Inkjet Printing Is it time to take a closer look? by: Brent Hoskins, Office Technology Magazine
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f the story of inkjet printing within the office technology industry was unfolding in a novel, it could be said that we are still somewhere in the early chapters. Yes, inkjet is certainly not a new technology. Consumer-grade inkjet for home use has been commonplace for years. The same is true for inkjet wide format and, on the very high end, $1-million-plus, often rollfed, transactional inkjet printing equipment. But what about general office printers for the dealer channel targeting the SMB space? Will inkjet one day be commonplace there? There is no doubt that the full-line laser-imaging-device manufacturers have the wherewithal to take on the manufacture of business-grade inkjet imaging devices for the general office, selling through the dealer channel. However, for many reasons, for the most part, that has not happened. Instead, the laser-imaging-device business model continues to dominate the BTA Channel, leaving many dealers essentially undecided about inkjet. Perhaps any thoughts about inkjet among dealers end, in part, with concerns about image quality. After all, dealers are accustomed to selling the sharp, crisp look of toner, which adheres to paper, rather than what they may often view as flatter, newspaper-print-like output with inkjet, which is absorbed into paper. If inkjet is not being widely pushed into the general office by manufacturers today, might it ultimately be increasingly pulled into the general office by end users? In fact, isn’t that already occurring to some degree, perhaps more recently due, in part, to the monumental shifts in printing driven by the rise of remote workers? Also, might some dealers only be thinking about the image quality of their inexpensive, consumer-grade inkjet printers at home, assuming all inkjet printers have a similar level of quality? With such questions in mind, at the very least, it may be time for more dealers to
take a closer look at the current opportunities with inkjet. “We provide a superior alternative to what has traditionally been offered in the market in terms of laser printing technology,” says Joe Contreras, commercial marketing executive at Epson America Inc. “If you look at our portfolio, I think that is where we are really strong. It spans from desktop A4 all the way up to A3 positioned for both the office and light production.” How is inkjet superior? “What our dealers are seeing is that they can considerably improve their service profitability, given the low maintenance and low intervention required on our products, and that’s because of our PrecisionCore [Micro TFP Print Chip] heatfree technology,” Contreras says. “For our newest introductory flagship products, the WorkForce Enterprise series of color MFPs, when compared to the competitive set of laser products, our mean copies between service visits is roughly three-and-a-half times greater. So, we’re three-and-a-half times more productive than the competitive landscape, which translates, obviously, into better service and a better experience for end users. They are not having to have technicians come into their offices as frequently. From both the dealer and end-user standpoints, it’s really a win-win across the board.” Contreras is not alone in emphasizing the service profitability that inkjet provides the dealer channel. In fact, looking upstream from the general office, but far lower in cost than the $1-million-plus inkjet equipment, there are production print inkjet opportunities available to dealers offering noteworthy service profitability. In April of this year, for example, KYOCERA Document Solutions America Inc. launched the TASKalfa PRO 15000c inkjet production printer, offering 146 pageper-minute (ppm) printing for letter-sized documents in both color and monochrome. The product — the first inkjet engine
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