But each of these tactics eventually runs out of steam, leaving management with no other choice but to somehow grow revenue. This has forced hardcopy companies to enter adjacent markets, win more business from competitors, and perpetually cut costs. But growing the top-line is tough in the hardcopy industry when placements for most kinds of printers are falling and the number of printed pages is declining. Companies can do that by growing revenue, improving profit margin, or some combination of the two. The overriding goal of every publicly-owned company is to maximize shareholder value by generating as much profit as possible. And while some in the industry are convinced they can hop on the DX gravy train as a new business opportunity, any DX revenue will be offset - or more than offset - by DX-driven reductions in new printer placements and future pages.įrom the April 2022 Issue - “Win, Lose or Draw " The growing pipeline of recent, ongoing and future investments in digital transformation (“DX”) will deliver redesigned procedures and processes that eliminate more and more printed pages.
Unfortunately for the industry, things are likely only to get worse. I’m more a prognosticator than a forecaster, but I can’t help but think there are some pretty powerful reasons to believe that 20% fewer pages likely correlates to 20% fewer devices that will print those remaining pages.ġ0. However, hardcopy vendors have been far more circumspect (or muddled) when it comes to sharing their thoughts on the future pace of new MFP and printer placements, particularly in the office market. And office printing is likely to stay flat in 2022, then resume its decline in 2023, and fall at a faster rate than before COVID. But that’s a math story for another time.įrom the May 2022 Issue - “Ten Uh-Oh’s from That 20% Blow"Īs I editorialized earlier this year (“The Recovery That Wasn’t” in February), there’s growing consensus among hardcopy vendors that office page volumes - which plummeted about 20% in the first year of the pandemic - hardly bounced back in 2021. This also implicitly points to the absurdity of printer vendors spending billions of dollars to buy their own shares, rather than investing in business development or acquisitions.
VENTURE FORTHE DOCUWARE PC
And HP has experienced fortuitous upside from a likely short-lived boom in PC sales. Fujifilm’s intentional investments in healthcare and pharmaceuticals have indeed been transformative. The sad little secret is that the minimalist strategies hardcopy vendors are pursuing to grow non-hardcopy revenue are unlikely to deliver the additional money they require.
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