Frédéric Fabi · dupli print · Smart Factory Breakout Session
–
Welcome to the Smart Factory
Can you hear me, Jacques?
It’s okay now.
I had to push my buttons a couple
of times, so you could see me too.
But Frédéric could see me, it will be
small adjustments, corrections that will be made at
the time of the replay.
In any case, a very big thank you for
this new session called the Breakout sessions of our
Smart Factory week organized by INKISH.
And today, we really have the privilege of
being able to exchange with Frédéric Fabi,
Frédéric Fabi CEO of the Dupli-Print group.
And why did I want to invite Frédéric Fabi?
Because Frédéric Fabi and his company are among
the driving forces for companies in the
graphic industries in France, Frédéric Fabi and his
company has been labeled “Vitrine
Industrie du futur”.
We’ll discuss this later!
And on the other hand, what’s very interesting
is that Frédéric Fabi with his team is
really working on all the concepts that we’ve
already discussed this week in 4.0 to be
able to fully respond to the
new needs and behaviors of customers.
Hello, Frederic Fabi.
Hello! Glad to be here, glad to be invited.
Frédéric, I will have the pleasure to
interview you with Jacques Michiels, so Jacques
Michiels Jacques a few words about you.
My name is Jacques Michiels I am
responsible for INKISH, Benelux, so Belgium, Netherlands
and Luxembourg and I am also a
consultant in the same field as Yves.
So I also ran a company that I sold
in 2012 and so, of course, everything about new
technologies and Industry 4.0 Smart factory,
I’m very interested in that.
So here we are, I’m very happy to join
Yves and Frédéric here for this nice session.
So there you go,
Thank you, Jacques.
I can send you right away the presentation
we prepared with Frédéric So the Dupli-Print
group “Vitrine des imprimeries 4.0”.
The summary of our session this morning, it goes
first of all to stop for a little
while. On the “Vitrine Industrie du
futur” label obtained by the
Dupli-Print group, Frédéric will tell us what
this label means and, above all,
how it was audited and
implemented within its teams.
Afterwards, we’ll focus on the strategies
of the Dupli-Print group, which respond, as
you’ll see, to the whole of the
long tail, which is really incredible.
And finally, the third point on the business
model 4.0 of the Dupli-Print group, So we’re
going to start with the “Vitrine Industrie
du futur” label of the Dupli-Print group.
As a reminder, this “Vitrine Industrie du
futur” label was awarded by the “Alliance
Industrie du Futur” organization and its purpose is
to, I will quote the words of the
president of the “Alliance Industrie du Futur”,
who indicates that with these new
Vitrines Industrie du futur, which join an approach
that was initiated in 2016 by the
Alliance Industrie du Futur, the Alliance Industrie
du Futur reveals the spearheads of the
industry of the hidden champions who are destined to
shine to bring in their wake the SMIs
of our industrial land, says
the president, Bruno Grandjean.
Our network of ambassadors, which includes
Dupli-Print and correspondents from
Alliance Industrie du futur, is mobilised to
promote these exemplary cases to their peers
and to contribute to meeting the challenge of the
100 Vitrines by the end of 2020 that can
show an exemplary path of digital or
energy transformation towards the Industry of the
Future. So, what is interesting is that in
order to tackle this labeling first of all,
these companies are asked to explain the
industrial context, the elements that trigger the
transformation, then after the initiatives, the responses
to the challenges, such as the
business or organisational technological innovations
that are implemented in these
industries, “Vitrines Industrie du futur”, to
give concrete examples to obtain this
labeling and finally, the spin-offs of the
transformation that respond to the challenges
and often beyond, with an avalanche of value.
Frédéric, I made a copy of Dupli-Print’s
response and approach in this labeling which was
given and published by this
organization Alliance Industrie du futur.
Can you tell us a little more about it
and tell us about this project that you have
labelled?
Well then.
Good morning, everyone.
What is important in these “Vitrines Industrie
du futur” and this labeling is, as you
said, Yves.
We are really focused and based on the
transformation of a concrete business and the
advantages that this can bring, both for
the manufacturer and for the customer.
We have been at work for many, many
years, transforming our business and our industry with
the same objective: to help the customer to
communicate better or to produce better or to
be more efficient.
So, more than 24 months ago, we decided
to launch a fairly innovative project with a
client, the Hachette Group, in
relation to book printing.
We can say that the book printing sector
is very mature and that there isn’t necessarily
much left to invent or reinvent in the field.
But by listening to the customer, working
with him, understanding his issues, we decided
to implement a way of producing books and,
above all, a way of collecting orders and
making them available to the distributor, i.e.,
the distributor being the logistician who
delivers to booksellers every day.
A very innovative way to do it.
So the project that allowed us to be labeled
in March 2019 is a project that started from
a relatively simple premise.
So now, which may seem simple, but was not necessarily
so a few months or a few years ago
or at least, this postulate was known,
but not necessarily easy to answer.
It was to say that in the distributors’
warehouses there were too many dormant books and
too much stock of books.
