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A colour ROI
Wednesday, 04 November 2009 06:54
With costs falling, the business rationale of colour becomes even more compelling.

With costs falling, the business rationale of colour becomes even more compelling.

The use of colour to stand out from the crowd, deliver a certain message or generate a specific response has long made intuitive sense, but a range of research now confirms its rationale from a business perspective. 

Readership of colour advertisements is 42 percent higher than their black-and-white equivalents (1) and reactions to colour account for up to 90 percent of people’s initial impressions when they see a new a product (2)

However, increased levels of impact and attention need no longer be associated with a price premium.  Technological advances and healthy competition have helped to drive the costs of both colour hardware (predominantly multifunction printers (“MFPs”)) and supplies. 

According to the analysts at Current Analysis (3), the advent of high-yield toner cartridges has led to a drop of between 5 and 10 percent in the cost of consumables over the last two years. 

The same analysts cite greater flexibility from colour MFPs, and printers offer enterprises a way to save money by printing only as many documents as they need for each project, thus avoiding minimum print run costs typically imposed by commercial printers. These savings can add up to a 40 percent drop in printing costs when more colour work is kept in house, the researcher said.
 
These trends have also impacted the nature and volume of documents organizations are now printing in house.  A survey, conducted amongst 250 enterprises in the US by CMP media in 2007, also highlighted the increasing role played by in house print production.  The vast majority – nearly 70 percent of respondents – currently use a combination of in house and external print suppliers to produce their printing materials, while only 2 percent rely exclusively on outside providers.  Significantly, 29 percent of respondents would feel comfortable bringing all of their print production in house.

These twin trends – generating business benefit from colour and an increased focus on in house printing – have helped to place colour print costs under greater levels of scrutiny than ever.  HP’s Imaging & Printing Group (IPG) has been at the forefront of driving down the cost of colour printing while, at the same time, driving up the levels of control in house users can exert over it.

 

Generating a ‘colour ROI’


Colour printing has yet to gain dominance over its black-and-white counterpart but as prices continue to fall, together with the rise in quality and control associated with in house production, it will be fascinating to see how these relative ‘market shares’ continue to develop.
 
The nearest parallel I can draw is in the world of broadcast and film where back and white has become the exception rather than the norm.  One factor that remains clear, however, is that companies are treating colour as a finite resource to drive business.  In common with all resources, its use should be managed and measured to generate the maximum return on investment (ROI). 

The concept of a ‘colour ROI’ may seem incongruous but – as the above dynamics are played out – it is set to become a key business metric.




1 Source: Color for Impact (1997), Jan V. White
2 Source: Institute for Color Research (http://www.ccicolor.com/research.html)
3 Color Printing and MFP, Trends in the Enterprise (published by CMP)


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