PrintFactory White Paper Explores Cloud-Based Automation

PrintFactory has released a study entitled “Redefining wide-format workflows to realize revenue at every opportunity.” The report examines the benefits to adopting cloud-based automation and explores possible reasons why, according to InfoTrends, 92 percent of North American print shops still rely on touchpoint technologies.

The paper cites the five factors that influence the pace and extent of technology adoption according to The McKinsey Global Institute’s “A Future that Works”: technical feasibility, cost of developing and deploying solutions, labor market dynamics, economic benefits, and regulatory and social acceptance. The authors find it’s this last factor that often becomes a sticking point.

Additional takeaways (data based on InfoTrends/Keypoint Intelligence’s “North American Software Investment Outlook”):

• Printers are only spending $35,000 per year on software.
• Most printers have not increased their spending in IT or software over the past two years.
• 31 percent of respondents recognized “investment in automation software as the answer to their productivity and workflow challenges,” and 18 percent say they plan to be fully automated by 2019; however, in 2015, only 9 percent of commercial printers said their workflows were 100-percent automated, and this figure dropped to 8 percent in 2017.

The full white paper continues on to explore opportunities and advantages of adopting automation despite the short-term investment of time and money.