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Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 1 Table Of Contents Is the Long Monday Over? 2 6 Trends Driving Digital Transformation and Impacts on the Capture Industry 3 Iberian Large Format Market – Where we are and what can we expect for the upcoming years? 21 Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 2 Is the Long Monday Over? Since March of 2020 when the COVID restrictions began in Maryland, I’ve often joked that it often feels like the last two years have felt like one long Monday. While the ultimate course of the pandemic is yet unknown, as vaccination percentages have increased, countries have begun to open back up. It still feels like a half step forward and a half dozen back sometimes, but life is rounding back into semi- normal (or rather a new normal, given “normal” is continually in □ux). Events are back, baby! The Document Strategy Forum hosted their annual event in Chicago earlier this month after running their event virtually last year. I’m □ying to Denver for AIIM tomorrow morning for that event’s return to in-person after two years. The MER Conference in early May rounds out a springtime of industry-related events. While the last two years sometimes feel like suspended animation, this industry has been marching forward. My article beginning on the next page explores trends that I think are sometimes ignored and are affecting the market. Thanks for reading, Bryant Duhon Editor-in-Chief Comments, criticisms, and witticisms welcomed. bdu@info-source.com Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 3 Everything Changes – And Stays the Same (Kinda) As I type this, when I look back at the last 25 years, one of the things that sticks out to me is how little things have changed at the core (I recall a “paperless work□ow” poster in AIIM HQ that, with some slight updating, wouldn’t be out of place today). Though I will admit to still being stunned that scanner vendors focus on solutions rather than their speeds and feeds in conversations these days. Another unchanged thing: there is a core of very experienced, very knowledgeable people in this industry who can help you. Some of you are in the reading this. This stuff works. There is one thing I wish had changed: the gap between the need for what this industry produces and implementation of those tools by organizations. 6 Trends Driving Digital Transformation and Impacts on the Capture Industry This article builds on the themes I discussed in a webinar presentation I gave for the AIIM Florida Chapter on April 21, . I welcome any and all feedback. Driving Transformation Past the Mountaintop It’s a good time to be in the industry. I know I’ve written and said that a number of times in the past two years. It’s increasingly obvious it’s truer now than it was two years ago. One thing that I also □nd fascinating about AIIM – and the industry in general – is how it’s at once very old and very new. I began my career in this industry as an editorial intern for AIIM’s in February of 1994 (I shepherded the magazine through various iterations: to to to , with Ben Herring as Editor-in-Chief of the last). True story: when cleaning out my of□ce a few months after taking over as editor in October 1998, I found my resume in the “No Way” pile John Harney, the editor who hired me for the intern spot, had tossed it into. inform magazine inform e-doc AIIM E-DOC Magazine infonomics To say I stumbled into this industry through a narrow window – sideways – is accurate. Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 4 So while much of the basic blocking and tackling remains the same, there’s been a gigantic shift to talking about the solution/business □t. I used to have my spiel memorized for AIIM webinar sponsors, “Talk about the customer pain. No one cares about your product specs or your company unless you can help them □x their pain.” Most listened. Some didn’t. The 2 group never got good ratings or results. nd That’s not to say that meeting the needs of end users is brand new, only that it’s much more upfront and explicit than it was a decade ago. The cloud and consumerization of IT have had a huge impact here. AIIM’s Information Chaos Vs. Information Opportunity” research from the early 2010s focused on this. Here’s a (it’s my personal blog page, the only place it still “lives”). link to the infographic If you take away anything, here it is: None of this stuff is new, focus on your business objectives and goals. The technology exists to get you where you want to go, digital transformation- wise. Another change is the ongoing labeling of the industry (a bit more on this below). There’s no perfect de□nition or term that, er, “captures,” everything. Enterprise content management (ECM) had a nice run but is phasing out – replaced by content services. Regardless of what it’s called, the basic need to take a document (broadly de□ned as a container of content) and move it to where it needs to be is unchanged. If we want to go Olde School, I’d even say that’s no different from AIIM’s original mission from the 1940s as the National Micro□lm Association. After all, micro□lm has to be the documentiest of the documents, right? Other than paper. At the same time, the need for the technology this industry creates has grown it’s never broken through. Sexier though