Subscription-based printing, instant ink deliveries for home businesses and workers
SMALL home businesses need not worry about running out of ink with HP Inc’s (HP) subscription-based printing service, which can also be tapped by telecommuting employees and households.
The app-based service detects when the customer’s linked printer is running low and automatically requests a replacement cartridge, which is promptly delivered to their doorstep. The same HP Smart mobile app can also be used to monitor print output and cost.
Such ink-monitoring and replacement services are already provided in HP’s corporate packages for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and larger companies. But Instant Ink fills a gap in the market by serving smaller home businesses and those who work from home, said managing director of HP Singapore, Vivian Chua.
Previously available in Australia and many parts of North America and Europe, with some 10 million users across the world, Instant Ink came to Singapore this March, making the island one of its first Asian markets.
The subscription ranges from S$1.90 for 10 pages to S$36.90 for 700 pages a month, with customers able to choose from different price bands based on their printing volume, Chua noted. “It’s just like having a family package on Spotify versus an individual package – it’s very similar. We leave it so flexible that you can change on the fly.”
“Think of Instant Ink like a video-streaming service, it’s on demand,” she said. “What we really want to do is provide that convenience, flexibility, as well as the option to the customer to be sustainable.”
Recycling is one part of this sustainability drive. In what HP terms “closed loop cartridge recycling”, used ink cartridges are collected and used to make new ones.
This is in line with the circular economy model of production – where consumption involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products – and contrasts with the ‘take-make-waste’ linear model of doing business.
Instant Ink subscribers receive postage-paid recycling envelopes in their cartridge delivery boxes, which they can fill with used cartridges and leave it on their riser or mailbox. These envelopes are then collected during the next delivery.
Many households may not know how to be sustainable, even if they are interested in it, Chua pointed out. Instant Ink’s recycling service makes it easy: “It’s very seamless. You don’t really have to do a lot of things just to be sustainable.”
Another sustainable aspect of Instant Ink is that it cuts down on some of the many touchpoints for ink cartridges – factories, ships, ports, warehouses, partner outlets, retail stores – and reduces “a lot of the delivery food chain”, thereby shrinking HP’s carbon footprint, Chua noted.
Instant Ink can also be more “sustainable” for wallets. Based on HP’s research, conducted with US analyst firm Keypoint Intelligence, Instant Ink could help users save up to 50 per cent on the cost of original HP ink.
When printing in large volumes, Instant Ink cartridges can be comparatively cheaper. And since the service charges on a per-page basis, even a page which requires a high amount of ink incurs the same base price, Chua explained.
“For a very long time, HP has been more focused on the experience people get versus the product,” she said.
Innovation at the core
Still, HP has kept innovating on the product front too. In 1984, it was producing print heads with 12 nozzles; today, its print heads can have up to 60,000 nozzles each.
One key contributor to the company’s innovations is its research arm, HP Labs, which was created in 1966, said HP’s global chief technology officer and global head of HP Labs, Tolga Kurtoglu.
“The labs played a pivotal role in enabling business transformation by way of science and technology,” he told The Business Times during a March visit to Singapore.
Kurtoglu said that HP’s strategy for sustainable growth over the next 10 years involves focusing on product innovation to maintain its market leadership in its 2 core areas: print and personal systems.
HP Labs, on the other hand, looks at longer time horizons. It invests in early stage technology, explores new markets outside its core businesses, and also incubates new business units after research and development.
Digital manufacturing, microfluidics – technologies that study the behaviour of fluids such as those in printer ink – and cybersecurity are three key areas of focus for HP now, Kurtoglu said.
One of the ways HP Labs advances its innovation agenda is through partnerships, with its biggest academic partnership being with Nanyang Technological University, Kurtoglu noted. The HP-NTU Digital Manufacturing Corporate Lab has about 125 staff and works with about 75 NTU researchers.
“We’ve been in Singapore 52 years now,” he said. “Over the years, we developed a good relationship with key innovation stakeholders in the Singapore innovation ecosystem.”
With Singapore acting as the greater-Asia headquarters for HP, the company continues to see it as an important hub not just for its core business but also for technology, innovation and future growth, he added.
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