The Hindu Business Line : `Say it with colour'

QUICK, which would you prefer? A black and white shot or a colour picture? Colour, obviously, you would say.It is not just individuals. The colour market appears to have captured the office automation industry too and is seen as one of the biggest areas of growth. `The usage of colour for maximising communication impact is an emerging trend. Exciting new technologies that have crashed the equipment and running costs have fuelled the growth of the colour market,' says Lakshmi Narayan Rao, Assistant Director (Marketing), Canon India.

Excerpts from a chat with eWorld:

How do you think colour impacts business communication?

The use of colour in business communications enhances productivity. It gets higher payment response. It maximises communication impact, improves comprehension and recognition, besides accelerating learning and retention.

Are your findings based on research?

Yes. Our research findings indicate that the use of colour can increase readers' attention and recall by 82 per cent, make an impression that is 39 per cent more memorable, besides emphasising critical information. People are more likely to pick up a colour piece of mail first.

Colour helps to enhance productivity by reducing the search time and errors by 80 per cent.

Colour increases comprehension by as much as 73 per cent and retention by 78 per cent. It can boost participation and involvement by 80 per cent. Reader comprehension has been found to be 14 per cent better even with a single colour than with bold text.

Is `colour in office' the next big thing to revolutionise digital printing solutions for the Indian enterprise?

Business communication in colour is gaining value. Until recently, high-quality colour documents for our business requirements were outsourced to the graphics industry — namely printers, designers, desktop publishers and advertising agencies. Today, there is more value in being able to produce colour documents on-site and on-demand. Colour certainly adds the essential effectiveness to any document.

What are the basic motivators for organisations to choose colour?

Significant changes are surfacing in business communications documents that were once created in black and white. Businesses that never considered buying a colour laser multi functional device (MFD) now realise the advantage and affordability of colour imaging equipment. The most common applications are marketing collaterals and presentations.

The top motivators for going colour through use of laser MFDs are convenience, increased security (you don't have to send your confidential documents outside your office to get them printed at a jobber), fast turnaround and savings on cost. The ability to connect as a network printer and reduced total cost of ownership is also a key motivator.

How and when do you see colour MFDs becoming a one-stop communication hub for Indian enterprises?

Single functional devices in enterprises are already being replaced by MFDs. The emergence of colour laser MFDs as must-haves has been primarily due to a combination of better return on investment (RoI) and convenience.

Market perceptions have traditionally classified colour laser printers as expensive and out of reach for the general market. In reality, the total cost of ownership has decreased considerably because of higher yields on toner cartridges and revolutionary advances in technology.

Colour printers are not new. What is unique about what Canon is talking about?

Traditionally, equipment cost, running cost and network bandwidth issues have been the deterrents in increasing proliferation of the use of colour devices. To share with you some facts — the cost of colour equipment has been 4 times the cost of black & white equipment, the running cost of a colour device is 20 times the running cost of black & white device and most importantly, colour prints are known to clog the network 25 times more than a black & white print.

But now, with Canon, the cost of equipment ratio (black & white vs colour) has been brought down to 1:1.3, the running cost ratio has been brought down to 1:5 and the question of network clogging does not arise.

Hence, Canon has significantly reduced the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

How is Canon promoting this concept?

The colour business market in India is expected to be Rs 180 crore by the year 2006, and we at Canon India intend to capture 40 per cent of this market through our initiatives. Today, our share in the colour MFD segment stands at around 32 per cent.

We will be embarking on the nationwide drive of educating the market about the opportunity of generating business value and increasing productivity with colour. Our sales approach is not that of a `box-pusher' but instead, we will focus on Solution Selling.

We aim at educating the customer, understanding his requirements and then providing the best solution that not only addresses his challenges but also yields faster ROI.

As a part of our overall strategy, we will soon introduce the IRC3100, a new colour laser MFD, in the market.

lnr@thehindu.co.in

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