limited tools like RPA sucked up investment recently. The poor document – keeps poking along. All that said, we might be getting over the mountaintop. We’ve been a little like the Little Engine That Could meets Sisyphus – always trying to get up that mountainside, never quite making it all the way over. That’s changing. In this article, I’ll broadly address: Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 5 The More Things Change . . . Years ago I stole “better, faster, cheaper” from Mike Alsup, President of Gimmal Group, as my annual technology prediction. It’s trite. It’s also true. It also seems like better, faster, cheaper (maybe not cheaper) keeps getting faster. A few years ago, this video [ ] of a German pro surfer riding a 115 foot wave off the coast of Portugal went viral. That small white streak in the middle is the surfer. click here to watch This is what it feels like covering, writing about, and trying to market these technologies. I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like having to do this stuff. □. Six trends affecting the industry □. How those are re□ected at AIIM [and our May issue will also focus on what we learn at this week’s AIIM conference] This is a . . . large industry and depending on your de□nition ranges from IG/RM to customer communication management (CCM) and process and capture tools. This is by necessity a high-level overview Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 6 I’m a fan of the “losing sight of the forest for the trees” cliche. It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture when there are so damn many trees getting in our way. I’m not going to focus on these obvious trends: Cloud – though I’m not entirely sure why this is still mentioned as a trend by some. It’s just another way to provision your IT infrastructure. It stopped being a “trend” a decade (or longer) ago. Pandemic Low unemployment Low code Growth of content – it’s hockey stick, up and to the right, growth to in□nity and beyond All of these background trends will continue to overlap and drive the need for capture/DM and automation. When I was speaking with Brian DeWyer of Reveille, he noted that the attention to the need to manage this data – the unstructured content -- is turning towards it, instead of away. We also both remain bewildered by the reliance of business success and customer satisfaction on the ability of businesses and orgs to manage their documents and then spend all their money managing data. You can read my conversation with DeWyer and Rick Butgereit in the April 4, 2022 issue on page 3, . Reveille Updates Eponymous Product - Further Embeds Itself into the Data Monitoring World By the end of this, I hope I’ve pulled a bunch of trees together and made a forest for everyone. It’s also not easy to keep focused on moving forward when executives have Shiny Object Syndrome. Fortunately, executives are focused – □xated even – on digital transformation. Though given that the world IS digital, every business needs to be digital, but I digress. Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 7 says the □rst known use (relative to the concept of eliminating manual tasks) was in 1912. Webster At the core, it’s about moving a document (any container of information) to where it needs to be so that the required action can be taken (archive, sign, act on, share, etc.). I wanted to look at the de□nition of automation and learned it’s a relatively new word (so sayeth Britannica anyway). In its ideal form, automation implies the elimination of all manual labour through the use of automatic controls that ensure accuracy and quality. Although perfect automation has never been achieved, in its more-limited form it has caused alterations in the patterns of employment. — Encyclopedia Britannica Coined in the 1940s at the Ford Motor Company, the term automation was applied to the automatic handling of parts in metalworking processes. The concept acquired broader meaning with the development of cybernetics by American mathematician Norbert Wiener. Through cybernetics, Wiener anticipated the application of computers to manufacturing situations. Encyclopedia Britannica What Is This Industry – Really Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 8 As I said earlier, none of this is really new. Business of all kinds have been attempting to automate work probably for as long as there’s been work – after all, what’s the wheel but automation for your feet? It’s the industry word salad that we’re constantly dealing with which threatens to bury us under a deluge of verbiage. I dislike “digital transformation.” “Hyperautomation” is even worse. They don’t really mean anything. It varies depending on what you’re trying to address – getting rid of paper is digital transformation. Using RPA to connect manual processes is digital transformation. To tie us to the photo of the Model T and manufacturing roots of the word “automation;” Industry 4.0 in manufacturing is all about digital transformation. What do I mean by word salad? Here’s a call out from a website of a company in this space: Hyperautomation with Intelligent Document Processing, Business Process Management, Robotic Process Automation, Automated Governance, and Integration. What does that even mean? I have no idea. After reading that quote, I jotted down all of the phrases for the process/capture industry. I may have missed a few. Intelligent capture. Intelligent document capture. Intelligent automation. Hyperautomation. Digital transformation. Capture 2.0. Process automation. Intelligent automation. Intelligent automation. Digital process automation. process document I have been on many vendor – process guys, capture guys, ECM guys – and other websites where combinations of these phrases are used in the same paragraph. I’ve been doing this for a good while and I have a hard time sorting out the language sometimes. For the vendors out there, what’s that confusion doing to your customers? Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 9 So just beware of “automation” and identify the context the company/person you’re speaking with is coming from. For instance, UiPath is mostly talking about RPA. The manufacturing industry is often focused on Industry 4.0. AIIM is still essentially talking ECM and doing a good job of sticking to intelligent information management (which, like ECM, isn’t perfect). Process mining vendor Celonis talks execution management and process automation. Regarding the use of “intelligent,” if there’s any whiff of AI, products are “intelligent.” I often look like the poor pup in the photo at the end of many days. And now Gartner has killed the content services magical quadrant. Whither the industry? Well, as my offensive line coach in high school (that’s American football for all of you non-sports fans out there) used to say when explaining the need to ignore the defensive tackle on a certain play. Sweaty, red-faced, and smacking my dense friend’s helmet with his open palm, “What do you do if the tackle crashes? IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER! IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER!” While we in the industry do need to draw some [permeable] boundaries around the industry, for end users, maybe it just doesn’t matter. Ignore the words and focus on the features and functionality and capabilities of products and – as or even more important – □nding a good implementation partner. I suspect that the continually changing terms hurt industry adoption over the years, be that as it may, what you need is out there. As an editor for 25 years and counting, I too often can get hung up on words. Maybe the concern about the multiple ways to describe essentially the same set of technologies is overblown. Plus, none of the confusion is really new. So while I think it’s important to, as I said previously, identify the context someone is speaking from, starting with technology is never a good idea anywhere. As always, work from the inside out – identify the business case/need □rst; then identify the technology/products that will meet those needs. Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 10 Automation Everywhere: A Few Stats This is obvious for user organizations. It also applies to vendors – too often sales is focused on pushing THE SOLUTION rather than listening to customers and even walking away if it’s not a good □t. So ignore the de□nitions – but not entirely. I’m not going big into stats here. All of you are familiar with the hockey stick graphs the show the growth of data/content. The following two images and data illustrate: □. How many automation projects are in planning or process. □. How central capture/process technology is to making digital transformation possible. Automation is everywhere, according to an ebook from Automation Anywhere, 2022 Trends: Automation Accelerators. These two simple statistics indicate a huge amount of duplication, wasted effort, and false starts. Also that automation efforts are huge investments right now – there are LOTS of initiatives going on. Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 11 6 Trends Driving Digital Transformation Before turning to our trends, keep in mind all of the other well-known trends as well. There’s another uber trend in the background to remember as well: the process and capture industries are colliding. Ralph Gammon shared his thoughts on that pending collision earlier this year; in the January 18, 2022 issue on page 4). Seismic Shift in Capture Landscape in 2022 As I wrote this, I realized that I omitted another trend – the ongoing massive improvements in AI relative to capture. Next is an infographic snippet from SSON (the ). Every one of these is core to the industry (even chatbots – governance issues, RM issues, etc. – some of the conversations around chatbots reminds me of the conversations around email 20 years ago) and re□ects the need to take a piece of content and get it to where it needs to go. Shared Services & Outsourcing Network Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 12 Here are the trends: Trend 1: IT Skills Shortage The report highlights this con□ict: 61% of organizations globally are planning to increase their IT headcounts to record levels during the next 12 months, four out of 10 digital leaders say they can't keep people as long as they would like to because they're being lured away by the offer of more money somewhere else. In terms of capability gaps, cybersecurity (43%) is the most sought-after tech skill, up by almost a quarter in the past 12 months, followed by big data/analysts (40%), and technical architects (34%). The shortage of developers (32%), is increasing at a faster