When most of your competition is still living in a digital toner-based world, what can you do to stand out? For Carmel, Indiana-based Bacompt — a provider of data processing, printing, and mailing for high-security documentation — the solution was production inkjet. High-security documents necessitate fast turnarounds, a low cost per piece (due to the sheer volume of jobs), and data-intensive printing and processing. So when Bacompt needed to update its capabilities, a VarioPrint i300 color sheetfed inkjet press fit the bill.

And even though a former Xerox executive founded the company, the last six presses Bacompt installed have been  presses.

 

“We have all Canon [Solutions America] equipment in our 50,000-square-foot on-demand printing facility, so I like to say it’s a matched set,” Bauer says. “The Canon [Solutions America] team can service everything and we have consistency across the board.”

 

The new VarioPrint i300 inkjet press, installed in October of 2017, was also a high-end production press that Bacompt management believed would engage employees at a high level. Yet it was not just the allure of a new digital output device and a series of great experiences with Canon Solutions America equipment that lead Bacompt down the path to install the VarioPrint i300 inkjet press; it was the press’ speed and quality attributes that clinched the deal.

 

“The fact that the VarioPrint i300 is an inkjet production press, combined with [its] ColorGrip technology and its great output quality, has allowed us to improve everything on the transactional side,” adds Dwayne Hurt, Bacompt’s chief operating officer. “Low cost, high quality, and the right time. Before, it was always a trade-off: if you wanted inkjet’s low cost of operation, you had to give up some of the quality work. We don’t have to do that anymore.”

 

Bacompt already had decades of experience with customized jobs, so with some brief training from the Canon Solutions America technology group, there was not much of a learning curve. Hurt says that the VarioPrint i300 inkjet press’ ColorGrip technology has also allowed Bacompt to continue to use its tried-and-true substrates because it eliminates the need for treated stocks. That also helped to streamline the installation process.

 

The addition of the VarioPrint i300 inkjet press has also enabled Bacompt to venture into marketing-oriented print jobs. Lisa Thomas, marketing director of Bacompt, explains that the VarioPrint i300 inkjet press opened up new branding capabilities that the company could not offer in-house before. “Anything that our clients send out, including monthly statements, can now be branded with their corporate colors, logos, and typefaces,” she says.

 

Bacompt has also started to venture into transpromotional printing using the VarioPrint i300 inkjet press, especially for credit unions, which Bauer says can benefit from improved branding. “There will always be some clients who say ‘Why should I care about digital inkjet printing?’” he says. “So we try to stress to them that this is a game-changing technology; it establishes a whole new price point and brings capabilities that they were never able to achieve before.”

 

Hurt adds that 70 of Bacompt’s clients are credit unions and, prior to the installation of the VarioPrint i300 inkjet press, most of their company’s print jobs were produced on preprinted forms with monochrome overprinting to add the variable data.

And with the 98 percent to 99 percent operating uptime that Bacompt has experienced, Hurt says that the VarioPrint i300 inkjet press has proven to be reliable and efficient. “It’s a great piece of equipment,” he concludes. “It’s made to run.”

“One of our initiatives was to migrate that work over to the VarioPrint i300 because of its low operating costs. Now we can provide them with a color-branded statement, digitally printed, with their logos and watermarks,” he says. “It’s been a big success. And we’ve picked up a lot of extra work because we have been able to upgrade them to color without many extra costs.”

 

Although there were a multitude of reasons for bringing the technology onboard, Bauer points to one particular customer project that proved to be the catalyst: “The real impetus to install the VarioPrint i300 was the data portion of a large state contract. [This new contract] required very high volumes. We were looking at buying multiple toner-based digital presses versus the VarioPrint i300,” he says. “We were able to get this great new technology, which was a lot more affordable and gave us more open capacity to run other jobs, while taking on that large contract.”

 

As for long-term goals for its new inkjet capabilities, Bacompt intends to expand its marketing material production and delve further into commercial printing products with a data component. Hurt knows there is potential for these goals because he saw the new inline booklet making, stitching, and perfing finishing equipment available for the VarioPrint i300 inkjet press while he attended drupa 2016.

 

And with the 98 percent to 99 percent operating uptime that Bacompt has experienced, Hurt says that the VarioPrint i300 inkjet press has proven to be reliable and efficient. “It’s a great piece of equipment,” he concludes. “It’s made to run.”