COVID-19 Presses Transformation of Hard Copy Industry, How is Our Journey to the Digital Transformation?

Abstract

As is well known to ISJ-members, the demand for paper prints has been declining due to the digitization of various business processes in recent years, and seems to be accelerating due to the pandemic of COVID-19.

FPDs (flat panel displays) used in advanced mobile devices have sufficient color gamut and resolution comparable to paper prints. If we limit the relationship between screen size and mass to some extent, in combination with the processing speed of the CPU (central processing unit) and GPU (graphics processing unit), it is sufficient as a substitute for paper, and it became a useful attractive edge device.

With hard-copy demand declining, what kind of basic stance should the copier/printer industry take to work on DX (digital transformation) to achieve good results? It is necessary to properly evaluate the huge digital platformers who are totalitarian and swallow everything, and we should consider them as a group of strategic threats.

It is important to create new business models together with customers who have built good relationships over the years, and to deepen relationships as partners.

For that purpose, the roles of human resources who have conceptual power, draw a clear vision and lead the organization by themselves, and engineers who put business value into the actual ICT (information and communication technology) systems will be extremely important.