So, with the Hachette group, we thought about how
we could limit their stocks and allow
them to be on a just-in-time basis, as
we are on a just-in-time basis in various
industries. I am thinking, for
example, of the automotive industry.
What has already been done is to have a
good understanding of the current pattern and the
current issues.
And we have set up an entire automated chain
which today allows us to receive a flow, an
EDI with a list of books to be printed
from the moment we receive this list of books.
We process the insertion of these orders
in our ERP system completely automatically, both
in terms of job files
and typesetting, printing completion, etc.
It’s all completely automatic.
There is no human intervention.
Then we developed automatons to be able to
prepare the production files and finally we
start printing.
So there is necessarily an operator behind
the printing line, then a fully automated
finishing solution that is able to adjust the
material according to the thickness of the
book, the format of the book.
And at the exit of the machine, logistic tools
that are rather normally used in the food
industry, which allow us to put small strips around
the books with a barcode and to know
exactly where the book is going
to be stored in the warehouse.
So there you have it, and it is by
presenting this project to the Alliance that we were
labeled “Vitrine industrie du futur”, with
always the objective, the situation before, the
goal and the realization of this very innovative
project and that we are now in the
process of deploying with other clients
in the book, but not only.
Thank you very much, Frédéric, what is interesting
in your presentation is that it is well
understood that digital transformation takes place on
the entire value chain, on all the
production processes, including the product as such
with your bar codes, which allow you
to locate the finished product and to locate it
on a supply chain, but I just had a
question, when you say that there is an
automatic adjustment on your finishing lines, how
do you, between the printing
unit and the finishing.
How your finishing devices automatically adjust
to the finished format or thickness.
So the decision has already been made to
separate the printing line from the finishing
line, because we print much faster than we
bind, so we print on ink-jet technology,
reel-to-reel, and therefore on a Canon line.
When we print, we put bar codes on each book
and it is these bar codes that allow us to
adjust the whole finishing line in
relation to the information read, i.e.
the number of pages in the book, the format
of the book, the type of paper and therefore
the whole adjustment of the line is done
completely automatically until the book is taped.
So, as well as cutting, folding,
square back gluing, gluing, etc..
Everything is done automatically.
It is even possible on this line to
cut books with flap covers completely automatically.
That’s interesting.
Maybe one more question on this
subject that interests me anyway.
Coming also from the book of the book
of the book making, are there still
formats that are grouped together?
Or is it really up to
the unit that it can change?
Because I always imagine that even if there
is intelligence on the printed product, there
is still a kind of wedging on the finishing
machines or which may have to adapt the
format. So is that there is still a
grouping of certain formats that follow each other.
That’s a really good question.
In this project, we didn’t start with all
possible formats and all possible papers, but we
started with 90 percent of the
formats of the Hachette group.
And then, a number of papers that allow
them to cover many, many books today.
That was important.
Because in some projects that have come up
in the past years, there was still a
restriction on the format and on the paper, which
can still be problematic, if you want to
extend this solution to all the publishers
in a group like the Hachette group.
To answer your question, yes.
In order to be able to make and produce
in an industrial way, we are obliged to make
production batches.
Therefore, the production batches are made automatically
according to the format, the book
and the type of paper.
So why the size and type of paper, and
the size for the printing width, since you don’t
print on the same widths if you’re
on a 16 x24 or 21×29.7 format.
And the paper?
Well, because we bundle the papers, knowing that
our chain is able to print, splice
different papers on a reel and
unwind a reel with different papers.
But you’re right, we still create production
batches that allow us to optimise production
because if this project came about, it’s because
the customer had the necessary volumes to
respond to this type of solution since it’s
a very expensive solution, it’s an investment
between printing and finishing of more than
2 and a half million euros.
So at no time can we afford to produce
4 books in a month, so we needed volume.
And this volume allows us to
create production batches and group orders.
I had another question,
Frédéric, about this labeling.
What interests me a lot about this approach
is that this labeling is given to companies
coming from very diverse sectors.
From my side, from my point
of view, which gives strength.
In visits that you could have made to
other companies, other sectors, you could have
transformed or converted ideas that were applied, I
don’t know, in the food industry or in
the automotive sector or I see in companies
also labeled “Vitrine Industrie du futur”, the
spectrum is very broad and you
could apply them in your company.
So yes, that’s also the advantage of
this network, since we realize that manufacturers
have basically the same problems.
I visited a company that made mechanical parts
with diameters of 15, then 18, then 25,
then 30 and then realized that it was losing
a lot of time in production because it went
from a diameter of 18 to 30, then back
to a 20 and then to a 24.
And the problem we have in the grouping we
were talking about 5 minutes ago about the type
of paper, the format, well
it’s exactly the same.
We talk about books and we talk about
pieces, but we’re in the same situation.
So yes, that’s the advantage of
this type of network as well.
