The Transformed Graphics Supply Chain

T HE T R A N S F O R ME D G R A P HI C S S U P P L Y C HA I N J U NE 2 0 0 9 WHE R E NE X T F O R I NDI A NP R E -P R E S S ?

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dj@intermediaglobal.com

MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

DHANANJAY BALODI

June 2009

(Rev/ July 2011)

MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

The TransformedGraphics Supply Chain

Where Next ForIndian Pre-press?

Copyrights Intermedia Global, 2009

IntermediaGlobal

T H E T R A N S F O R M E D G R A P H I C S S U P P L Y C H A I N J U N E 2 0 0 9 W H E R E N E X T F O R I N D I A N P R E - P R E S S ?

dj@intermediaglobal.com

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MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

The Graphics Supply Chain includes all businesses involved in the creation, production and implementationof visual graphic communications in the print and electronic media as well as all ‘enabling’ businesses suchas technology, consulting and logistics that help in the automation of processes and exchange of data acrossthe supply chain.

“The Transformed Graphics Supply Chain”

series of though leadership articles aim to capture thesweeping changes across the media and communications industry. Further, they seek to analyze theviability of traditional business models in this changing industry landscape and propose new thinking.While these articles look at the Indian context, most trends and insights closely shadow what is happeningin the global industry.

“Where Next for Indian Pre-press”

analyses one such traditional business in the supply chain - thepre-press tradeshop and seeks answers to questions like why the tradeshop is threatened with extinction.What strategies are Indian tradeshops applying to re-invent and survive? And do they stand a chance?Your opinions are welcome.

DHANANJAY BALODIdj@intermediaglobal.comT: +91 (0) 98923 23661www.intermediaglobal.com

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY:

Dhananjay Balodi

(DJ) is a Mumbai, India based consultant and entrepreneurwith over a decade of experience in the media, publishing and graphic artsmarket. Over a 19 year career, DJ has successfully built two start-up BPObusinesses in the graphic arts space, launched and edited a popular Germanmagazine title in the Indian market, designed and launched b2be-Commerce services at

Satyam Webexchange

(part of a Top 4 IT servicesmajor) and has led the design and development of a collaborative publishing

worklow system.DJ is Founder at Intermedia Global – a marketing and premedia KPO consulting irm and an

Esko Artwork

consulting partner. He is currently involved in the development & rollout of a newglobal media services strategy for

Eastman Kodak Co.

DJ has also been consulting for severalpremedia & marketing services businesses from the UK, Europe, Australia and North Americainterested in the India opportunity.Earlier, DJ was

Managing Partner

in a joint venture with India’s largest prepress company

where he led the business’ eorts at transitioning into a

premedia KPO

supplier for the globalpackaging, marcoms and magazine publishing markets. In October 2008, DJ was invited to bepanelist at the

US FTAA’s

(Flexographic Technical Trade Association) annual conference to speak on

“Premedia Offshoring”

for the packaging graphics market.DJ can be reached on email (dj@intermediaglobal.com) or on cell phone at +91 98923 23661.

Cover photo sourced from photolibrary.com

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dj@intermediaglobal.com

MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

argantuan changes are sweeping the media and communicationsindustry landscape. At a fundamental level, this change is in the form

of what constitutes the deinition of

‘media’

. Print which had until

the early 1990s stood its ground as media’s de-facto deinition, gave

way to television (electronic media) as the emerging medium formass communications. The re-emergence of radio a little later, furtheraltered the landscape shrinking print’s share of the communicationspie. While Indian newspaper advertising continues to grow at ahealthy 17% YoY since 2005 and still is the number one media of choice for advertisers, TV (16.75%) and Radio (39%) combined haveemerged as a close second **.

To add to print’s woes, the post dot com era of the mid 2000s has rapidly drivennew wedges into the print-centric advertising pie garnering a growing foothold for

‘electronic/new media’

in the communications budgets of mass advertisers. This‘new media’ emergence is both swift and telling. Swift because of the sheer natureof technology’s rapidly growing sophistication and telling because it is challengingpopular notions of marketing, communications and brand building. More

signiicantly, ‘new media’ is already questioning the traditional agency’s capabilities,thinking and inluence over the marketer’s communications budgets.

Graphic Arts: An Industry in Transition

While the changing media landscape – print to electronic - is obvious because we

see and experience it as consumers, there are other signiicant changes brewing in

the background that have engineered far-reaching impacts to the graphics art andcommunications services supply chain.New media and the impact of I.T have challenged the relevance and value of traditional print-centric service providers. Certain skills and industry constituentssuch as print pre-press –

long held as a super specialization

- have been ruthlessly

marginalized and driven to irrelevance. PDF, Photoshop, CTP, digital prooing andthe Internet along with a host of smart new applications for worklow and data

management – digital asset management (DAM), marketing operations management (MOM) and rules-based artwork production - have put the power of producing

‘media-ready’

output directly into the hands of the designer, rendering downstream

‘pre-press processing’

stages needless in most cases.Some of the capabilities that were central to pre-press processing such as color

retouching and ile integrity checks have become non-dependent on specialist

equipment or software due to the evolution of Adobe’s Photoshop and Acrobat

platforms. Prooing which once needed high-end capital equipment and manual

expertise

(recall wet prooing?)

is now almost a desktop capability (if not already,

will very soon be). To top it all, the demise of the scanner and the ilm some years

back with the advent of digital photography and CTP almost fore wrote