Automation has been the buzzword of the past decade as organisations across every sector have looked to its transformative potential to accelerate gains in sales, productivity, quality, sustainability and much more.
Today however, we’ve moved well beyond ‘potential’ and you need look no further than the HP portfolio of highly automated presses, robotic solutions like MoviGo and HP PrintOS and HP Site Flow solutions to see that automation is here and now, driving real and transformative change for PSPs and brands alike.
2024 a monumental year for print automation
2024 was yet another monumental year for HP PrintOS and HP Site Flow, with customers producing more than 650 million items on the platforms marking continued and consistent growth of the solutions since their launch in 2016.
This success lies in the solution’s ability to address the unique production challenges of the web-to-print industry leveraging the robust infrastructure and advanced capabilities of HP Site Flow to fulfil the influx of high and often unpredictable volumes of micro-orders based on a wide SKU portfolio, that demand quick turnarounds as well as shipping direct to end users.
In fact, during the peak holiday season alone our HP Site Flow customers processed over 150 million items and over six million orders. This growth also owes its success to the thousands of brands and PSPs that are already integrated with HP Site Flow and submitting orders to HP customers, and we’re constantly connecting new brands while simplifying the connection with PSPs through end-to-end production workflow automation.
We also continue to see strong growth in HP PrintOS as PSPs look to overcome the challenges of a fundamental lack of data and optimise their production floors. Today PrintOS serves over 28,000 organisations with more than 44,000 connected devices worldwide, testament to the power of the platform. And, when leveraged in tandem, HP Site Flow and HP PrintOS are providing a powerful and unrivalled holistic automation solution for PSPs to scale and grow.
Investing in the Future of the Print Industry
The success of HP Site Flow and HP PrintOS comes down to our mission to invest in solutions that support our customers to navigate the ever-evolving industry challenges, and sustainably grow their offerings.
With escalating e-commerce expectations for customisation and speed, PSPs are bogged down with the challenge of growing in to print on demand in an increasingly complex print landscape.
That’s why we created the HP Industrial Print Software and Solutions division, to bring the power of solutions like HP PrintOS and HP Site Flow and innovation with AI to address industry challenges and the fragmented print production ecosystem head on. Through continued investment in our innovation, expertise and network of partners we are equipping PSPs to become more productive, reduce their costs and ultimately better collaborate for sustainable business growth.
A great example of how we’re helping brands and platforms connect with our network of PSPs and streamline production flows is our collaboration with Canva that we announced last year. Canva has expanded access to professionally printed products from HP PSPs around the world so that anyone creating visual content on its platform can seamlessly design and print with a fully integrated system.
Leveraging HP PrintOS and HP Site Flow, Canva is also able to automate production and shipping processes for PSPs providing an end-to-end solution that streamlines print jobs for greater productivity. With HP PrintOS features, the Canva Print Operations team can better identify, connect and manage a global SKU catalogue across HP-enabled PSPs at scale.
Leading the AI Transformation
From the very outset of creating the HP Industrial Print Software Solutions division we emphasised the transformative potential of AI and instilled the importance of taking an AI-forward approach to innovation. That already is encompassed in many of the advanced solutions available today across the entire print ecosystem. One of our customers Elanders has been able to harness AAA (Auto Alert Agent) 2.0 to significantly reduce production time, saving one hour for every 80,000 impressions.
The solution enables them to not only enhance operational efficiency, it also drastically reduces customer complaints and returns by 5-7%.
Yet, AI is not just about boosting press productivity but will help PSPs to reinvent the whole production floor to enable smarter workflows, simplified operations and data-driven decision making. This transformation allows PSPs to operate more efficiently, offer innovative services, and adapt to evolving market demands, ensuring long-term competitiveness.
What we achieve with our customers infusing AI throughout the entire technology stack is evidence of how HP solutions are setting a new standard for AI and automation. At the end of last year HP was awarded Keypoint Intelligence’s Buyers Lab (BLI) 2024-2025 Pacesetter Award in Production Workflow: Artificial Intelligence. The accolade recognises HP as a leader in AI adoption, use, and implementation in print production workflow solutions, and is testament to the strategic direction we’re taking to bring industry-leading solutions for our customers to sustainably grow.
This year at Hunkeler Innovationdays, we showcased how HP’s advanced technologies set a new standard for digital print production with the first ever live end-to-end finishing line for book production that brings together the power of HP Indigo and HP PageWide technologies with HP’s Intelligent Automation ecosystem.
If you would like to discover more about HP’s innovations and see firsthand how HP continues to push boundaries book a demo or contact the team.
About the author
Joan Perez Pericot is VP and GM of HP’s Industrial Print Software and Solutions business
