Device Spotlight – Meet the Xerox Versant 3100

Is your organization ready to achieve optimal workflow efficiency through high-impact automation?

Making the jump from conventional multifunction devices to a full-fledged production printer is a big decision. It's also cause for celebration – installing a printing press like the Xerox Versant 3100 is a sure sign of expansion and growth.

This printer uses state-of-the-art technology to deliver unparalleled performance. With breakneck print speeds capable of approaching 100 pages per minute, automatic color calibration, and support for ultra-high-resolution printing, this device is in a class all of its own.

The Versant 3100 combines several innovative Xerox technologies to produce results that competing models cannot match. It outperforms every other printer in its price range in key areas of automation, paper handling, and image resolution.

With the ability to deliver up to 250,000 pages per month of vivid, high-resolution print with unprecedented image consistency, it is the top choice for discriminating enterprises and organizations. It will give you the power you need to move marketing and promotional material processes entirely in-house, generating significant cost-savings and making your team less reliant on third-party print houses.

Industry-Leading Resolution Bit Depth Comes Standard

When Xerox says that the Versant 3100 offers the best image resolution in the print industry, it is not an exaggeration. This printer supports 2400 x 2400 dpi print resolution, but the true power of Xerox innovation is in the image bit depth.

Printers create images by layering individual dots of color on an imaginary grid. Conventional printing presses use 8-bit print engines to determine the exact hue of each dot. Eight bits of information translates to 256 distinct, individual states. An 8-bit print engine chooses the closest hue to the original image's color from among the 256 possible hues it can generate.

The Versant 3100 features a standard bit rate of 10. That means that every single dot it places on the 2400 x 2400 grid is colored from a selection of 1024 individual hues. This printer generates images with color depth and vibrancy four times greater than any other printer on the market.

Process Automation for Color Calibration and Registration

The Xerox Versant 3100 is not just a leader in terms of image quality. It is also a highly efficient, automated print production workhorse that uses world-class engineering to reduce the amount of time and effort it takes to produce top-quality prints.

One of the ways it does this is by automatically calibrating itself before print runs. Thanks to the inclusion of a Full Width Array and Xerox Automated Color Quality software, your print operator can save hours of time checking color table references and simply let the machine take care of calibration itself.

The Full Width Array also fine-tunes dot density uniformity, which safeguards image quality across the entire page. This prevents washed-out areas from popping up on individual pages – a frustrating yet commonplace occurrence in high-volume print environments.

The Versant 3100 also features automated image-to-media alignment that eliminates the risk of costly registration errors ruining entire print batches. Anyone with experience in a high-volume print shop knows that a tiny degree of image skew can quickly turn into a massive problem when dealing with large print runs. The Versant 3100 automates error-prone and time-consuming tasks for you.

Clear Paper Jams Easily with Automatic Sheet Clearing

Another time-saving innovation the Xerox Versant 3100 features is automatic sheet clearing. In the world of print, paper jams are the ultimate challenge. A jam at the wrong moment can ruin mission-critical print runs, and so far, the premise of a guaranteed paper-jam-free printer remains out of reach.

However, there are ways to minimize the damage and frustration the paper jams cause, and the Versant 3100 is a shining example of how this can be done. If the printing press stops in the middle of a print run because of a jam, it automatically ejects all sheets in the paper path to its top trays.

This means that the operator does not have to open every single printer door and scour the entire paper path to free papers from inside the machine before starting the run again. Clearing a paper jam from a high-volume printing press used to be a time-consuming waste – now it takes mere seconds.

With compatibility for paper weights of up to 300 gsm, there is no better first-time production printer on the market than the Xerox Versant 3100. Incorporate this tool in your arsenal and you will observe an exponential increase in productivity and efficiency from your print room.

Is it time for your company to make the jump from desktop printing to high-impact, high-volume, value-generating printing of in-house marketing materials and booklets? Talk to us!

So What Really Is Business Process Automation?

You may start to hear the term "Business Process Automation" circulating - So what is it exactly?

Gartner defines it as "the automation of complex business processes and functions beyond conventional data manipulation and record-keeping activities, usually through the use of advanced technologies." 

Really, the goal of most business software is to take tedious processes and convert them into a push-button workflow that takes the manual out of manual labor. Because logging into a website to approve some invoices instead of Jim chasing after you every afternoon for a signature sounds a little easier... on everyone. 

So you have a lot of paper, I mean a lot of paper, and some days sorting and organizing that paper has the potential to turn your brain to mush. But what if we could implement a process that begins with a few steps at the copier and ends
in a nice convenient digital file cabinet that contains all the business process workflow for each document?

For instance, your job is to take your stack of paper, review each sheet, sort them into the appropriate stacks, have each of the four managers approve their stack in a timely (and I stress timely) fashion, then be able to track down those invoices, new hire packets or expense reports (whatever makes up your "stack of paper") at any given moment.  You might have a tear running down your cheek right now as you imagine yourself in the file room with drawers of file cabinets ripped open and you sprawled out on the floor going through yellow folder after yellow folder (who decided on that shade of yellow anyway?) looking for that one page, only to be interrupted 50 times for things that are possibly more important but that must take a back seat until you can find that one... wait... there it is!

If this sounds familiar, I think we can help...well I know we can help. Business Process Automation isn't just a new trendy term, it is in fact real and we know all about it.  So wipe those tears away and let us know when you are ready to make it a reality. We are here waiting!

Join us in Vancouver, Washington at the Hilton on October 15, 2015 to learn more from our experts! Register now at www.ctx-xerox.com/tech.html

Service & Our Continuous Improvements

At the Northwest Group (Copytronix, QBSI and Pinnell) we are not just a copier company, we strive to provide the very best solutions and service in the marketplace.  This is not a stagnant operation, in fact, we continuously look for new ways to improve our processes both internal and external so that our service is seen as superior and our customers are satisfied.

One significant change we have made in 2011 is our use of BEI Services. Business Equipment Information Services is a tiered approach to managing service results.

This is how it works:

BEI provides us with a worldwide database of equipment performance. We can quickly compare our equipment performance to national standards and take the guess work out of whether or not the equipment is performing as expected, and if not, some insight as to why.

It shows us the most and least effective volume bands for each individual model. We can also instantly compare our results in some critical areas such as parts and labor cost, copies between visits, time between failures and most importantly our ability to fix it the first time, without having to order parts or be called back for any reason before a certain criteria of copies and time make it a quality service call.

Technician territories are set based on data from BEI which builds effective territories based on training, travel, and technical efficiency. It is workload distribution that gives us the best chance of having the correct technician responding to the call with the correct parts to get it fixed the first time.

Along with benchmarking and building effective territories, we can then offer an incentive program to our technicians that rewards doing a total service call, having the correct parts to fix it the first time and making the equipment run as long as possible between service calls.

By benchmarking results, running efficient territories and using parts wisely, we are becoming a better service organization for our customers. That is the ultimate goal.

- Ed: Service Manager