The Changing Face of the Printing Industry

PRT, a well-established printing company, becomes multi-service provider in the growing sector of TransPromo

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The Italian company Poligrafico Roggero & Tortia (PRT) is an established enterprise with a company history of almost one hundred years. Today, the print service provider from Turin has 80 staff and, with annual revenue of 15 million Euros, is one of the leading providers in the growing transaction and TransPromo printing market.

PRT was also one of the first to adapt to the changes in the printing sector.

One of the first strategic measures was the foundation of the joint venture Intellidoc. The company, which has specialized in data processing, software development and document creation, is working hand in hand in with PRT. Intellidoc has been using the software PReS from PrintSoft for the creation of documents since day one. Customers of PRT/Intellidoc include leading service providers from the telecommunication, supply, finance and energy sector. The company started off with the production of books, movie posters and advertising material.

Far-sighted decision

The courage to invest was crucial: following a thorough analysis of the market environment, the management of PRT decided to consistently expand its inkjet printing capacities. The parameters were clear right from the outset: fast production, full color and top quality printing at low price. To this end, the high volume print system InfoPrint 5000 – from InfoPrint Solution was purchased. One of the greatest strengths of the system is the print speed: top quality full color printing with a print speed of up to 64 meters per minute at a print width of 502 millimeters. PRT was the first company to operate

this system in the EMEA region. Thanks to the extended service portfolio, the company soon became one of the leading providers of transaction printing and direct mailing services.

Optimized customer communication

Personalized bills that are customized to individual customer profiles are ideal advertising media. The significant increase in annual turnover in the TransPromo sector indicates that this approach is more and more embraced by marketing departments. In particular large-scale enterprises that send out several million bills every month take a great interest in optimized customer targeting.

The software solution PrintSoft PReS, which is used by PRT/Intellidoc, allows for automated reading of master and transaction data provided by the respective companies. In addition, it is possible to integrate any number of images, graphics, barcodes and texts into the documents.

The sequence of placement of these elements can be defined individually. That way, it is possible to integrate information related to the billing data anywhere in the document, e.g. as a summary on the first page. The system recognizes any unused white space for marketing messages based on predefined parameters. As a result, the space is fully utilized and advertising messages can be effectively placed on the document (white space management).

Top quality at low cost
After completion of the document creation process, PReS generates full color AFP spool files for transmission to the production printer. For control and archiving purposes, it is also possible to use PDF as output format and to send the documents in PDF format to the customers. The entire production process is, by and large, fully automated; PRT can finally also envelope the bills and pass them on to the postal service provider if this is required by the customer.

PRT’s decision to invest in TransPromo printing marked the decisive step in the company’s transition from a traditional print house to a modern service provider with a comprehensive service portfolio. In addition to the fact that outsourcing releases resources and that individualized full color printing is an efficient marketing tool, the low cost of full color printing is particularly attractive to potential customers.

PRT Strategies
In order to understand the future strategies of the print service provider we asked some question to Riccardo Pesce, CEO of the PRT Group.

PRT was the first Italian company to invest in a inkjet high production printer InfoPrint 5000;  today the R&D of InfoPrint Solutions is working, not just to the implementation of the performances in terms of printing quality and productivity, but also to the developing of more efficient workflows dedicated to the mail room. In particular the new solutions launched during Graph Expo 2010 integrated the entire process included the finishing. In the near future do you think to invest in this segment? Which are your needs in term of workflow?

PRT is constantly updated about the evolution of the products launched by the most important vendors. We think that the workflow represents a key factor in achieving the best efficiency in the production process. In particular in the mailroom an integrated workflow, which involves all the steps from the management of the database trough the document composition, the output and the finishing, to the delivery, is crucial.

PRT has got a quite old and important tradition in transational and transpromotional printing: which is your approach to the diffusion of the cross media communication? What kind of services and products do you offer to your customers?

Step by step we are moving to the dematerialization of the documents and towards the integration of printing products with the dematerialized communication: for this reason some years ago we decided a spin-off of our software R&D division and we started a new company. Intellidoc is an independent company: it is dedicated to the data management, to the document composition.

One important focus is the environmental responsibility: which are your strategies in terms of “green document”?

PRT has always been involved in environmental responsibility .We obtained both PFC and FSC certifications: thanks to them we can guarantee to our customer the ability to choose products from socially and environmentally responsible forestry. We are constantly working on the environmental focus: some new services in this area will be announced in the near future.