As a consumer you might not have heard of the OKI brand, as they operate in the business arena at all levels, where the demands of a printer are many and can be quite complex. The small home office has a different set of needs from the large retailer or bank with hundreds of outlets, or even a country's National Health Service and OKI has designed a suite of products for these various sectors.

Terry Kawashima, Managing Director of OKI Europe opened the event, a senior OKI Executive and board member of OKI Data Corporation, highly experienced, with 30 years in the company and a large amount of those spent managing in Europe, not from afar. He stressed the level of research and understanding of their clients that OKI carries out, that reflects in the products launched in Milan and the manner in which OKI have made available to the small business, functionality levels previously only available to larger corporates.

The three main aims that OKI build into their kit are very straightforward. They need to be:

Secure - Easy - Smart

Many of the functions that this range of printers perform don't even need a pc involved and these days any weak links found are exploited by hackers, so OKI have ensured that the data entrusted to their machines is absolutely secure. This also gives you the ability to allocate certain permissions to staff members, so confidential information is kept that way, or store complete documents on the printer to be accessed only by those that have the required authority.

Set up is designed to be very straightforward with all operating information accessible through the 7 inch colour touchscreen that controls all print jobs and can call up videos of various functions if need be.

The smartness comes with the use of LED technology that OKI have been using for over 20 years and are very much ahead of the game where LED printers are concerned. The product range has increased level of functionality added across the board. They can produce stunning high quality documents at 1200 DPI, and also have built in document management software that can be accessed on the move through OKI Apps, or the links that OKI have established with the likes of Google Cloud or Apple Air.

Print versus digital.

It was interesting to hear Tetsuya Kuri's presentation, VP of OKI marketing UK, comparing digital and print marketing methods. With an estimated 205 billion emails a day hitting our intrays , the OKI research  shows  printed  documents, flyers, adverts etc. produce better results and have a 48% chance of hitting the right spot, versus 26 % for digital, producing higher conversion rates and higher ROI.

Printing technology.

At New Business, bearing in mind we produce a quarterly magazine that is printed offsite, our office needs are fairly basic. However, we do produce a complete magazine in the office that is printed as a one off during the proofing stage and the quality of the print copies produced by the OKI printer range would be good enough to send out, very impressive. Small local publishers do use OKI machines for this purpose.

This is our world but this is basic stuff, for today's hitec printer. When you wander into the world of retail, the enhanced features really come into their own.  Price labels can be fired down from Head Office to branches. A supermarket chain for example might do this several times daily and this can be organised quickly, without a pc saving time all round.

Some of the range can even print on magnitised paper, that make the job of making up stands for events, or changing prices at car show rooms, the work of a few minutes.

Hospitals and Doctor's surgeries are also catered for through specialised built in document management software, that can cope with the plethora of hand written information about patients in both areas and make it available to all those that need to view it. In the area of education, the machine can also make available just those documents that students need to access and that can be cloud based also.

Some printer manufacturers are "jacks of all trades master of none", selling everything from printers to PCs, laptops and tablets but in the EMEA territory, all OKI research and energies are dedicated to the manufacture of high quality printers that "empower business no matter what size". Lee Webster, General Manager OKI Europe Ltd, said that through this dedication they supply 1 in 4 printers sold in the EMEA area in recent years. They might not target market share as a business aim but have achieved 30 % in A3 printer based managed print solutions.

An impressive and successful launch of a range of equipment that has all business sectors covered and technology used also outside of business, in education and healthcare.

Digital technology is finding its niche in the market but like the tablet didn't' kill the PC or Laptops, it's a tool, no more than that.  Print is not going to disappear, there is nothing "virtual" about it. Vivid colour is very pleasing to the eye and OKI are very much up to the challenge.

Chris Westcott

New Business