It’s because we realise that automation, the principles
are the same and I’m going even
further, it’s because certain tools today
for planning, scheduling or monitoring
production in the workshops today are subjects on
which we continue to work a lot and
subjects on which we work a lot for the
production site in Mayenne, the takeover of Jouve
that we did a few months ago.
We are going to use software, graphic ERPs, but
we are going to add to these ERPs software
tools that are used in aeronautics,
in the automobile industry, etc.
Because they have a proven track record
in process automation or production planning.
Thank you very much.
We’ll move on to the next point.
Concerning the strategies of your group, the
Dupli-Print group, how they respond to the
long tail, we’re not going to spend too much
time on this because we’ve talked a lot this
week about this concept, this theory of the
long tail that was introduced by Chris
Anderson explaining that with precisely the
new technologies and especially the appearance
of platforms and the possibility of producing
niche products is much more “feasible”.
That’s why you see one at the centre
of opportunities, especially for a publisher, to be
able to expand its catalogue
in a more relevant way.
And what’s interesting, why we included it in
our in your presentation, we discussed it
with Frédéric, is that we realize that,
precisely with your latest acquisition, it’s good
that the Dupli-Print group finds itself above all
in the long tail, whether it’s for a
strategy of cost domination for large print runs
or printing on demand up to unit printing
and mass personalization.
What I also notice.
This is the first question I will
ask, Frédéric, precisely on these different positions.
For me, and especially when you find yourself on
the tail end of this tail, it is that
this becomes possible thanks to the
platforms you are working on,
the “Sosimply” platform segment and then
with Jouve-Print, your partnership with
the “Lulu.com” platform.
Frédéric, can you tell us about
your vision of the different industrial
strategies that you propose
to your various clients?
So, in fact, one thing that hasn’t changed
since 1993, the year Dupli-print was created,
is that we’re still customer-oriented
and that’s not fair.
They’re not just words.
We’re customer-oriented.
It means that we try to understand what the customer
wants and how we can help him to be
more efficient, either more efficient because he
will have a better and more important
return on investment thanks to the document that gave
them to his customer, or help him to
optimize his costs and that says optimizing
costs does not necessarily mean lowering his
prices, but it means
optimizing the overall chain.
So we were talking about
it earlier with Hachette.
The cost of a book for Hachette was not
just the cost of printing, but the cost of
storage, but the cost of distribution, etc.
Etc. So now we can see that with
the solution, we have put in place.
We are on a global reflection
and not a production reflection.
So for us, Industry 4.0, we see it that way.
That is to say that today, all the players in
our sector, there is not one who can say
that we are not in
a market that is price-driven.
And whatever you do at the end, the price will
be important, so it will be more or less
important in the market
segments where you are.
It will be more or less important in
relation to the intelligence in quotation marks that
you put in front of it
and the service you provide.
But anyway, it will be driven by costs.
So today, we are in a
very difficult, very complicated sector.
So I think there are a lot of areas that
are difficult, at least this one I know well.
It’s not simple at all.
And our biggest competitor isn’t all the
actors I see on the slides here.
Our biggest competitor
is digitalization, digitalization.
Because nowadays, print, apart
from maybe the packaging.
But all the markets, the different segments
of this market are in decline.
Therefore, if we want to give paper a chance,
it is imperative that paper fights with the
same forces and arguments
as the electronic media.
And today, when you want to
trigger an email, it’s pretty simple.
You have plenty of tools on the market.
You make three clicks and you have an
email that goes out to 500 people.
Imagine that you want to do the same thing
with paper, but it’s already a little more
complicated because you need someone to create
the document, because you have quality
constraints. Then, in the back.
Then you have to call a printer.
Then you have to call a router.
And it’s all complicated.
And so we, Industry 4.0, we see it that way.
It is seen as a facilitator to
trigger the paper document for the client.
I bring value to the client because I make
their life easier and allow them to do things
they couldn’t do.
If I resume sending documents to customers, imagine
a car dealer who, every week, wants to
send his few customers who are
eligible for a technical inspection.
It might be a dozen customers every week.
Imagine that he has to call a
printer, then a router, and so on.
For ten copies.
He’ll do it one week two
weeks, the third week he won’t.
But if we put a system in place that allows
him to automate all that, to go and get the
information from this information system, to
automate production here at Dupli-Print.
Well, we are making paper as simple as
electronics, but with a performance that paper has
in addition to electronics.
It is that today, if you have a personalized
paper, the studies show, and it is not a
mental picture, but it really shows that the
return on investment is more important with
the paper than electronics.
So for us, Industry 4.0, is at
the service of our development strategy.
We have identified sectors in which we are
the book, marketing, it can also be management
documents and we are trying to put in place
tools that will allow us 1/ to simplify the
life of the customer in his order taking and
2/ us, to simplify our life internally with
less administrative costs,
less repetitive tasks.
And it’s Industry 4.0 that
allows us to do that.
It’s very good because it will allow us to
move very quickly, so here on this slide, it
was more about technology, which can be
put forward in the different strategies.
And we can see that, in any case, for
the most part, these technologies can be found
within your group.
