“Customers may say: ‘I need a printer’, but what they really need is integration or a way into a new area,” he added. “If you simply replace what you do today with digital technology, it’s not going to work. There’s a need to adapt business processes to production processes.”
Sharon Sibbald, C&IS manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said that more than 100 staff were currently employed in the department in the States, whereas Europe had been “more piecemeal”. “We are consolidating our skills across Europe, although most of the people are in the UK at the moment. We’re in a position to say to clients: ‘Anything you’ve got, we will integrate with’.”
Sibbald emphasised that the IBM offering was not limited to large clients with complex requirements. “It can range from something very, very small to very, very large. For example a company could start with web-based ordering. We match it to the budget available and deliver as best we can,” she said.
IBM’s Infoprint Manager and Infoprint Workflow form the hub of the solutions offered. A new version of Infoprint has been split into three “flavours” using modular components.
“A commercial printer might require scanning and web delivery, and would have different requirements to an enterprise or distributed printing client,” Sibbald added.
IBM has also implemented a subscription pricing model for Infoprint Manager, whereby customers can sign up for one- or three-year deals to include upgrades and maintenance.
Story by Jo Francis
