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Impact or Laser?

I had a great visit today with the InfoPrint call center staff in Austin. There was discussion about customers being convinced to move away from impact printers and toward laser printing. This is typically by people prejudiced against impact, or those that are only selling lasers. It reminded me of my write-up on the subject, found on my website. Here it is for your convenience:

Use IBM InfoPrint Impact Printers
or Migrate to Laser Printers?

If your old impact printers are not becoming to you -

you should be
coming to us!

Covered Below:

Issue Examination

Marketplace Facts

Are we Impact-Biased?

Options are Available

Are Any of These Silly Issues True?

Have CUSTOMERS STOPPED TAKING SHIPMENTS because the documents are in dot matrix output?

Will no A/P clerk PAY YOUR INVOICE due to the fact that your company uses an older style of printing?

Are vendor salesreps, ISV advisors, consultants and staff telling you to move to LASER PRINTERS?

Are you ready to SPEND MORE MONEY?

Ready to be LESS ECONOMICAL?

Is there NO OTHER WAY to make the printout work better?

Want to SPEND 10X TO 20X ON PRINTING SUPPLIES?

Then by all means, MOVE TO LASER PRINTING!

Impact Printer Facts

Pretty much every laser printer rep has no impact offering (or even any personal experience) with a high volume mission-critical business-level impact printer.

Just think about it .... Ricoh? HP? Xerox? Lexmark? Konica/Minolta? Brother?

None of them sell impact line printers.

Only Lexmark have anything with a ribbon in it, and theirs are serial printers for light transactional duty only.

Do any of them sell thermal barcode printers. Nope. Not a one.

Are you taking your printing advice from reps and company staff that can't remember a world without web browsers and pocket cell phones? What do they really know about impact printers anyway?

So We Try to Keep You on Impact?

No, not at all! We think laser printed output is great. For years, we have helped customers make that move and enhance their print.

We think impact is great too, and can be made modern and even more cost-effective that it is today.

You know how many doctors and chiropractors bad-mouth each other? One value we have for you - we can diagnose, devise a remedy, and write a prescription without an entire printer transplant. We do not have a built-in bias AGAINST impact printers, OR FOR impact printers. We love 'em both, but we especially love showing customers how to transact their business at the lowest costs - it wins us long-term customers, and we feel those are the best kind.

How Can GLM Help Me Affordably?

We call it "Print Less and Print Better". Why move only to laser? Maybe you could move to less printing.

Let us help you leave the three-part-forms behind. Is the "pink" copy simply headed to a filing cabinet? Put it there electronically. Could the customer choose to receive the bill in an email? We do, and we are in the printer business!

One of our suppliers switched to e-distribution, and their invoice printing dropped by 75%. We can provide the same software and consulting solution to make that happen for you.

Some output is absolutely better on laser! Bringing photo half-tone images, tight logo graphics, and small barcodes on your printing are all reasons to move to laser. If you merely want to move away from pre-printed forms, we can likely design the form and the data onto your old or new impact printers and keep the expenses low.

Maybe you have a workflow issue with your printing. Do you generate invoices with one job and picking slips with a separate job and printer, and then have experience errors and rework when you try match them to pick and pack the box? We can help you consolidate that effort, with no change to your application programming.

Is Impact bad?

No.

Is Laser always better.

No.

Are you stuck with the output you have because it is too complex to change the programs?

No, not at all.

Switch a Line Printer to a Fast Serial Model?

How is the Infoprint 4247-Z03 like a Southwest Airlines plane?
They are both 737's!

The Z03 at 1100 Characters Per Second (CPS) equates to 737 LINES PER MINUTE. Impact print users can consider the Z03 as an affordable alternative to a 500 LPM InfoPrint 6500, or a new upgrade from the older IBM 6400 line printers.

It's 40% less money than an InfoPrint 6500 LPM Line Printer, 30% lower for maintenance service (even less with 9x5 coverage, unavailable on InfoPrint line printers), can sit on a table or desk, and it's nearly 50% faster!

Pictures and details are available here - my website.

How Companies Are Focusing On Printing Less

From Madison Advisors’ Industry Defining Print Suppression Market Study, by Kemal Carr; found on DocumentMedia.com

http://documentmedia.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=Articles+%26+Archives&type=Publishing&mod=Publications::Article&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=2E1BF301C56C4454AFEA260F895DAB59
Madison Advisors surveyed 27 Fortune 500 firms to understand their print suppression strategies. While the majority of firms surveyed identified print suppression as a focus area, they lack the ownership of a C-level executive. Only 14% of them answered that a Chief was looking at e-delivery and printing less. In those large companies, 63% responded that they had budgeted specifically to paperless or e-delivery initiatives.

"Organizations need fully developed stategies with executive support, metrics for measuring success and the right practices in place" to shift to paperless communications. Without them, "customers ofter revert back to paper once the initial thrust has passed."

Even if your company has not made it into Fortune's big list, what are your plans? Do you have the tools in place to enhance, electrify, and e-warehouse your customer and internal communications?