But I’ll go straight to that because you
touched very quickly on the case of the
Dupli-Print group’s business model 4.0.
So, precisely, I proposed to Frédéric, to try
not to lose a crumb of the Dupli-Print
approach, we will rely on the strategic
canvas proposed by Osterwalder and Yves
Pigneur, the idea is with this canvas to clarify
a business model, that is to say, to
create and capture value for the client.
These two authors Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
propose to break down a business model into
9 blocks as you can see.
And that we’re going to talk to Frederic.
So, Frédéric, you answered our first slide and
I find it very interesting that before
talking about 4.0, it’s important to have a
very clear vision of what your customers
expect. The value proposition, as you just said,
is based on the market segments you are
targeting. to be able to respond in the most
relevant way to a value proposition that is
in line with what your customers,
customer segments or clients expect.
This is the publishing and
marketing and marketing sector, Frédéric?
So, yes, we have different
lines of business: publishing, mobility, pharmaceutical
laboratories, banking, finance, and products that are
books in the broad sense of the
term. The book for publishers, but also when I
do a technical doc, well it’s no more and
no less than a book since I have
a cover, an inside and it’s glued.
I have a whole activity, in fact,
around direct marketing, personalization, leaflets, and
then there is a more “print,
standard, basic” activity for franchise networks.
Where there, I’ll print flyers,
brochures, posters and so on.
And that’s something I want to emphasize
because Industry 4.0 is not necessarily digital
printing technology.
It is true that today the market is moving
more and more towards digital for reasons of
personalization. But you still have quite a
lot of needs in print, on traditional
technologies. And we can do print on demand
in offset on a 70×100 or 52×74.
Because I’ve got a 100,000-page pamphlet printed, I
don’t know that I’m going to have to
print it at 12:10.
But on the other hand, at one o’clock, I receive
the order and tomorrow, it has to be gone
and I’m able to do print on demand in offset,
so Industry 4.0 is really not a question of
old generations of machines or
old technologies, new technologies.
It’s a mix of all this with
a goal you can’t afford to lose.
We must keep in mind, it’s the satisfaction and
the response to the needs of the customer
and it’s true that today, with the purchase of
Jouve and all the development that we have
been able to do within the Dupli-print group
in offset, digital, large format, we cover
the whole value chain of our customers and this
is one of our arguments, in effect, to
accompany our customers in their development
and in their communication needs,
In and in the services.
When I look at the Dupli-Print Group from
the outside, it’s a beautiful combination of
products and services, that’s what interests me
the most, the products you mentioned.
The services offered to your clients?
You can say a few words about that, Frederic.
Yes, so today, I would say that our
main source of income is still printing.
So when I say printing, I mean printing
and related services, finishing, routing, and so
on. It’s still production, it’s
our main source of income.
For more than ten years now, we have
been accompanying our clients, especially in the
marketing and communication part, in the
deployment of operational marketing operations.
And there, for about 2 or 3 years now,
we’ve had a non-negligible part of our revenues
which is ensured by the support of our clients,
therefore the sale of man-days to help our
clients to animate a network to
help our clients to deploy campaigns.
We have project managers who accompany our
clients and these revenues are increasingly
important. And then finally, we have another type
of income which is, well, two other
types of income.
The third, which is actually all the web
solutions we develop and sell to customers.
Because, once again, the Web solutions we sell
are not just there to please the customer
or to make it easier for
them to place their orders.
It brings him real value.
These are solutions that are sold, with
setup costs and subscription costs, so at
Salesforce you pay a monthly subscription fee
to use solutions in the cloud.
And then, finally, we have one last type of
income that has nothing to do with print,
which is digital.
So we sell electronic signature, we sell data
hosting, we sell emailing, we sell SMS, etc.
Now, if I had to divide up between these
4 groups, we still have roughly 90% of our
revenues on the print side
and 10% on the rest.
So, we still have a long way to go
if we’re going to balance it all out.
But for us, the strategy is really
to develop these tools in parallel.
Because today, as I told you some
time ago, the biggest competitor is digitalization.
So, we are inevitably obliged to accompany our
clients in the digital world and this is
what we do every day with clients
in the publishing, banking, insurance or automotive
sectors.
If I may say, Frédéric, very interesting,
so segmentation, both in services and products
for the customer, which you obviously
put at the centre of everything.
Is that in this strategy, you also have,
I would say, the feeding, therefore, of
the Prod part by in fact
the solutions that you bring upstream.
I would say at the digital level
that actually creates campaigns and so on.
Which are then developed or even produced
by your departments which also feed your
production.
Yes, yes.
Then I guess I didn’t make myself clear.
In fact, we are really a printing industry,
which I consider and our group’s strategy is
to say that tomorrow, printing will continue.
So what we’re trying to do today is
to develop solutions upstream, which will feed our
production sites and therefore capture printing
in a slightly more intelligent way.
I don’t really like this word, but in any
case with solutions that will allow us to feed
our production sites, as well as solutions as
I described them to you on the Web.
