André Statkus

Can you imagine how big the impact for a customer is, that he has no longer have the need to walk between the printer and his computer because he is immediately able to release the print jobs directly from the user interface of his Production printing device? Well, time for our customers is very important. Let me tell you how my idea, developed together with my colleagues, brought this benefit to our customers.

In 2012, I started working for the Office Product Management in Konica Minolta. I found my passion very quickly working with our two core technologies, which allows us to integrate software in our devices or customize the Panel based on the customer requirements.

One of them is OpenAPI. What does it mean? Well, it is like the communication between two international people: they only understand each other if they speak the same language and have the same vocabulary. In our world, it means that the Production Printing devices can communicate with many software applications outside the system, if they “speak” the same language.

My programming skills helped me to create, together with my Team Leader and an external agency, nice User displays, which we used to show customers on exhibitions and internal fairs. We created funny displays that were aligned to a cockpit of a helicopter to show the customer what is possible.

In 2015, I was happy to join the International Marketing division, I was responsible for Production Printing devices, and again I was in contact with the core technology for Production Printing, OpenAPI.

After the first months working with and learning more about Production Printing devices, I thought about the possibility to combine the Production Printing devices with one of the two technologies.

Therefore, I searched for use cases that might be helpful for our customers and brings them a real benefit. Before deep diving into this idea, it was necessary to become familiar with the software “AccurioPro Flux” which was the main starting point in streamlining the printing workflow. The idea was to create an APP like on our smartphones for our Production Printing devices.

Time efficiency for our customers was the whole driver for this idea. I immediately contacted one of my colleagues (Achim Ricks) who is responsible for this Software and he was immediately fascinated about the customer’s benefit.

From this date onwards, we tried to find out what really our customers’ requirements are and which functions the App should have. After some meetings, tests and skype calls the day has been there, we showed a running application called Flux Panel. The feedback from the customers was great! This made my colleagues and myself believe in it and fight for it.

The overall message for our sales colleagues and customers was that we had now, for the first time, a complete harmonization of Production Printing hardware and Production Printing software for devices.

You might be asking yourself why I am telling you this story. I want to encourage you, if you have an idea to improve a process in the company or to create totally something new, then try it and believe in it. The time you will spend with the colleagues to bring your idea to reality is motivating and brings great team spirit.