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As one of India's leading print solution companies, Repro India boasts a 150,000 sq ft print facility at Mumbai, and has more than 400 employees. The company prints books for various segments ranging from paperbacks to soft-cover books children's books activity books, promotional books, and even course material for leading IT companies. Repro has invested heavily in technology to cater to its client base of more than 250.

Repro also has a large number of IT companies as clients for whom it undertakes printing course material and internal training material. As Microsoft's Authorized Replicators (MSAR) in India, it undertakes the entire print-based fulfillment for Microsoft's operating systems and application products. It also prints books and courseware for Microsoft's Official Curriculum (MOC) apart from managing subscription programs for Microsoft.

Repro boasts of a client-list of renowned IT companies such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, HP, Compaq, Aptech, NIIT, etc for whom it prints and standardizes books and other courseware. It has printed large volumes of books for Microsoft, IBM Learning Services, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Oxford University Press, Orient Longman, Egmont Imagination, etc.

Although Repro has been using digital technology for more than a decade now, it was only about two years back that the company scaled up its technology to also offer print-on-demand (POD).

The Web defines POD as referring to digital printing technology that allows one or two copies of a book to be printed at a time, dispensing with the expense of warehousing books. It also allows a publisher or author to have books printed only as they are ordered, which means that at the end of the year, a publisher doesn't face costly returns from bookstores.

Reasons for Scaling
For Repro, the decision to scale up their technology from digital printing technology to offering POD services was driven more by business requirement. Agrees Rajiv Vohra, board director, Repro India, "I wouldn't call it a change since we have been using digital printing for a long time but only recently have we scaled to print-on-demand services. So, it was a scaling up of the existing technology, and also since we were getting customers for POD, we decided to convert it as a strategic business unit in Repro." He adds that scaling up is a positive thing since it implies progress.

Also, the company was facing no particular issue that prompted it to scale up the existing technology. Instead, as consumers demand, new technologies are invented which in turn determine our adoption rate for the upcoming technologies.

For its scaling up activity to POD, Repro, apart from Xerox, considered other vendors like HP, OCE, IBM, Konica, Minolta, etc but what Repro decided in favor of Xerox was the customer's requirement. "The customer would have developed his solution on a particular set of technology and stabilized on it. That is customer driven choice. That does not mean it cannot be done in another way," says Vohra.

Repro thereafter installed Xerox's products like DocuTech 6180 Production Publisher and the PowerPlus Series that helped the company process more jobs in lesser time, with high-speed printing, job flexibility, and diverse finishing options. "Apart from this, we also installed Xerox 4110 Copier/Printer which meant digital scanning and printing at best-in-class speeds for one-sided and two-sided documents. Also, the optional EFI controller extends your Xerox 4110 print functionality to leverage an EFI print workflow and ability to do more complex applications, including variable information printing.

Growing Need for POD
The growing need for information dissemination has made POD more relevant in the present times. POD publishing combined with the Internet as a marketing tool has democratized the publishing industry-it has become much easier to self-publish and self-market today than ever before.

According to Vohra, the need for POD has stemmed from the fact that people need more information at a much shorter notice since information is changing at a rapid pace. This acquired information needs to be disseminated through new medium like the Internet, etc. "Therefore, if our client wants one of his earlier published works again, he prefers being sent the PDF attachment to him over email instead of sending across a hard copy of the published work since the email reaches him faster. Also, he can get a printout easily from his laser jet printer," he says.

Benefits
Today's commercial printing environment is more complex and competitive than ever before. Our customers are increasingly demanding faster turnarounds, shorter run lengths, and personalized color documents. "The key to leveraging these trends is to develop new ways to work that translate into finding innovative ways to increase productivity and RoI," Vohra says. For Repro, POD has resulted in an increased production capacity coupled with faster speed of production.

One of the most important advantages that digital printing offers is variable printing, which means that each printed document can have personalized/customized data. "Since our core application is providing technical education material and courseware, by using POD services, the content can also be personalized even up to printing the name and batch number, company name as well on the content," he adds.

Another advantage of digital printing is the ability to offer a quick response time due to its minimal press setup and it's built-in multicolor registration system. This eliminates many of the upfront and time-consuming processes that can cause analog printing methods to have a slower turn-around time. Besides, even the inventory requirements for end product is low along with simpler production steps.

Personalized printing combines static or graphic information with dynamic database driven information, which can deliver a unique message to each customer. Customized model or 'personalized printing' opens up endless opportunities for one-to-one marketing, customer relationship management (CRM), direct mailer, sequential numbering, security identity solutions, ticketing, and billing-in fact any application that calls for different individual printed pieces. The key is that printed content is controlled by data from a database or even by direct input from a website. While a host of factors come into play in a one-to-one exercise, the most critical, perhaps, is the use of innovative technology.

Future Plans
According to Vohra, Repro India would be undertaking more scaling up operations of the technology in the same segment of POD service. "Since POD itself is a concept, it can be applied to more customers in various segments as it works more as an enabler," Vohra says.

Stuti Das
stutid@cybermedia.co.in

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