Comment technically speaking

In early 2005, Xerox and Fuji Xerox announced their largest order for the iGen3 digital press. This was for 24 iGen3 units from JAIS in Osaka, Japan. JAIS is a division within the Mitsui Sumitomo Bank and the order for the iGen3s was to handle the printing of monthly statements for Mitsui Sumitomo Bank's Visa credit card operation. This credit card operation is the main Visa operation for Japan and it handles 44 different affiliated Visa cards. In total, it has 13m customers, all legally requiring monthly statements of their account. The Mitsui Sumitomo Visa operation is the second-largest credit operation in Japan, JCB being the largest, and the bank is the fastest-growing operation and is continually looking for ways to move ahead of its larger competitor.

Before the iGen3 acquisition, the printed statements for the Visa card customers all followed the same format and content. They were printed using continuous feed monochrome laser printers printing onto pre-printed offset shells. JCB upgraded the manner in which it worked when it installed Kodak Versamark continuous feed inkjet colour printers, printing in three colours (red, blue and black), and doing a degree of personalised marketing. Mitsui Sumitomo Card decided to go further than this and also to print to a higher quality than its competitor. It decided to adopt what are being termed "trans-promo documents". That is a document that handles all the financial details of the credit card statement, but which also provides targeted marketing information based on the buying habits of the customer. This targeted marketing information is printed as a part of the statement rather than being added as an insert in the statement's envelope.

Ambitious impressions
At the time of the order for the 24 iGen3s, I was sceptical. The plan was to run at least 9m colour impressions each month within a maximum of a 96-hour window. To do those with 24 separate units, running at a maximum of 6,600 impressions per hour, appeared to be a huge planning, management and logistics problem. Logically, this appeared to be a job for high-speed continuous feed printers. The problem for JAIS was that no such printers existed that produced a suitable quality of output. Mitsui Sumitomo Card wanted its statements to be of the highest quality to differentiate them from its competitors.

Recently, I visited JAIS and, at the time, it had just completed 12 months of full operations where each month for the past year it had printed in excess of 9m impressions (4.5m statements) within the required time window. Although, it is worth noting that the higher spending Visa customers that get colour targeted statements, the remainder receiving standard monochrome statements.

Fuji Xerox and Xerox had worked together with JAIS and Kanematsu Electronics the local distributor for the Exstream Dialogue software that is used for data mining, and to create the VIPP drive files for the iGen3 presses. The operation has been a major success. To the extent that a senior Visa executive said: "We no longer think of cost per page, we think of revenue per page."

JAIS claims to be the only company in the world producing a high volume of offset quality colour transactional documents, although a number of high-profile UK companies such as K2 in Manchester and OTM in Leicester are also tapping into personalised marketing on bills and statements. It has been one of Xerox's leading customers, has been deeply involved in the evolution of the iGen3 press and has shown it is capable of more than just quality graphic arts printing.

The iGen3 has been shown to also be capable of high-volume reliable continuous operations. No doubt Xerox will be pushing it towards other companies wanting to get into the slowly evolving colour transactional printing market.

30-second briefing... full-colour transactional printing
- The largest order for Xerox iGen3s came in 2005 when Japanese company JAIS ordered 24. The company is a division of the Mitsui Sumitomo Bank and the order for the iGen3s was to handle the printing of monthly statements for Mitsui Sumitomo Bank's Visa credit card operation
- Prior to the massive investment, printed statements for the bank's customers followed the same pattern and format: a monochrome statement printed on continuous-feed laser printers onto offset pre-printed backgrounds
- It now produces what are being termed "trans-promo" documents, where the financial information is backed up with marketing messages that are tailored for each individual customer
- JAIS's move to the iGen3s follows rival bank JCB's decision to print its statements in three colours - red, blue and black - with a degree of personalised marketing on Kodak Versamark presses
- A year on, JAIS is now printing 9m statements per month, with Exstream Dialogue data-mining software backing up the operation. Only the highest-spending Visa customers receive the colour targeted statements
- JAIS is now planning to expand the amount of personaled marketing messages which it incorporates in its statements, and is expecting to install more iGen3 presses in the near future

Andrew Tribute is a journalist and consultant in digital pre-press and pre-media marketing technology. Visit: www.attributes.co.uk 

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