But it can also be automatic flow to
simplify a customer’s order rather than the customer
placing an email, etc..
Let’s put a workflow at his place.
It will be easier to work with Dupli-Print
because there is an automated workflow rather
than working with a regular printer because he
has to place his orders by email.
So yes, indeed, everything we develop is there to
feed our site, but not only because we
also have solutions that we develop, where
we pretend to manage the global communication
of our customers, namely print, but also
email, but also large format, etc..
And we’re, we’re not necessarily
well-positioned in and on all markets.
And then, in addition, there are some customers, and
we have a few, who have bought from
us only the web platform part to manage
their communication tool, but who wish to keep
other printers.
And in this case, we certainly don’t refuse to
do that because, as I said two minutes ago,
we’re selling that part.
So, of course, everything we develop is there
to feed our production tools, and we have
organized our production tools in relation
to what we develop upstream.
So, for the customer, it’s
easier to print at home.
And if a customer wants to print
somewhere else, he can do so.
And then, if we go with a client, I
think of a pharmaceutical company we’ve been working
with for years, with whom we
had to do 6, 700,000 prints.
We accompanied him in the digitalization of his
contracts and today we are in the
electronic signature and we have to
print 10.000 euros per year.
So there, the solution was a quick fix.
It’s either I accompany the client because we
have the skills, because we’ve already done
it for others towards digitalization, or I hold
on to my print until the last moment.
And then, at some point,
I run out of customers.
So it’s a mix of these
different solutions with an important element.
We are a printing industry, we want to remain so,
but we know that in the long run, and
when I say in the long run, that is
three, five years, print will certainly only represent
60 to 70% of our activity and 30 to
40% will be opened up by other services.
Some I know today and others I don’t, because
we are in the same logic of accompanying the
client and therefore constantly questioning our
way of understanding the market.
I had the pleasure of attending one
of your presentations with this very pharmaceutical
laboratory where you presented yourself
as a solution provider.
And that’s what I like about it.
This value proposition of solving your customers’
problems is one of the incredible
strengths that is put
forward within your group…
So not only smart
printer, but also omnicanal.
Yes, absolutely.
It’s true that it’s always been in our DNA to
want to come up with a new solution, and
it’s been that way for 27 years.
Except it was a choice.
A few years ago.
Today, we’re still having fun in quotes,
just as much fun as ever.
But it’s no longer a choice.
It’s an obligation.
Because if we don’t do
this today, we’re dead.
We are obliged to accompany the client, to
think about his needs and sometimes the client
doesn’t even know what his needs are.
Because you have an interlocutor in front
of you, who has a price problem.
It doesn’t have to go elsewhere, but it’s our
role and our knowledge of price, plus other
technologies. Or there, we can really help the client
tell him OK, we can help you with
the price.
But maybe also in the way you will order the
print, in the way you will consume the print.
And that’s really the objective we
have today with the Dupli-Print group.
Very good, very good, thank you anyway.
I, personally, thank you already because I
have to prepare for the next session.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
I’ll leave you in Yves’ right hands,
And thank you.
See you soon.
Thank you.
See you soon.
Well, let’s go on and this slide
shows the different channels to “How does
Dupli-Print-Jouve-Print communicate with
its customers”.
You’ve talked a lot about it, especially with
these platforms that you’re putting in place
for your clients.
There, I retained on your SOFIVE site and
we discussed a little earlier about your
platform set up with Hachette.
A few words, precisely, on this
type of platform channel, Frédéric.
In fact, today, if we take each of us,
the way we consume is completely different today
than it was ten years ago, when
we see the development of online shopping.
Today we’re going to buy a train ticket.
You no longer call 36 je ne sais quoi, you
go on the Internet, you buy your train ticket,
you want to book a hotel
room, you go on the Internet.
So it’s a movement
that’s there, that’s present.
And the habits that we have as individuals,
we are also professionals and in our
activities, we wish to have the same thing.
So we started from this observation by
saying, personally, I consume through web
platforms, etc.
How could I help
my professional clients, i.e.
marketers, manufacturers, communication
people, etc.
to help them place their orders?
And so, today, the Web is unavoidable.
So, we have platforms that allow us
to store templates, to customize templates, we
recently launched a platform
to manage events.
So I send an invitation by email.
I registering online.
The communication manager can see who is
coming, who is not coming, etc.
at any time.
Now, what am I selling?
Of course, there may be things
to print behind it, etc.
But what I sell to customers
isn’t the impression, it’s the.
I’m a facilitator for the organization of his
event, so we’re always thinking like this
and thinking, what can I do for
my client to make his life easier?
And so, the Web Channel is one of them.
EDI with automatic file transmissions
is one of them.
And so, we are today very much on
Web technology with development that is done in-house,
with some software
companies as well sometimes.
But we’re really in this logic of how I
can simplify the customer’s life before and after.
How, at Dupli-Print, we simplify life.
