Mid-sized, high volume print and electronic services providers and direct mail companies came together February 17-20 in Orlando, Florida, for the 24th annual INg Forum. INg is a networking association for the print and electronic service provider industry. The annual Forum brings together INg members plus some of the biggest name vendor partners to discuss key business and technical issues facing the industry and share best practices on running and growing member businesses.

Here are some of the session highlights from the Forum related to production inkjet and how to leverage this technology to expand your print business:

• “The In and Out of Inkjet Printing” – Mary Schilling of Schilling Ink Jet Consulting spoke about inkjet as a production technology and how to best leverage inkjet papers and substrates to create a highly effective and profitable document.
• “Introducing Inkjet to Your Sales Force and Your Customers” – This topic was specifically requested by a survey of INg members. Elizabeth Gooding, President of the Gooding Group, discussed lessons learned when introducing sales teams and customers to production inkjet and how investigation into vertical markets and application opportunities can dramatically boost sales and improve profit.
• “INg Membership Performance and Perspective Report” – Matt Swain, President of InfoTrends, discussed the results of an InfoTrends study on INg member issues including trends in inkjet technology, software, hardware, infrastructure, services and staffing.
• “3 Strategies to Succeed and Grow, a group discussion” – Dan Adler, President of DA Digital, is a noted industry consultant who previously started and then sold a digital print service bureau. He led a member discussion on ideas to succeed and grow using examples of companies in the print industry and what they are doing to achieve great results.
• “New Member Introduction” – During one of the several new member introduction sessions, Fred Van Alstyne, COO of Content Critical Solutions, shared a best practice on how his company grew by delivering personalized, high-impact communications that helped its customers enhance their business performance and improve revenues.
• “What is not 100%,yet is 100%?” – In one of the several vendor presentations, Guy Broadhurst, VP Technology and Client Solutions at Canon, spoke about the emerging technology of inkjet and what businesses need to know to successfully implement a white-paper-in to full-color-out production inkjet solution.

Of particular interest during the Forum was the announcement by Canon of its investment into educating the industry on how to efficiently and effectively design for inkjet. Written by Mary Schillling and Elizabeth Gooding, this first-of-its-kind “Designer’s Guide to Inkjet” is a “how to” book providing tips, tricks and techniques to enable users to get the best results every time from production inkjet, eliminating the trial and error approach. Both Mary and Elizabeth spoke about the book’s benefits to designers, printers and the industry. Canon provided copies of the Guide to attending INg members.
Current Production Printing Solutions customers can order copies of the Guide at mypressgo.com.

As you can tell, this vibrant networking group is all about sharing, educating, and making its members more efficient and profitable. For more information about INg, visit imagingnetworkinggroup.org. Or to learn how to apply to become a member of INg, contact Shelly Anderson at 404-310-225 or email sanderson@datamatx.com.

Sheri Jammallo is the Corporate Enterprise Segment Marketing Manager for Canon, with a keen focus on marketing strategies across North America in the Transactional, Direct Mail, Data-Center and In-Plant print production space. She brings with her a wealth of industry knowledge that enables her to lead field relevant go-to-market production print strategies and programs for Canon that bring value-add to the production print customer and print industry.Previous to Canon, Sheri spent many years in several roles at Xerox Corporation. She was a Production Print Solutions Manager in the Northeast responsible for high end production print technology and services portfolio, leading a business development team of Production Print Sales Specialists within the In-Plant and Commercial print space. Prior to that role, she was a Production Print Business Development Executive as the lead business development strategist to grow market share in In-Plants and Data-Centers within the New England region.Sheri began her career in the Commercial print space at Standard Register. She spent several years with Standard Register in business development and leadership roles, with a strong focus on go-to-market growth strategies of a vast portfolio of commercial print applications to the Financial, Insurance, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Public Sector, Educational and Retail vertical markets.