July 2005
Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe GmbH
Page 6
International Marketing Division
Office Marketing Group
Launch Guide bizhub 250/bizhub 350
2. Market
2.1 General Considerations
(Source: CAP V)
We are working in an increasingly connected and digital environment. As a result, the definitions
for the document and the office have changed. We have moved into a world of virtual and
collaborative working, where the office workflow and information processing is becoming central to
defining the total product solution. Electronic documents are experiencing exponential growth,
shifting the focus away from hardcopy. With the total Western European paper market projected to
remain flat over the next five years, the dynamics of the office market are undergoing a major
transformation.
The office is no longer in a
fixed location. Today’s office must be where the user is, be it at home,
on the road, in a hotel room, or in a corporate building. Regardless of their location, workers still
need to produce documents in the most convenient and efficient way. Vendors must find a way to
address business issues as well as capture and share the information within an office environment.
The Importance of the Workgroup
Paper volume is forecasted to increase at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of only 0.6%
between 2002 and 2007 in Western Europe. Nevertheless, there are pockets of growth within the
office market, particularly in the Workgroup environment. This growth will be driven by office colour
devices and multifunctional devices. These units are placed in shared environments and will be
increasingly network-connected in the future. Connectivity enables users to easily share
documents and information, driving the print volume from their office devices. The Workgroup will
also see growth because of users in the Personal environment that are now networked and
outputting most of their volume on a Workgroup device. In addition, some distributed documents
are now being printed on demand in the Workgroup arena rather than in a Production printing
environment.
According to a study done by CAP-V in 2004 one third of corporate users believe that more than
50% of their documents will move to the network within 3 years. An increasing percentage of
documents have moved from copying to printing, and this trend is expected to continue in the
future. While the majority of customers considered most scanning applications to be important,
scan-to-file was identified as critical by the greatest percentage of respondents. The largest
percentage of scanned documents are archived.