Because if you simplify the customer’s life and he
places orders 2, 3, 4, 5 copies behind.
If I have to spend half an hour
making a manufacturing file, processing my order, it’s
impossible. I’m not profitable too and I’m back
to Industry 4.0, automation, I have to
too. …
I also simplify my life on our production site
and our dream in inverted commas is to have
only customers with whom we will have automated
processes and no more orders by email or
phone, or this or that.
But I don’t want it to be a
constraint on the customer either.
So if it’s more difficult to place an
order automatically than to send an email, it’s
because we haven’t responded
to the customer’s problem.
Today, of course, we still have
customers who send email orders, etc.
But the objective is to
transform them all towards automation,
Thank you very much, Frederic, and we’ll
come to the value proposition, the different
channels. Well, how do you align your activity
with these strategies, what are the key
activities within the
Dupli-print group today?
So, as I was saying earlier,
we cover the entire value chain.
So we have computer scientists, developers today
who are capable of developing solutions.
And the SOFIVE solution is developed in-house, but
we can also develop bits of solutions
for customers at certain times.
So basically, we’re able to process computer
data and put it in the mail.
So, in between, you have developers, you
have project managers, you have graphic
designers, you have printers, you have
staplers, you have filmmakers, you have
logisticians. So it covers the entire value
chain and different printing technologies, it
covers traditional offset technologies large format,
small format, web offset, inkjet,
sheetfed, web, laser, inkjet, large format.
So today, we really cover the entire value
chain to meet all of our customers’ needs.
Once we’ve said that, we need to link all
that with automata, well organized ERPs, so that
we don’t waste too much time knowing that the
document has gone from department 1 to 2,
then 3 then 4 and so on.
So, we need to follow and order,
schedule, schedule, pardon, all these steps correctly.
So these are things we’re still working on.
Because Industry 4.0 is like a ball of wool.
The more you pull on it, the more it
comes and the more things you have to do.
We really don’t pretend to have
made it to the end.
We’ve already automated a lot, but we still
have a lot of work to do internally,
especially on ERPs, scheduling software
and workshop data entry, etc.
We’ve already automated a lot, but we still
have a lot of work to do internally.
Etc. So, we have all these services that we
make available to the client with always one
goal, which is “I need to make
my client’s life easier and more valuable.”
So the interconnectivity of all your systems.
This is the major impact
of 4.0 on your business.
Then yes, clearly.
And now it’s the same in our jobs.
There are languages called JDF etc.
where everything globally is interconnected, but when
you start to get into it, you
realize there’s not much interconnected and
that’s also an issue for tomorrow.
Because, as we were saying earlier, we are
dealing with an industry that is driven by
price and cost control, and
that is even more important.
It’s paramount.
And today, of course, we know our overall cost
price, but we need to be even more precise
on this machine, this techno, etc..
And so Industry also 4.0 and the recovery
of machine data, the number of clicks, the
number of revolutions, the number of sheets printed,
will allow us to be even more precise
on the profitability or not of a job and
on the markets we need to rely on.
And this can be, where we have to get out.
Data really becomes one of the raw materials with
ink and paper, but one of the important
raw materials for printers 4.0.
More than the data, Yves, it’s the possibility
and the simplicity with which we’re going
to retrieve the data and
be able to analyze it.
Yes, that’s right.
So, once the key
activities have been identified?
Which technologies, or at least the
emerging technologies and skills use Dupli-print
-Jouve-Print in order to be able
to answer for its activities?
What technologies at the development
level, at the …?
Tell us what you think, at least from a 4.0
point of view, what are the ones that are
being honored or what are you worried about?
…or that you’re focused on
right now, for example.
There are, we have different things, I’m going
to get to the printing technology, I’ve
talked about it, I’ve talked about
it, but at the level…
well, there is one element that is
very important today for the interconnection of
information systems, and that is that all systems
must be open and must be able to
communicate with each other.
So, we’re on SQL databases.
We’re on dotnet development techno, so
there you go, classic technologies.
But what is important is that these
systems can communicate with each other.
After that, if I address the subject more at
the level of new technologies that we will be
able to use to offer news, new services
to our clients, we are working on artificial
intelligence to do predictive marketing.
So, there’s all these subjects.
They are around the
customer’s document or communication.
This is important to us because today, you
just have to look at our mailboxes.
We receive more and more personalized documents
and what will make the difference tomorrow
between different companies is which one will
be the most relevant in the personalization
or at least in the
communication with its customer.
So the data is super important.
Data mining, data storage and especially with
GDPR now, data analysis, these will be
increasingly important.
So we’re looking at these issues of
artificial intelligence, data segmentation and so on.
These are really the topics of the moment, because
it seems to us that these will be
topics that will be increasingly
important for our clients.
To communicate properly with theirs.
To address the question, now that we have
the skills and profiles to be able
to respond to all these developments
or new technologies, how does
Dupli-Print find or work with its
teams to update or support your
personnel?
In fact, there are two
broad categories of human resources.
