Executive Q&A: Toby Weiss, Senior Vice President and General Manager, EFI Fiery

PN: Tell us a little about your company, the segment of the market it serves, and what you consider to be your "core" users.

EFI develops and markets products for the manufacturing of signage, packaging, textiles, ceramic tiles, and personalized documents, and we have a wide range of printers, inks, digital front ends (DFEs), along with a the industry’s largest MIS/ERP workflow software offering.

The Fiery Business Unit within EFI focuses on digital front ends for leading brands of production printers, including sheet-fed, signage, wide format, and production presses. Our DFEs ship alongside EFI printers as well as presses from leading manufacturers such as Canon, Konica Minolta, Kyocera Document Solutions, Landa, OKI, Ricoh, RISO, Sharp, Xerox, and others.

PN: How did you get involved with the company? What is your background before that?

I joined the company 8 years ago. I have a software background, and previous to EFI, was CEO of a database security software company. I moved from New York to the San Francisco Bay Area to join EFI.

PN: What do you consider your greatest achievement in this market to be?

Oh, I can’t claim this to be “my” achievement, but it feels great to be part of the team that is leading the transformation of an industry from analog offset printing to digital printing. It used to be you would hear that the quality of digital printing wasn’t good enough as compared to offset printing, or the costs weren’t low enough with digital printing, but you simply don’t hear that anymore.

PN: If there was anything you could change, either about your career in regards to the print industry, your company, or the market as a whole, what would it be?

I think the industry loses a lot when everyone talks about the death of print. Even today when I see advertising that “justifies print,” I cringe. Everything around us has an image on it, and clearly print will continue to be important in the future. It doesn’t need to be stated. Rather, we need to focus on helping businesses grow and continuing to solve the needs of the market related to the imaging of things.

I also cringe when I hear a digital front end, or a DFE, called a RIP. I think people miss the boat when they don’t consider all the important factors that go into a workflow, and they think a RIP is just a RIP. Printing companies are well served when they spend time to really consider a digital front end choice and examine what it is really going to do for them. It is, in effect, the brains in front of the printer and the central nervous system directing how the hardware will actually operate.

When you are running a printing business, you often don’t realize you need a particular feature or function until one of your customers asks for it. If you don’t have a state-of-the-art DFE, you can’t meet the customer’s expectations and you risk an unhappy customer, or worse, a lost business opportunity. People compromise a lot when they don’t need to.

PN: What do you consider the greatest challenge to be for the industry right now?

I see a dichotomy of printing companies. Some are thriving and some are struggling. As a general rule, the ones who are taking risks and taking on new business areas – like moving into packaging, for example, or offering marketing services – seem to be thriving. The ones standing still are the ones struggling, with their businesses reduced to price competition and commoditization.

On the vendor side, I see some challenges as well. Some of the major vendors are trying to protect the revenue they get from existing customers by providing only proprietary, lock-in solutions. And that doesn’t always serve the customer’s best interests. By seeking best-in-class partners, they can both expand the range of options they can offer customers while freeing up their own resources to focus on innovation in their areas of core competency.

PN: What do you consider the greatest asset to be for the industry right now?

The greatest asset in our industry is that the actual end customers really care about some of the issues we are focused on right now. There will be a lot of natural pressure to move from analog to digital. Customers want shorter runs, faster turnaround times, higher quality, lower cost and more customization. This is occurring in almost all segments of the business. So we don't have to spend money as vendors to convince the market of the benefits of what we can provide. Rather, the market is already there, and vendors like EFI can focus our investments on innovation and support rather than market development as we have had to do in the past.

PN: What have been the biggest changes to the way we communicate with one another in the past few years? How would you recommend this industry take advantage of that?

You can’t underestimate how much change is happening as a result of the internet. While it would be easy to say social media is the biggest change, I think it is the communication that is happening as a result of big data and machine learning to make communications extremely targeted. The news we get is tailored to us. The advertising we get is much more tailored to us than it ever has been before.

I think the industry really has to plug into everything that is happening from a marketing technology standpoint with the Internet and social media. Being able to target communications down to the individual level is key. Consider the Amazon experience: You look up a product on Amazon but don’t buy it, and the next thing you know, you get a reminder or an advertisement about that product. Or you search for something on Google, and you start seeing ads related to that search. There is a great deal of data aggregation going on in the world of the internet. You buy something, and you start getting advertisements for related things.

What role is the printer playing in that? If I bought something online, shouldn’t I also get a piece of direct mail promoting other things I am likely to buy? Based on that, shouldn’t my catalogs be customized? It’s all about tying it back to the big data that is happening on the internet. The opportunity for the printer is to present to customers these direct mail opportunities – for example, if someone looks at an item but doesn’t buy it within a certain amount of time – why don’t I kick off a postcard offering them a 10% discount on that item and a couple of other related items.

Communication has changed; it is so much more personalized. Printers need to tap into that. And there are examples where this type of thing is being done today in a completely automated fashion, kicked off by big data and the actions of consumers.

PN: Looking ahead, what major innovations or technologies do you believe will shape the future of the industry?

Machine learning and automation are what will drive the industry as I described earlier. Automation is transforming all industries along with big data. We think EFI is well positioned to help printers automate their businesses. This takes time and cost out of production, so it not only opens up capacity, but it frees up resources that can be spent on innovation.

PN: What is the biggest piece of advice you would give to printers and others involved in this industry?

Don’t be afraid to fail. You have to try new things. If you sit still, I think, it is game over in the printing industry.

PN: Is there anything else you would like to share?

Fiery has just celebrated its 25th anniversary in the marketplace. Fiery has had a leading position in digital print and continues to do so. We would really like to thank all of our loyal customers and partners who have continued to support Fiery over the years and allowed us to continue to invest enormous amounts in this platform. We think the best is still to come and would encourage readers to watch for more innovation coming their way.