rate than other tech roles. □. IT skills shortage □. User-friendly rules □. Process mining □. Look for Legos (containerization) □. Cybersecurity (and Don’t Forget Physical Security) □. Meta-Work? The IT skills crisis is worse than ever and CIOs must create effective recruitment and retention strategies if they want to snare the talent that their digital transformation projects desperately require. That's the main □nding from recruiter which shows that more than two-thirds (67%) of digital leaders globally are now unable to keep pace with change because of a lack of technology talent. Harvey Nash Group's Digital Leadership Report, Remember those two statistics slides from earlier? This skills shortage is within the IT industry, plus the Harvey Nash Report noted that 60% of companies intend to increase technology investments during the next 12 months. Gartner has recruitment and retention as a top strategic priority by 52% of boards Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 13 Another IT skills report, Skillsoft’s , says that 76% of IT decision makers face a skills gap in their departments – 146% increase from 2016. 50% say investing in cyber security is highest priority. Global Knowledge 2021 IT Skills and Salary Report This gap is going to hurt. IDC predicts by 2022 monetary losses from IT skills gaps will be $775 billion worldwide. Trend 2: User Friendly This lack of IT personnel is another driver for moving to cloud (though someone still needs to manage that infrastructure – even if everything is “in the cloud”). It’s also a driver for low-code (which we’ll discuss again in trend #6). It seems as though as white color work decentralizes, IT resources will need to be pooled. That could be a central IT function, a turn to the cloud, or outsourcing to a managed services provider. I suspect we’ll see the emergence (if not already) of an “IT-lite” profession where a combination of project management, business acumen, and the ability to “low-code” will be in high demand to manage an IT infrastructure and application stack that is hosted by third-parties. I’m going to use the example of scanners to illustrate this. Look at the photo of this scanner. What’s the biggest difference you see? That gigantic touchscreen, right? It screams “user friendly”. This is a scanner from a company called Raven located in Houston, TX (we’ll be speaking with their president soon and reporting back in a future issue). They are focused on the consumer or small business market, judging by my initial read of their website. While the scanner companies we speak with regularly have also focused on end-user ease-of- use and simplicity – that gigantic touchscreen screams “use me.” Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 14 I love Raven’s marketing language: "Manage Your Documents. Organize Your Workspace." Simple. Clear. Descriptive. Let me be clear, I’m not trying to compare the functionality of Raven to Epson, Fujitsu, Kodak Alaris, et al. To me, this image is a visual that says “let’s make this as simple for the user as possible.” I recall speaking with one of the copier manufacturers years ago, and they had added a shelf for paper/coffee to be user friendly. It’s not a new trend, but it’s increasingly important. Especially as the IT skills shortage continues to pinch and there’s limited access to IT help to tell you to turn it off and on again (I recently watched ). The IT Crowd We’ve covered Kodak Alaris’ network scanner (December 9, 2021; on page 11), which is essentially a brick and is dead-simple to use. In brief, unbox the device, plug the power cord in, once it accesses the network, drop the pre-con□gured sheet into the scanner, scan. I mean, I could □gure that out. Of course, Epson and Fujitsu have both focused on end user ease-of-use in recent conversations. They’re also focused on making life easier on IT management by allowing scanners to be managed like a print □eet. Secure Network Scanning With Kodak Alaris I thought I had found a unique angle on user friendliness and purchasing products. Then I saw an article from Digitech, , that expressed exactly what I wanted to. This could be separated out as its own trend, but I’m lumping it in here. From the article: Digitech Systems Identi□es 4 Important Trends to Simplify Work in 2022 “Cloud changed the economics of technology purchasing, moving us from a large up-front payment to smaller, incremental monthly payments. We’re heading toward another major shift in the way we buy technologies and preparing now will make the transition easier. Deloitte calls it “□exible consumption.” Gartner uses “composable” to describe it. Regardless of the term we ultimately settle on, it’s a move toward user-de□ned abilities and pricing. We’re moving away from buying licenses for products and toward paying for only the components or services that we actually use (estimated to be less than 20% of available features). It’s a trend that simpli□es our lives because we can “custom build” technology solutions that exactly □t our needs and decrease money spent on little-used features.” 1 Also think about the consumerization of IT and how easy-to-use consumer apps continue to impact software in the business world. We all just want this stuff to work. Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 15 Trend 3: Process Mining A □nal aspect of user friendliness is that human-centric design (taking people into account from the BEGINNING of a project) should be the default for any IT implementation project. The need for UX designers will skyrocket, I believe. Process mining is a key enabling technology. Like RPA, it’s true value is when it works in conjunction with other tools to kick off improvements to processes after identifying broken or inef□cient processes. ABBYY Timeline and Kofax Insight are both process mining tools. From the other direction, process mining leader Celonis is working on the unstructured content problem. Looping back to my oft-repeated point about how nothing changes, Celonis touts invoice processing/accounts payable as part of their execution engine suite. Yep, the sexy new tool is using the same low-hanging fruit as capture vendors 20 years ago. True plug and play is the name of the game. Harvey Spencer has been talking about this for years (maybe longer, the last two years of one long Monday have screwed up my sense of time). The cloud holds the promise of being able to mix and match capabilities. Companies too numerous to mention here are working towards this goal. Process mining isn’t new, but it’s gotten a lot of interest in the last □ve or so years. Unlike in the past, you no longer have to guess at how your work□ow is performing. What’s broken? Where? Can all be discovered through activity logs. Trend 4: Look for Legos Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 16 Who knows, maybe in a decade we’ll all be as happy as the kid in this photo. [Note: we’ll be exploring this topic in a future issue.] Why am I kicking off a section on security with an image of a cute baby snuggling a teddy bear? In 2017 an 11-year old kid hacked into a robotic teddy bear via Bluetooth – at a conference – and then downloaded dozens of Bluetooth connected phone numbers from the audience. You aren’t paranoid if they’re out to get you. Anything connected to the Internet is at risk of a data breach. Any. Thing. I’m not a security expert, so I’ll keep this section short. I opted not to load this up with stats. Google “cybercrime” or “data breaches” or “cybersecurity” and you’ll □nd more statistics and research than you can read. You’ll also realize a few things: Trend 5: Cybersecurity Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 17 Trend 6: Busy Work I should change my passwords regularly Cybercrime is a gigantic industry – there are hosted ransomware services for cybercriminals without the cyber expertise The number of attacks grows year-over-year without sign of stopping. Securely backing up your data is one of the most effective ransomware defenses you can implement. Seriously, pay attention to your passwords. Capture and process vendors are going to need to focus on security unstructured content – including who is accessing that content internally. Brian DeWyer and I touched on that in our conversation mentioned earlier (DIR 4/4/20). As network scanning continues to grow, it will be critical for vendors in this space to pay attention to security. Kevin Neal has been all over this issue for a few years. We spoke about it in the December 9, 2021 issue of DIR on page 3, . Are We Overlooking Security in Web Scanning? A Conversation With P3iD's Kevin Neal Software company Asana surveyed 10,624 global knowledge workers for their . The results are depressing: Anatomy of Work Report 58% of time spent by global professionals is spent on work about work – work communications, search for info, switching between apps, managing priorities, and chasing updates 33% of time skilled/meaningful work 9% dedicated to strategic work towards major goals Some of you may feel seen looking at those statistics. This means missed deadlines, stress, and burnout. The good news is that the tools in this industry can help reduce/eliminate some of these issues. For instance, RPA can help address the “work about work” manual tasks. Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 18 What All of This Looks Like at AIIM Not saying that to be dismissive – it’s a real struggle to address the needs of the diverse AIIM audience in a limited number of sessions. Which sessions illustrate these concepts and trends I’ve been discussing? You can see the themes of transformation and automation entwined throughout the event. As always it’s a mix of old and new technology – even in the sponsors you see this, with companies like Leadtools and Fujitsu as long-time industry □gures and a new company, Arvest (look forward to meeting them!), joining the mix this year. AIIM President Peggy Winton kicks off the event with a keynote that highlights AIIM research and focuses on what 4 □ndings should IM/IG pros consider if they want to fully leverage their most powerful asset (information) to fuel their digital transformation journey (and ascend to leadership positions). With professionals missing 15% of deadlines because of of□ce disruptions, is adding more work to their plate going to help or hurt productivity? It strikes me that businesses could achieve a large ROI from investing in improving the time management skills of employees equally as much as investing in technology. The Conference looks like it always has – a mix on the spectrum from archival to process automation, with stops at records management and the cloud, etc. on the way. (This is from one of the AIIM Conference parties, that's yours truly on the left; Peggy Winton, AIIM President, center; and Baron Gemmer, AIIM Fellow, on the right.) The results made me think of the ongoing push for low-code and citizen developers. At some point, there just isn’t enough time to get everything done. Could low-code cause more burnout as resource-constrained IT departments of□oad some development work onto users? Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 19 Lauren Mayes, Program Director, Content Services for IBM Business Automation Software presents . She ties the convergence of capture, content, work□ow, and case management 20 years ago to today’s convergence of analytics, blockchain, mobile, collaboration, RPA, natural language understanding, machine learning and more. When Technologies Converge, Innovation Happens: extending IIM capabilities with new synergies Then there was a section I call “all that is old is new again”: 1. How I Reduced my Organization’s reliance on paper and manual processes. This wouldn’t have been out of place in 2001. It’s the basics – get rid of the paper! 2. Fujitsu’s Scott Francis is giving a presentation titled . “Digital transformation is driving rapid change in all business areas.” Your Info Management Journey Begins with Document Imaging 3, OPEX and Swiss Poste will speak about implementing a process automation strategy and solution to improve work□ow, accelerate change, and drive ef□ciencies in their business work□ow. It’s not 100%, but I’m going to guess they’re speak to digital mailroom solutions. 4. Sometimes all that’s old is just old, Harvey Spencer is speaking on . I kid because I love. This is at once an old/new workshop – same title would’ve been appropriate at a 1980s AIIM Show and Conference. On the other hand, we all know Spencer was on the cutting-edge of capture for decades before he decided to semi-retire (read his interview on page 3 of the January 3, 2022 issue, .) Document Capture at the Point of Ingestion Capture (of More Than Words), Scent, Process, and More: An Interview with Harvey Spencer The importance of the customer is a theme in many of the speaking sessions. I □nd this title interesting, “Modern information Lifecycle Management: it starts with Customer Journey mapping,” combines governance and customer service – focusing on ensuring customer experience documents tie into IM. The □nal keynote consists of a panel moderated by Peggy Winton, AIIM Pres, who all saw “improvement in their IM/business strategy alignment from a shared focus: optimization and application of customer-centric information. Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 20 I think I can. I think I can. I think I Can. That’s what the Little Engine That Could thought as it climbed the mountain, bringing all the toys to the good girls and boys on the other side of the mountain. It’s time for this industry to get to the “I thought I could” part of the story, careening down the mountain and chucking business- altering productivity toys at everyone. Bad childhood analogies aside (I loved that book), it’s our time to shine. Whether on the process or capture side, business success is founded on the ability to □nd the right document. A few □nal thoughts: You simply can’t digitally transform an organization without capture and process automation tools. Ain’t happening. Don’t ignore the complexity underneath the simplicity. As these tools become easier to use and implement, “it’s in the cloud” could become a catchword for looming disaster if you don’t actively manage your IT. Are we getting closer to a paperless of□ce? Actually, yeah, it looks like it! Don’t get hung up on the names (of the vendors or whatever the analysts want to call the industry next year), look for the functionality you need – even if they aren’t in a Magic Wave with a Peak or a member of AIIM. It’s a damn □ne time to be in the industry. Since the origin for this article revolved around the AIIM Conference, I’ll end with my best-ever piece of conference-going advice: Wear comfortable shoes. A conference/event is NOT the place to break in that fantastic new pair of shoes you want to show off (made this mistake once, had the heel blister reminder scar for a year or three afterwards – and was wearing Converse on day 2). Final Thoughts and Getting Over the Mountain Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 21 The Iberian LFP Market by Applications: CAD, Graphic, and Textile segments This article is based on statistics extracted from Infosource’s database (isDB), available under scalable subscription to match your exact research needs. From 2017 onwards, the Iberian Large Format Market (LFM) started a consolidation stage, remaining stable and almost □at in both unit sales and revenue for the period 2017-2019. In 2020, the disruption caused by the pandemic, which hit the southern European countries especially hard due to their weaker economies and the bigger exposure to the economic sectors more affected by Covid-related restrictions, made the LFP Iberian market decrease by almost 26% in unit sales and by more than 26% in revenue compared to 2019 □gures. From 2020 2nd Half onwards, the Iberian LFP market began to show a recovery trend that continued in 2021. By the end of 2021, the market showed a 15% increase over 2020 FY period, in unit