There are skills that we didn’t have at
all and we have to go outside.
I’m thinking developers.
Even if someone can train, it can be done.
But generally speaking, these skills are more
likely to be sought outside and developers
recruited. And then there’s a little bit
of mixed competence that you have inside.
You can also go outside, but if you
accompany your employees properly, they can improve
their skills.
I’m thinking of project manager positions.
I’m thinking of the sales department too.
Or when you’re a sales person and you’re going
to sell a platform like SOFIVE, you don’t
go to the customer and say Hello Mr.
Customer, how many prints do
you make per year?
Ah 150.000, OK, that’s such a
weight paper, I’ll give you a prize.
You will see the customer by understanding
how he distributes documents to his network.
What time he can lose with his network because
there are a lot of exchanges, good to get
from this that for …
the brand.
And then you sell him a platform that will allow
him to simplify all that, so the deed of
sale is not at all the same.
We’re not selling a finished product.
We’re selling a solution that’s going
to simplify our customers’ lives.
And then, behind this solution, there is the
consumable that is print, email, SMS, etc..
So that, in relation to the sales department,
you have to accompany the sales people from
a sale of products to a sale of services.
And so that’s some sales people who will
succeed, others who will never succeed because
they are in a product model.
Besides, no one model is
better than the other.
Except that today, the product model is no longer
adapted to our sector, so we need a
service model.
You still have business sectors where
the product model is perfectly adapted.
And then there are all the classic skills that
we have in the company, which are printing
and finishing.
The job remains the same in terms of production,
but the skills, or at least the approach
to the job that our operators must
have, are no longer exactly the same.
That is to say that there are certain tasks
that will be automated and control tasks that
will have to be developed.
The job doesn’t change at all.
But the business is evolving and the operations
and daily tasks of the various employees
may need to change.
So you have to go with them too.
There are really three types : skills that I
go and look for externally, skills that I can
look for externally, but by accompanying employees
internally, we can also develop them
and help people to develop their skills, and skills
that remain the same in the core of
the job, but on slightly different tasks, because
we are more in control than in
execution, because there are more and more
production support tools in our jobs.
Thank you very much, Frederic.
Let’s move on to a subject that interests
me particularly in the case of 4.0.
In one of my last articles,
I wrote that isolated printing companies
will have more difficulty positioning
themselves in the future, and
it is more thanks to strategic
alliances that printing companies will
be able to respond to
customers in a relevant way.
You, Frédéric Fabi the Dupli-Print group, you can
tell us a little bit about your approach
to the strategic partners you need
to build your business model 4.0.
Again, I think there are
different types of partners.
We have technology partners,
so printing, finishing, etc.
So that’s the big, big,
big players in the market.
In print, …
You expect a lot.
Are you expecting a lot
from these printing partners?
Did they sell machines yesterday, and will they
be expected to do more tomorrow, even in
more demanding service?
Yes, we expect a lot because the model I
described to you at the beginning of the
interview to make the book
in a completely automated way.
If I don’t have the network to
do it, I can’t do the service.
So we expect a lot from manufacturers in the
sense that we expect them to produce machines
that go well with the right technology, the right
speed and the right quality, and so on.
Afterwards, I don’t expect these actors to give
me a lot of information on the strategy
I’m going to pursue because
that’s our business, it’s ours.
Then afterwards, we can exchange because if
we think about several, it’s always smarter.
But I don’t expect that
from this type of actor.
I’m waiting for them to have the right techno
with us too, to think along with us because
a machine can evolve.
We can make them give them ideas too.
And the fact that there’s a slightly clever actor
who’s going to change a few things on
his machine.
I was seeing, for example, more and more
services, we are seeing more and more services,
especially from offset but not only
digital manufacturers who manage maintenance
themselves. Whether maintenance is also increasingly
being analysed, we were at a
preventive maintenance, we talk
about predictive maintenance.
And can these manufacturers provide much
more relevant support to make your
machines more efficient?
Actually, on that part
of it, yes, definitely.
But there’s a big difference between
traditional offset-type machines, which are still
super reliable and very rarely break down.
Maintenance, and we don’t need
the same kind of maintenance.
What about digital machines, where there
are much more frequent interventions?
And the Libra 800-type finishing modules we
have, we still need more regular
maintenance. So, in the case of the offset
part, I would say the maintenance is working
pretty well.
We also keep ourselves in house.
And then the manufacturers react.
In the case of maintenance on digital
presses and slightly more complex finishing modules
where there is a lot of electronics.
And one of two things: the line is
super productive, super reliable and requires little
intervention, but there is still a need today
for an intervention within a short period of
time, because generally speaking, we
cannot multiply the investments either.
When you have a channel like that, you can’t
have another one to make a backup, so, and
since we dedicate these channels to particular models,
you can see how embarrassing it can
be if the channel breaks down.
So indeed, we expect these actors
to provide a flawless service.
And nowadays, when you buy a press, at least
we always think that way in digital press
buying, what is important is of
course the press, the press, etc.
but the after-sales service
is almost as important.
