FuturePrint Virtual Summit Q&A: Jonathan Malone-McGrew, Solimar Systems
We spoke to FuturePrint Virtual Summit speaker Jonathan Malone-McGrew, Chief Engagement Officer, Solimar Systems, about how Solimar is supporting clients and partners, the way the pandemic is changing demand, the sectors seeing the most significant impact and more.
Don’t miss Jonathan’s session, Behind the Workflow Curtain: True Stories of Optimizing PDF and RIPs, with Ken Hillier, Pat McGrew, and Mary Ann Rowan, on June 3rd.
Check out the full schedule here.
HOW HAVE YOU RESPONDED TO THE CRISIS?
At Solimar Systems we are trying to do everything we are able to support each one of our clients’ and partners’ unique situations. For our partners, we have stepped up video training sessions with custom content to help support their needs by team and region. We are also making sure they know about, understand and can leverage our free trial offers on our workflow software platform. In addition, we are helping clients navigate the changes to their business by streamlining add-ons when they need more capacity, letting them rent additional system/solutions to make it possible to meet temporary increases in the production environments and continuing to promote our core belief that strong relationships are the key to lasting engagements and satisfaction.
WHAT IMPACT IS COVID-19 HAVING ON DEMAND?
Demand is definitely different. We are seeing people need to add capacity in critical businesses where they are having to take overflow from other providers that have had to close down temporarily or for the foreseeable future. We have seen some buying cycles be put on hold due to uncertainty and we are also seeing some organizations use this as a time to start finding ways to improve, streamline and squeeze costs out of their current processes. There is no doubt though that April 2020 was a difficult month for the print and digital communications industry. We hope to see a rebuilding when it is safe and will be there to support all our partners and clients.
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON WHEN RESTRICTIONS WILL RELAX AND NORMAL TRADING WILL RESUME?
At the present, this is a little hard to answer. We believe that restrictions are already relaxing in some parts of the U.S. and the world. However, even the countries that were impacted first are still not back up to pre-COVID-19 levels of trade. Normal may be a new normal, which will likely breed innovation and new expectations. We plan that the recovery may take quite some time based on the downturn we saw back in 2008-2011 where confidence took nearly 10 years to rebuild to its peak levels. Our outlook should be optimistic though as we believe difficult times will lead to new innovations and solutions that will seek to help propel the print and digital communications industry to new opportunities and success.
WHICH SECTORS WITHIN PRINT DO YOU BELIEVE HAVE BEEN MOST STRONGLY IMPACTED BY COVID-19 AND WHY?
From what we have seen, commercial printing, especially marketing printing and luxury good printing has seen significant impact. We have customers that are running 1 out of 3 of their inkjet presses and we have others that have a strong business in the transactional/critical communications printing space, but have had to halt their commercial printing centers. Our suspicion from reports in the market are that the mom and pop printers are likely devastated and trying to hold on, while larger printers in the commercial market are having to face the prospects of reorganization and how to take on enough capital to make it through the slowdown. The why is largely attributed to businesses being closed due to the health issues with COVID-19. When retailers, restaurants, realtors, software vendors, airlines, hospitality and personal services can’t operate--there isn’t a lot of need for printing. It is really similar to how traffic levels have died down due to stay-at-home orders, which has led to some of the lowest fuel prices in the last few years.
WHAT DO YOU EXPECT TO SEE PERMANENTLY CHANGE ONCE LOCKDOWNS/RESTRICTIONS EASE?
We believe it is very likely that how you visit businesses, whether for transactions, sales calls or meetings, will be very different and more cautious. There could be lasting requirements for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and temperature checks. We may see that ‘in person’ events will be fewer and more strategic. From an employer perspective, how sickness is dealt with and the time before people are allowed to return to the workplace may be more strict. They may have to work remotely for a period to make sure they are symptom free. We could also see tests or vaccination suggestions or requirements.
From a selling perspective, it may take some time before we see ‘in person’ sales resume as a regular occurrence. At least until there is a better understanding of treatments in case someone does become sick and there has to be health procedures taken. The result will be plans for what to do in a future pandemic in HR planning and disaster recovery planning.
WHAT CONSUMER TRENDS DO YOU THINK WILL GROW AS A RESULT OF THE CRISIS?
In the near term, online and remote consumer activities will likely continue to grow. Depending on how this crisis unfolds, we likely will settle back into some level of in person activities as it is part of our social nature. Direct mail may actually become more important if people aren’t interacting in person as much and continue to experience digital overload. We may also see an uptick in opt out tactics by consumers if they are more immersed in digital and are more stationary so that they can focus on what messages they want and don’t want. Remote access, management, tracking and reporting of all facets of their personal and work lives and the technology that makes that easiest will continue to be of interest. As global people we tend to adapt, innovate and find ways to overcome our challenges. We may not yet know what the latest innovations will be or trends will be. For the print industry, web-to-print, robotics, artificial intelligence, operational visibility and automation will likely be significant interests for B2B industry participants.
