AFP Consortium

AFP Consortium: Why Should the ROI Business Person Care About AFPC?

By Harry Lewis

In my last posting, I was feeling proud about the overall success the AFPC has had in harnessing the expertise and effort of its volunteer members from more than 30 commercially competing companies.

I still think that’s a big achievement in itself. 

But a key question is:
“Why should our industry’s eventual customers – the banks, the insurers, the healthcare providers and the utilities – care about how we pulled it off”?

All they’re interested in is the end result. Can they produce the millions of bills and statements and policies and mailing pieces they need to generate every day of the year? Can they do it fast and reliably? Can they take advantage of the color capabilities of their high speed printers? And can they safely and easily mix old and new software and hardware systems from different suppliers without the whole print shop grinding to a halt?

The answer to all these questions is yes they can - thanks to the steady work of the AFPC.

But what is not always so obvious to senior executives and those who aren’t directly involved with running high volume transaction output operations is the fact that we are always trying to hit a moving target. The job is never done, because this is one industry that never stands still.

No splashy headlines

The AFPC’s job is to push forward in response to changing market requirements by defining and integrating advanced technology while maintaining the stability industry has come to expect from AFP. The work the AFPC may not seem very exciting but it fulfilling and critical to our industry.  You won’t see a continuous stream of  headlines proclaiming our accomplishments as there’s not a lot of glamour in an announcement like the one we made in August this year about the new AFP IS/3 standard.  But, for thousands of organizations around the world, it means that full-color transpromo marketing and long, fast print runs of mission-critical documents will be a bit easier, a bit more efficient, a bit more reliable and a bit faster.

Add up the various accomplishments of the AFPC and you’re looking at a substantially more refined and robust presentation architecture, with better performance and lower whole-life costs. 

Just better ROI

ROI is where the rubber meets the road.  Year by year, AFP becomes a better, more flexible and more reliable tool set that helps customers continually enhance the return on their past and present investments. Enhancing ROI for the industry is what the AFPC and its 32 members have been doing since 2004.

Attendees at the 10th meeting of the AFPC in Boulder on March 12, 2008.

Join me over the next few months as I share more about:

• the history of AFP;
• the work of the AFPC;
• the AFPC members, and;
• the business value the AFPC delivers to the global print and mail industry.

My goal in this series is to stimulate a conversation about and recognition of the AFPC. So, please share this series with your associates using the social network buttons above.

I also look forward to your joining the conversation using the comments section below.

For AFPC membership information, touch here >>>.

Regards,

Harry