sales. However, in Iberia, contrary to the overall Western European scene, the pre-pandemic levels are not yet recovered but expected to in the next 2-3 years. It is expected that the worldwide logistics and supply problems that are causing shortages in almost all technology industries will also affect LFP market sales along 2022 H1 period. However, it is foreseen that the supply limitations will be overcome within the □rst six months of 2022 and most of the main vendors trust in their capability to balance the sales and ful□ll all pending backorders during the second half of the year. If we look now into the different main LFP applications – CAD, Graphic, and Textile – we can observe different behaviors, trends, and recovery rates after the pandemic crash. Iberian Large Format Market – Where we are and what can we expect for the upcoming years? Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 22 CAD Market Different behaviors can be also observed between Spain and Portugal. While the LFP Portuguese market crashed more strongly in 2020, its recovery rate in 2021 was also much higher than that shown by Spain. However, by the end 2021 both countries showed □gures that still are around 15% lower than 2019 sales. The CAD market accounts for around 60% of the total LFP unit sales across the Iberia region; almost six percentage points below the Western European average CAD market share. Considering Spain and Portugal together, the CAD segment was able to keep a continuous growth trend, in unit sales, until FY2018 period, remaining almost □at in FY2019 and showing a 25% decrease in FY2020 due to the pandemic lockdown and subsequent restrictions. By the end of FY2021, this market showed a 7.7% growth rate, followed by a very smooth growing trend up to 2025 supported by the 13% forecasted growth rate for the Spanish construction industry in FY2022. Additionally, and depending on how the Spanish and Portuguese governments will □nally distribute the released European Public Recovery Funds, the aforementioned smooth growth trend could be pushed up and accelerated. Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 23 Graphic Market Textile Market By the end of FY2021 period, the Graphic Arts segment, including the soft signage, will account for around 32% of the total Iberian LFP market. After a remarkable long-term growth trend, this segment hit its maximum □gure (over 3K units) back in 2016, starting then a downtrend until going below 1.5 K units in FY2020 and thus decreasing by almost 42% compared to the FY2019 period. This huge decrease is well explained due to the big dependency of the Iberian Graphic Arts Market from the hostelry, tourism ,and other mass events-based economic sectors. That high dependency on certain speci□c sectors also explains its slower recovery compared to other neighbor countries. For FY2021 vs FY2020, the market showed a 39% increase in this segment. However it is not expected that the highest pre-pandemic □gures will be reached again in the near future. Regarding ink technologies, the most noticeable trend is the progressive market share reduction for solvent printers, due to the increasing environmental concern and regulations that we can observe throughout all main European countries. Conversely, the UV curing printers showed the highest MASH increase along the last 5 years period. The Digital Textile Printing segment is a clearly growing application within the Large Format market across all of Europe and the Iberian region is not an exception. Even the pandemic was not able to stop the growing trend – rather it accelerated it. Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 24 By the end of FY2021, the LFP-Textile is projected to account for almost 9% of the total LFP unit sales across Iberia. Although this is still a small segment in unit sales, its revenue is relatively higher and will almost account for over 16% of total Iberian LFP market value by the end of this year (last year 2020, even accounting more units than in 2021, it was only the 14%). For the upcoming years, Infosource expects a continuous growth trend that will make the market almost double, by 2025, the 2021 reported unit sales. Rodrigo López Parte ( ) has a more than 20 years background in marketing and sales responsibilities within various professional digital printing markets. Along his career, Rodrigo has had the opportunity to work in different market segments such as the industrial photo market, the graphic arts large format printing, the industrial ceramic and textile printing and the digital packaging □nishing. From February 2021, Rodrigo joined the Infosource’s team as market analyst and regional manager for Iberia and North Africa. rlp@info-source.com Document Imaging Report April 25, 2022 Page 25 Document Capture OCR/ICR, AI, and Machine Learning RPA ECM Records Management Document Output BPM DIR brings you the inside story behind the deals and decisions that affect your business. Vol. 32, No. 5 Managing Editor: Ralph Gammon ( ) rg@info-source.com Editor-in-Chief: Bryant Duhon ( ) Phone: +1 (301) 275-7496 bdu@info-source.com DIR is published approximately 15 times per year by: Infosource SA Avenues des Grande-Communes 8, 1213 Petit-Lancy, Geneva, Switzerland http://www.info-source.com Copyright @ 2022 by Infosource SA. 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