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PRINT.IT
17
www.binfo.co.uk
Oki Growth Plans
A revitalised Oki is putting last year’s
difficulties behind it with a refreshed printer
range and ambitious growth plans
Oki at the double
Oki has announced “medium
term” plans to double printer
sales in EMEA – already the
company’s most important
region, accounting for 50% of
sales. Much of this growth will
come from new and expanding
markets, but Oki also plans
to increase sales in mature
regions, such as the UK,
through an expanded product
range and greater focus on
solutions and services.
Like other Japanese
companies, Oki had a difficult
2011. The disruption caused by
the earthquake and tsunami was
compounded by severe flooding
in Thailand that forced Oki to
suspend operations at its printer
manufacturing plant in Ayutthaya
Province.
Since then, Oki has
overhauled its manufacturing
capability, building in greater
tolerance, extending the
geographic base of its supply
chain and expanding production
capacity by 140%.
More recently, it has unveiled
a ‘Print Smart’ strategy to
promote printing products based
on Oki’s LED print technology,
first developed in 1981. At the
unveiling of the strategy, Takao
Hiramoto, president of Oki
Data Corporation, emphasised
that LED remains an important
area of innovation and product
differentiation for the company
and its customers.
“LED has many advantages
over laser print technology,” he
explained. “The fixed LED head
is a simpler mechanism for
easier maintenance, with high
resolutions and fast print speeds.
It is about half the size of a laser
engine and the flat paper path
allows more versatile media
handling.”
In particular, the compact
design of Oki printers, their
durability (they come with three-
year warranties) and their ability
to handle a wide range of media
enable small and medium-sized
businesses to cut costs and
improve productivity by producing
marketing material in-house.
Customer benefits
One company already doing this
is Citroen Scandinavia, which
sells cars in Denmark, Norway
and Sweden. It used to produce
point of sale material centrally
for distribution to its 175 local
resellers, a process that was
slow – new promotional displays
could take anything from five
days to five weeks to produce
– and costly, with distribution
accounting for 50% of total costs.
Citroen Scandinavia has now
replaced this process with a
web-based design solution that
allows its local resellers to design
and customise banners, outdoor
signs, window stickers, posters
etc. online and print them locally
on an Oki printer. As well as
saving time and money, the new
system lets resellers respond
to local sales opportunities
instantly.
Another customer benefiting
from Oki printers’ media flexibility
is Waitrose. It recently brought
the production of polyester
shelf-labels for freezer cabinets
in-house saving £1 million a
year. Instead of outsourcing
the production of these labels,
Waitrose now prints them
centrally on four Oki ES9410 A3
colour printers.
Expanded range
In order to meet the diverse
printing needs of enterprise and
SME customers, Oki is continuing
to expand its product range (see
box) and introduce new software
and services, including secure
printing.
A foreign device interface
on the C831/41 colour printers
(optional on the MB491 mono
MFP) allows users to release
print jobs using a card. This
option is particularly suitable
for larger businesses that might
already use cards for access
control and for businesses
that mandate card release as
a means of controlling and
auditing printer usage.
For smaller businesses or
ones that simply want to offer
the option of secure output on
shared devices, Oki offers PIN
release through the print driver.
Available on all Oki devices that
have built-in hard disks or the
ability to accommodate a Secure
Digital High Capacity (SDHC)
memory card, the Secure Print
option holds a print job in the
selected printer’s memory until
the user enters their PIN.
Additional features include
Encrypted Secure Print that
provides an extra layer of
security by encrypting files before
they are sent to a printer; and
the secure erasure of documents
once they have been printed or
after a user-defined period if not
released.
Managed Print Services
Another focus for Oki is managed
print services (see the summer
edition of
PrintIT
’s sister
publication
Sustainable Times
for a write-up of its MPS for
Defra).
Terry Laidlaw, managing
director EMEA of Oki Europe Ltd,
said: “The end user must have
the right to choose how he wants
print output delivered to him. He
must be able to buy hardware
or, if he prefers, say ‘Print is very
important to me and I want the
confidence that someone else
is going to come in and keep my
printers working’. We are able
to come in and give them that
confidence.”
www.oki.co.uk
2012 New Product Highlights
For the micro and small business:
• B401 A4 mono printer: a lower entry price for automatic
duplex;
• MB441 and MB451 mono MFPs: automatic double-sided
copying as standard;
• C300 range of compact A4 colour printers;
• C822 series ultra compact A3 colour printer.
For the small to medium-sized workgroup:
• C500 Series A4 colour printers: automatic duplex, PCL and
network capability, high yield consumables;
• M461, M471/MB471w A4 mono MFP: double-sided scanning,
copying and faxing;
• MC352dn, MC362dn, MC562dn A4 colour MFP;
• C831 ultra compact A3 colour printer: the world’s smallest A3
laser class page printer.
For the larger enterprises:
• MB491 A4 mono MFP: encrypted secure print;
• C8000 series A4 and A3 colour printers: IC card reader option
for secure print.