Convergence is the name of the game in today's document production revolution. As corporations strive to achieve effectiveness and efficiency in their customer communications the lines between marketing, IT, graphic arts and print/mail are fading. Legacy databases, print streams, applications, organizational roles and responsibilities are all converging in an effort to create documents with more value. In addition organizations are realizing that they can reduce redundancy and better use exisiting resources by integrating production print operations.

While variable data on-demand output and print-for-one personalization present new growth opportunities for traditional offset printers, the adoption of customer relationship management and cross selling of services has converged on the transactional print operations. The result are documents that are personalized, targeted, informative, eye-catching and contain individualized promotional messaging. But most of all, these new documents make a connection with the reader for increased response rate, retention and loyalty.

Convergence creates opportunities but with opportunity comes potential challenges. Meeting the challenges of convergence means accommodating new data streams and resources, meeting tight print windows, delivering high print quality, and implementing digital workflow processes.

The Océ Advantage

A first in the evolving world of convergence, the Océ VarioStream 7000 and Océ VarioPrint 5000 family of printers can address the speed requirements of the data center and the print quality requirements of the print-on-demand environment. Using the Océ exclusive Quick Change Developer Station (QCDS), the operator can change the personality of the printer in a matter of minutes to add spot color or MICR printing.

But there is more than printer flexibility that is required for converging print operations. There is the multitude of print data streams. The Océ PRISMA architecture was built with this challenge in mind. Whether the data is coming from the mainframe in AFP, LCDS, Metacode or line data; or, from the network in PostScript, PDF, PCL, or TIFF, you can rely on the PRISMA system to manage the data and accurately reproduce it.

In addition, the extensible PRISMA architecture also allows you to add digital workflow processes like soft-proofing, job ticketing, impositioning, archival, and auditing capabilities as needed.

Océ's convergence story doesn't end with the digital publishing system and workflow solutions. As the two worlds of print operations converge, our commitment to help customers achieve maximum performance while reducing redundancy continues. Evident to this belief, Océ has formed an alliance with the Communication Papers Division of Willamette Industries Inc. which enables Océ to offer its own branded roll paper to its customer base. This web fed paper is specifically developed to meet the needs of both the offset press and digital publishing system. By using the same paper for both the offset and digital processes, short-run and quick turnaround documents can be produced on the digital presses that look identical to the long runs produced on the offset presses.

With Océ Digital Document Systems, you can embrace today's convergence and capture opportunity in the new document world.