PRIMIR Study Unveiled about Financial, Transactional and Transpromo Printing

October 2008

multipage

A new PRIMIR study entitled "Trends and Future of Financial and Transactional Printing through 2012" was released in the spring of 2008. The study focused on commercial printers as well as in-house data centers and print-for-pay data service bureaus. A principle objective was to develop a comprehensive analysis of the digital printing (including inkjet) market opportunity for this application and identify drivers and threats to printed output in 2006 while at the same time forecasting trends and opportunities through 2012. 

The research was unique since, in addition to the traditional round of expert and industry interviews, an online consumer survey was conducted. In fact, 547 consumers responded about their current and future use of paper and online transactional documents. 

Marco Boer of I.T. Strategies who conducted the research for PRIMIR noted, "the rate of migration to e-statements is highly varied, depending on business sector and size." For example, banks that on one hand have a 40% online banking rate find that 70% or more of their customers still want paper statements. While some credit card providers encourage electronic payments to save on remittance processing costs plus paper, printing and postage costs, other providers see paper as a great monthly communication vehicle with their customers. The latter group is generally open to the transpromotional opportunities. 

There is a lot of industry buzz about opportunities in transpromotional statement printing. The truth is there are many parts of the transaction processing workflow that precede the printing. Given that, altering this fundamental workflow has a domino effect on the entire process. 

Adding color graphics to a statement requires adaptation of completely new printing languages, changes in layout require coordination between the IT department and the marketing department, and programming adds expense and investment. Thus, the operational/technical challenges for implementing this new 'marketing opportunity' in-house requires corporate level decisions far beyond the simple acquisition of a high-speed color transaction printing system. As a result, there are opportunities for many NPES members to partner together to provide a 'total solution' to a printer or corporate in-plant that is interested in this market. 

Having said all that, transpromotional printing is an opportunity for the astute 'commercial' or digital printer who has already mastered the technical skill sets, implemented new workflows, and has the high speed color printing system in place. The only skill set needed is a highly effective sales team to convince the corporate clients of the benefits and rewards of transpromotional statements and win their confidence to outsource that part of their business. 

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