Yes, we have these actors, these first
types of partners who are technical partners.
Then there’s a second type of partner
that I would call business partners.
Today, you can see that in everything we’ve
been talking about for the last while, we’re
not the only actors.
That is to say, thirty years ago, you had the
printer in one corner, the com agency in the
other. And then, basically, that was it,
the creator and then the printer.
Nowadays, all the trades we tackle.
See, if I take marketing and communications.
I’ll be in contact with
technology partners, CRM tools, etc.
so we have business partners or specifiers and
we can work with each other to ultimately
provide a more relevant
solution for the customer.
We have partnerships that we are developing
with various publishers from various agencies,
but not necessarily communication agencies, plus agencies
that will help clients to deploy
solutions, so more consulting, etc.
We have a lot of partnerships that we
are developing with various publishers from various
agencies, but not necessarily communication agencies,
plus agencies that will help clients
to deploy solutions, so more consulting, etc.
So that’s a second type of partner.
And then we also have partners, I would
say in production because today, investments are
expensive and sometimes it is better to use
partners who have good equipment, instead of
wanting to do everything ourselves.
So we do not do it very much,
because our strategy is complete integration in certain
sectors of activity.
On the other hand, it happens to us when we
have things that are a little bit outside the
spectrum of having printing partners,
logisticians, routers and so on.
And that’s important to have, I would say,
a set of partners you can count on.
Some people rely on us at certain times,
in full transparency, being clear with the client
and without any misunderstandings or under-understandings
with partners who have done
this. And we have about ten partners in France
with whom we work, people we appreciate and
with whom we have a little bit the same,
the same values and with whom we work.
It’s a bit like the
three types of partnership.
And then, there is the partnership that I
haven’t touched on, which is the techno
partnership as well, that is to
say, I’m talking about artificial intelligence.
Today, I don’t have the
skills to do artificial intelligence.
So I’m going to rely
on artificial intelligence specialists.
So here, it’s more punctual, it’s more
prospective, but they can become regular partners.
If we succeed in developing solutions for
our customers in this or that area.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
I’m hurrying, because I see that time
is running out on the last one.
You talked about revenue flows during
the first slides, about your different
revenue flows.
Cost structure we share, we point
out that 4.0 allows, would allow
manufacturers to reduce their logistics
and production costs, etc..
It’s also true that
4.0 technologies are expensive.
Frédéric, can you tell us a
few words about this cost…
Indeed, the objective of 4.0 is to increase
its revenues by seeking out businesses that
would not be possible without 4.0.
and it is also, in
effect, to optimize its costs.
So for me, it’s too
early to draw any conclusions.
But in any case, what I can say is that on
the projects 4.0 that we’ve put in, it’s clear
that we have much lower costs for order
processing, order tracking, etc., and that’s why
we’ve been able to reduce our costs.
That is obvious.
On the other hand, I’ve had a lot
of investment to put this 4.0 in place.
So today, in the current state of things, if
I really want to be very transparent, we
haven’t developed enough projects 4.0 with our
customers and that’s really the objective
in the months, weeks and months that have just
gone by, to systematize this in order to
eventually have a real economy.
Today, we have investments
that are important.
For me, they are indispensable if we want
to continue to exist in this industry.
Savings are clearly measured on all
tasks that have been automated.
Now, the return on investment, we have to wait
a little longer because we’re in the middle
of it and we need more projects, so
we work on it on a daily basis.
Frederic, I’m going to have
to close our interview.
We could discuss for hours together as these
subjects are so exciting and your approach is
fascinating. I have put on the last slide the
link on your site where we discover, a lot
of, information and I inform all the audience and
all those who will be interested in this
session that it will also be replayed
with subtitles in different languages and broadcast
on the platform INKISH.TV.
Frédéric Fabi, again a very big
THANK YOU for this gift.
This sharing of experience which is extremely
important, we really need locomotives like
you as well as your group, to concretize, we
talk a lot about 4.0 which remains very
conceptual and thanks to entrepreneurs like you,
we see realizations on the ground.
A very big THANK YOU.
Thank you, Yves.
Besides, I was delighted
to share this experience.
And then I thank you.
I would also like to take this opportunity to
thank all the customers with whom we are
moving forward.
It is also because our clients are open and
accept exchange and sharing that we can offer
them new things.
And that’s how we’ll manage to move forward
and continue in this beautiful profession of
print, which is in decline, but
which has good arguments to make.
And we have a client in the market sector
who told us recently that the return rates on
these paper mailings were over 10%.
So I challenge many, many customers to show us
that the return rate on sending an email is
over 10%.
So there you have it, I’m
glad to have exchanged with you.
And also…
And then, let us continue to try to develop
this great industry, even if this is not the
easiest time we have ever had.
Yes, and we’ll be following you, and I’d be
delighted to talk to you again, to follow all
these exciting projects you’re
putting in place.
Thank you very much, Frederic.
See you soon.
Thanks, see you soon.