Kodak Insite Members Connect To Offer Expanded Services

Home to nearly 40 Kodak customers in Europe and live since late last year, Kodak's Graphic Community is a Web 2.0 community for graphic communications businesses. Kodak's Graphic Community is an online world where users can build strategic relationships with business partners anywhere to create new revenue opportunities.

Kodak is providing membership in this community free to all users of Kodak Insite since Version 5.5. Community members can browse the membership, identify partners with whom to develop business relationships, and then link together to create efficient marketing and production supply chains that can foster expansion and growth.

Kodak's Graphic Community is a true Web 2.0 environment, established to promote efficiencies and collaboration among Kodak's workflow customers. Discussions are ongoing between North American and European Kodak customers to set up a print network. Kodak does not charge any transaction fees nor does it define the terms or manage the business relationships between the members of the community.

"Personal and business networks on the Internet are an essential way that many people interact in today's world," said Judi Hess, general manager, Enterprise Solutions, Kodak's Graphic Communications Group (GCG), and vice president, Eastman Kodak Co. "Kodak's Graphic Community is built just for graphic communications businesses, so it is the perfect way for Kodak customers—whether they are very experienced or novice networkers—to capitalize on the potential that online communities offer."

When Insite software users join the community, information they provide about their business can be viewed by other members on the secure Graphic Community Web site. Users can browse the network to make business connections based on key criteria, including location and production capabilities. Members can then link together to form their own peer to peer networks, allowing them to exchange job content and information in an efficient and automated way.

Print service providers in Kodak's Graphic Community can establish networks to provide geographically distributed print services, load balance their production during peak periods, fill available press capacity during slow periods, set up "Virtual Print Service Provider" businesses, and outsource products that they are unable to produce themselves.

For example, printers who don't have a digital print capability can begin offering those services to their customers, yet have them produced via a community member until they have the demand to support the purchase of their press.