iQLaserpress

iQLaserpress is one of the fastest growing and most successful ‘on-demand’ commercial printers and print finishing companies to have emerged in the last few years.

The company was founded in early 2005 and briefly operated from premises in Farnham, Surrey. Within a year the company moved to a larger building in Guildford and year-on-year growth has seen the company relocate on two further occasions. 

In December 2009 the company moved to a new 14,000 square foot building in Aldershot, Hampshire. With demand for print averaging at 5.5 million A4 copies per month and an annual turnover of £3.5 million, the company is looking for further extensive growth during 2011. iQLaserpress currently employs 35 people across the Group which also includes The BIGiQ, iQCreative and iQCards.

Xeretec has been a supplier to iQLaserpress since the company’s formation, over six years ago. During this time Xeretec has supplied the company with two Xerox Docucolour 5252’s and a DocuColor 8000 machine for colour output, running alongside a monochrome fleet of Xerox Nuvera 288, 120 and 100 models, also supplied by Xeretec. At the time these machines were predominantly used for producing documentation, including textbooks and training manuals.

With a strategy to increase turnover by penetrating new markets with new applications, iQLaserpress invested in their first iGen, the iGen 3 in 2008. This investment paid off for it allowed the company to form iQCards in 2009, a successful arm of the business that produces personalised greetings cards, gift tags and wrapping paper.

Whilst growth is still top of the agenda for iQLaserpress they are fully aware of a fine line that exists between diversifying and being seen as a jack of all trades. 

To support the company’s strategy iQLaserpress has implemented a solid administrative infrastructure and is continually adapting and implementing changes to its overall service to ensure that all of the company’s clients receive the same personal touch no matter how large the company grows.

Why the Xerox iGen 4?

Since investing in the Xerox iGen 3, iQLaserpress had seen a sharp increase in demand for colour volume from both existing and new clients. Whilst iQLaserpress were able to cope with this rise in demand it did mean that any additional surge in incoming orders kept their existing presses working 24/7.

As part of an evaluation process iQLaserpress looked  at a number of devices on the market at that time, confident in the Xerox brand the company did not seek to include the new Xerox iGen 4 in this process. 

Xeretec proposed the Xerox iGen4 as a natural addition to the iQLaserpress fleet.  The iGen4 would provide iQLaserpress with leading edge technology and a solution that would enable the operators to adapt to easily, as they were already familiar with Xerox. An investment of this type would compliment their existing process and seamlessly integrate into their workflow.

iQLaserpress were really happy with the performance of their iGen3 and were aware that the iGen4 had advanced to become a much stronger product than its predecessor.  
 
With Xerox citing a 30% gain in productivity with the iGen 4, iQLaserpress are able to qualify that this statement is by no means an exaggeration as Xerox has essentially removed a number of labour intensive tasks, normally performed by the operator, and put them directly into the iGen engine.

As an investment, iQLaserpress is not only benefitting from the increased productivity and efficiency boost of the iGen 4, it has given the company the opportunity to offer their existing mono clients a full-colour option for a marginal increase in cost.

Extracted from the complete iQLaserpress case study available upon request from Xeretec.