving advanced product development and enabling affordable quality, power and precision. In mail and shipping the rise in connected devices and machines is a key influence, boosting Ecommerce whilst raising customer expectations, which in turn requires the market to respond ever more quickly. Technology has presented solutions here, too, enabling same-day delivery, digital real-time tracking and precise, accurate duty and cost calculations.
Where there is technology, there is innovation, but ‘innovation’ is a word in danger of becoming overused. For a product or solution to truly innovate it has to enable real transformation of businesses, processes, systems or people. This year, the industry’s biggest trade show, drupa, provides the perfect backdrop for industries to showcase such outstanding and truly innovative products and services. Drupa2016 will lead businesses to accelerate their product development and embrace the digital age. Here, we take a quick look at innovation in print, in mail and in shipping.
Innovation in print
The global print industry has worked very hard to keep up and develop a position itself in our digital world, and innovation has been a key part of this. There is 3d printing, file-based processing; cloud-based digital document hubs; and built-in technology which manages, manipulates, integrates and protects data. We have automated workflows with lightning-fast turnarounds and multi-channel output; technologies printing high volumes at eye-watering speeds; and razor-sharp inkjet capabilities we could only previously have dreamed of.
Industry expert Frank Romano has forecast that drupa2016’s print focus will be ‘inkjet on steroids’ with ‘bigger, faster, more capable’ machines than ever before1. He also expects to see workflow innovations.
The print industry has to innovate to accelerate, and will continue to do so into 2016 with solutions such as improved finishing and personalisation techniques and increasing online automation for enhanced productivity. Consumers, and the way they choose to communicate, have generated this change and as they continue to do so, the print industry will continue to respond with spectacular innovation driving world-class results.
Innovation in mail
Royal Mail, the UK’s incumbent postal service, celebrates its 500th anniversary this year. After half a millennium, the service is almost unrecognisable from its conception. The convergence of digital and physical communications has caused huge disruption in the industry, and posts have had to respond quickly to consumer demand, introducing innovative new products, services and delivery options.
The Internet of Things is another key challenger to mail’s current state of play. IDC forecast the Internet of Things market to ‘expand from $780 billion in 2015 to $1.68 trillion in 2020, growing at a CAGR of 16.9 percent’2. Analysts Gartner believe that by 2020, there will be 26 billion non-PC and mobile devices connected to the Internet of Things (IoT), everything from thermostats and cars to medical diagnostic tools and basketballs3. But if you thought it was just about connecting fridges and other home appliances to the Internet, think again, as the IIOT, or Industrial Internet of Things, comes to light.
Internet-connected mailing technologies, from inkjet printing systems to high-speed inserters, generate vast amounts of data. These technologies can be equipped with sensors to gather and store data, to be analysed for businesses to achieve greater productivity of work cells, with improved uptime and enhanced capacity planning. As the machines are connected to the Internet they can upload data to the internet for further processing and advanced analytics, and download software updates. They can often be controlled remotely and the machines can ‘talk’ to each other, detecting failures and production issues, minimising downtime and saving maintenance and labour costs.
This interconnectivity and centralised data can also help organisations compare their performance against others in the industry, so they can use the data to drive improved results, gain a competitive edge and become truly world class. The Industrial Internet of Things is a huge driver of innovation and the most exciting thing is that we’re only just scratching the surface of its vast power and potential.
Innovation in shipping
The rising volume of shipping and parcels generated by the popularity of Ecommerce is driving major innovation within postal services and logistics firms, as they restructure to maximise new revenue streams and tighten parcel and shipping management and security.
New technology and tools are becoming available integrating shipping and mailing, connecting physical sending with digital systems and data, and delivering consolidated accounting and reporting functions. We are seeing innovative products and solutions which eliminate the complexity of cross-border logistics, identify fully-landed costs with digital duty calculators, and enable precise and accurate real-time digital tracking.
We are also seeing increasingly flexible, innovative consumer-driven delivery options – same day, next hour, more flexible click and collect options, parcel lockers and even the use of drones. Amazon have patented ‘anticipatory shipping’ by which they start delivering packages before customers have even clicked ‘buy’. For example if you’ve bought Game of Thrones Series 1 and 2 it’s likely you’ll buy Series 3, so why not send it out to your local depot ready for dispatch? That’s innovative.
These examples of print, mail and shipping justify the word ‘innovation’ in every way. Transformational, disruptive and driving major change, they are just a few of the reasons why our industry is, and always will be, one of the most exciting industries to be involved in.
1 Frank Romano quoted on WhatTheyThink.com
2 IDC Mid-year review of the Internet of Things
3 Gartner press release http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2636073
