“Automation, automation, automation” has become a phrase we always end our conversations with Raymond Duval about. That’s important, but of course, everything he says before is even more important. In this interview we focus on the different processes Ultimate Tech covers – with a focus on BestCut and also the company’s direct mail solutions. Enjoy!
This is Morten from Inkish. I am still here at Printing United, still at the wonderful Ultimate Tech booth and with the wonderful Ultimate Ray. Good to see you Ray.
Ray: Good to see you Ultimate Morten.
Morten: Yeah, you think you owe me but you don’t 😉
Ray, I can’t help thinking because you talk to a lot of people. Customers, media, you also give training to existing customers.. I mean you’ve been with Ultimate for a long time, how easy or difficult is it to always turning your head to a new conversation?
Ray: Every conversation is meaningfull, every conversation is unique and it’s to be in that moment to live that moment to enjoy that moment and to be in that moment, like we are today.
Same thing with customers, same thing with partners.
Morten: The reason why I am asking this is because it was so easy in the ‘old days’ at least from my perspective, because there was a product called Impostrip and your website was Impostrip.com. Today you have multiple solutions that is of course part of the journey that is very much the nature of Ultimate as being the leader in automation, right? But I guess when you look at it is still like the more different talk-tracks you have, the more you have to understand the people that you are talking to but also to understand their needs and what kind of solutions they need.
I was just thinking is that difficult?
Ray: It’s more diversed today than then the company was founded 35 years ago in the sense that we do have more technologies, more products, more software. But at the end of the day, you said the key word, it’s all about AUTOMATION. It’s all about learning what the customers needs, What their environment is like, what their challenges are today and how far they are willing to expand their automation integration. All the tools and technologies we are bringing still today, are directly related to integrating and automating your print operation. We achieve that to listening where the customer or partner is and what they want to achieve and what we can bring them to put them on another level.
Morten: Let me expand a little bit on this. Another reason for asking this is that we’ve been so fortunate to have met quite a few of your customers. Some of them are very very deep into your products and really integrate them on a very amazing level to be honest. Some other customers are just scratching the surface but they still really are happy to be working with Ultimate and the products that you offer. But, when you bring more products to the market, I guess is that it takes a lot more time for you and your partners because I mean most of your sales is probably through dealers and partners, right?
Ray: To some extend, yes. We are fortunate to be able to communicate directly to most of our customers, even when we are working with partners, manufacturing partners and reselling partners. At the end of the day customers that are scratching the surface or are deep into automating their print operation, they can benefit from the diverse portfolio of solutions we have in technology. So, we can adapt to their operation and the fact that we are adding more functionalities, more automation tools, opens them to printing more sheets to doing new applications, because with automation you can achieve a lot more as you know.
Morten: Let’s say that I’m a customer and want to buy something from you. I understand that my business is having diffulty getting skilled employees, I spend too much processing times on all the things that are maybe not necessary to be hand-held. What is the process? Let’s say that I’m a commercial printing company that also has a little bit of large format and a littlebit of mailing, a little bit of everything, basically. How do I get engaged with you guys and how do I get to the right solution.
Ray: The conversation is like every conversation. We are showing interest in what the customer is doing. The customer is interested to learn into the possibilities and every customer discussion is unique. When they do mailings, white format, they have divered application, diverse equipment. They also have different pain-points. It’s about listening to what those are and what they want to achieve and where they see themselfes in comparison to their peers or their competitors and bring them possibilities of intervention where they can automate processes. Whether it’s before printing, post printing, with Bindery. You’ve sees new technologies like BestCut, where you can get anyone to cut paper. So it’s matching those requirements, needs, goals, technology and achieve integration and centralize.
Centralize automoation in your print operation.
Morten: But in a time, where I think that, to some extend, people have less time and maybe spend lett time evaluating technology. I think that’s a shame. But I also think that’s a fact, right?
I guess that your time-frame, from first contact till a decision is made, should be narrowed down quite a lot to basically focus on the ROI, focussing on the implementation time, the repayment time, operator training and all the things that goes into processing. Is that something you are experiencing? Am I right?
I mean if you run a multi-million dollar business, I would assume that people would be very interested to see if they can save dollars and time in the process. But for me it still seems like that they don’t have time to go into much details.
Ray: In a lot of what you are saying is right, but it varies from customer to customer based on their operational size, whether they are hundreds of thousands, millions or tens of millions, everybody’s time is precious.
The benefit of talking with someone like us is as a company we have over 35 years of expertise. A lot of people on our team have over 20 years or decades of expertise and the converstaion is a lot shorter for customers so that our team can understand their operational goals, their operational pain-points, and bring them technologies not only that we offer, but also make recommendations of best practises as to what they can source in the market. That has a big value as well.
Morten: So a lot of these best practices, because some of the pain-points may be similar, right?
Ray: Definitely! Best practise is pretty much around the same direction. It’s also bringing, best practises from their peers or competitors in other regions of the world. They can benefit from our expertise and bring them to that level of automation integration as diverse their opraion is, equipment wise.
Morten: You mentioned ‘mailing’ a couple of times. Where does the automation part from an Ultimate Tech point of view come in?
Ray: Save time, make more money. You said the keywords before.
So when you do Mailing as a PSP. Wether you do tens of thousands or millions of pieces, you have the same issues, which is sorting your mailing jobs for the postal system. The postal system needs pre-sorting, so we have developed new technology, where we can take those files upstream from mailing software such as BCC or Quadian or others, take that file, create the imposition file, the print ready file and drive that all the way to get the products out the door. That’s the level of intervention that we can do in that segment alone.
Morten: So when the day is over, I guess there’s only one thing to say right?
Ray: Ofcourse, it’s Automation, Automation, Automation.
This interview was filmed at Printing United 2024 by Inkish.
Conducted by Morton B. Reitoft from Inkish