A New Wind Blows in Chicago: New Insight and Innovations Move the Solimar Customer Advisory Council Ahead
Chicago in the fall generally means PRINT for the Print industry at McCormick’s South Hall. Diehard printers will also remember this time of year as GRAPH EXPO, but times and names change. PRINT offers print providers the ability to look at the latest hardware and software technology for a variety of print markets. It also makes it a perfect time to get our Solimar Systems Customer Advisory Council (CAC) together for an update on Solimar Research and Development (R&D), insights from their fellow members and market information from leading experts.
Held in the Loop, right off the river, the Solimar CAC fall meeting was an opportunity for our team and our clients to learn from each other. This year we had presentations from fellow CAC members, industry experts, and Mary Ann Rowan, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at Solimar. If you weren’t able to be a part of the CAC or are interested in knowing why being a part of this strategic group is essential; we have a short recap of the evening’s events.
First to present was Elizabeth Gooding and Mary Schilling with Inkjet Insights. The key points included the latest release of Designers Guide to Inkjet, 2nd Edition, what has been changing in the inkjet market and why designers need to be educated. We could write a whole blog on this topic (and likely will!), but what our CAC took away from this is that designers grow page volumes and cut sheets have recently generated an uptick in overall inkjet growth as we look to the future.
Pat McGrew, Group Director for Keypoint Intelligence, provided a market update to our attendees. There are many stats that Pat shared, but the items that stood out were the 4.7% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of CCM Software—and the continued interest in subscription licensing models—plus being able to understand and identify our competition and your secret sauce. A key take away was that your printers, software, and workflow aren’t your secret sauce, it is how you leverage it that matters. Other people could have a carbon copy of your hardware, software, and workflow…but that doesn’t mean they could leverage it to create the same competitive advantage. Pat recommends you work closely with your solutions providers to define and create the most advantageous setup possible—this, in turn, will drive success.
As part of the Solimar CAC, we ask our clients to present so other members can learn from their experiences. This meeting focused on the power of utilizing the Chemistry™ Platform for document re-engineering and workflow optimization for cost savings. You can listen to our full SOLicast for some of the data they shared, and it is truly compelling.
Before breaking for our group dinner, Mary Ann Rowan closed out the Solimar CAC meeting with a roadmap update for the Chemistry Platform. The key things we want our prospective and current Solimar customers to know is that we have a new Rubika User Interface experience with powerful time-saving benefits for document re-engineering and enhancement, as well as, a PDF optimization module that will correct subsetted fonts, cache image resources and more with the goal to drive the most efficient PDF files through your workflow and print Digital Front Ends (DFE).
We are humbled by the attendance at our Solimar CAC members and grateful for all the time they take out of their schedule to share with others and our team to drive mutual success. If you are interested in joining our CAC or are interested in learning about anything we have shared above, please contact us. We are happy to share more knowledge and help propel our business to new heights.
For more information, call the Solimar Sales Team at +1.619.849.2800.