FuturePrint Podcast
FuturePrint is dedicated to and passionate about the power of print technology to enable new opportunities and create new value. This pod features deep-dive discussions with the people behind the tech as well as market analysis, trends, marketing and storytelling!
FuturePrint Podcast
#221 - Intelligent Automation and the Fourth Printing Revolution with HP's Joan Perez-Péricot
In this episode, Marcus is joined for a compelling conversation by Joan Perez-Péricot, the visionary VP and GM of HP's Industrial Print Software and Solutions. With over three decades at HP, Joan offers an insider's perspective on the seismic shifts reshaping printing. We discuss the industry's pivot towards intelligent automation and software solutions amidst global supply chain hurdles and soaring labour costs. Joan's insights into the transition from analogue to digital printing, fueled by e-commerce and web-to-print advancements, provide a insightful look at how the print landscape is evolving.
Discover how AI is already revolutionising the print sector, transforming roles and redefining business strategies. Through strategic partnerships with other global tech giants such as Amazon and Microsoft, HP is poised to create unique AI applications that empower smaller businesses to thrive in a competitive market. We explore how AI enhances decision-making, automates workflows, and improves data visibility, offering transformative insights that heighten production efficiency and solve operational challenges. Joan shares how HP leverages AI resources to develop solutions that not only optimise processes but also drive a strategic shift in the print industry.
Biography
As the VP of Industrial Print Software & Solutions, Joan is responsible to expand HP’s business into SaaS models, drive the Artificial Intelligence strategy and develop the next generation of PrintOS solutions portfolio.
Joan is also VP Industrial Print Strategy and Sustainability, responsible of defining the vision, strategy, and transformation initiatives to accelerate growth, reduce the environmental footprint and increase the overall Industrial Print business growth and profitability.
Prior to this role, Joan was the Graphics Solutions Global Head & General Manager, completing the acquisition of OFS (a workflow automation startup), developing a new SaaS business (Site Flow) and incubating new creator solutions.
Before that, he was the Global Head and General Manager of the Large Format Production business, scaling-up the HP Latex business for signage and decoration, and launching the HP Stitch business for textiles digital printing.
Since 1992 he has been responsible of multiple product developments, the integration of the Scitex, NUR Macroprinters & ColorSpan portfolio after being acquired by HP, and the launch of the disruptive HP Latex technology.
Married with 3 kids, Joan has a degree in mechanical engineering from The School of Industrial Engineering & an MBA from ESADE business school in Barcelona.
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FuturePrint TECH: Industrial Print: 21-22 January '26, Munich, Germany
Welcome to the latest episode of the Future Print Podcast. I think it's the first time I've had this gentleman as a guest, but we just switched having a little preamble chat. We actually know each other a long time back in the day when I joined the print industry, so I'm really happy to have him with us. Today we have Mr Joanne Perez-Péricot, who is VP and General Manager of HP Industrial Print, and I know it's going to be a very insightful and interesting conversation. But welcome to the podcast, John.
Joan Perez-Pericot:Thank you, marcus. It's my pleasure to be here and, just to clarify, I'm the VP and GM of the Industrial Print Software and Solutions business and not the overall Industrial Print.
Marcus Timson:Right, right, yes, sorry, that's an important aspect of the discussion as well, isn't it, and particularly as we go through it. Yeah, absolutely so, joanne. Give us a little bit of introduction about yourself because, like I said, you've kind of you've been a sort of a leader and a face in the industry for quite a while now, and just give a little bit of an introduction as to your background and your experience. That'd be interesting.
Joan Perez-Pericot:Sure. So I have 32 years working in HP, always in print, so I'm kind of a print industry veteran. I started in 1992, in fact running factories as a process engineer, designing production lines and really in the consumer business, especially around the digit, and then I moved into strategy marketing in the large format business. I've been driving the latex business probably since the very beginning, become a general manager of the business. I've been also leading solutions and new business equation. I've been leading a strategy for industrial print and very recently I was appointed by Ham Levitt our SVP, as with this new charter of launching this new software and solutions business that we are very excited about.
Marcus Timson:Yeah, and that's something we're going to talk a lot more about this year. I really noticed that I think everybody did the shift really not away from hardware, but software and intelligent automation of analysis suddenly becoming a real, compelling reality, so just sort of kicking off, I guess. Really sort of we are, you know, in this VUCA world that as a term, we've become to sort of know what that means, and I think clearly it's a challenge. It's putting a lot of stresses and strains on the industry, whether it's supply chain, whether it's difficulty predicting the future, whether it's cost or whatever, and clearly it's adding and maybe accelerating change as well, isn't it? So give us your view on how that's impacting the industry, particularly as we've just gone through a big year for the marketplace, particularly so in Europe. Just give us your view as really sort of the challenge that you see facing your customers, because you've got that kind of breadth of different sectors within the industry that you're very active in.
Joan Perez-Pericot:Indeed, I think the industry is a bit in a very exciting and interesting time and a bit in a turning point. You mentioned the rise of e-commerce, the rise of internet. You mentioned all the supply chain challenges that are disrupting basically how our customers are operating. There is also the labor cost all the difficult to find talent that is driving for a lot of needs in terms of automation and really being more efficient. So there are many. There is also sustainability that this is also forcing all of us to think differently about how we produce things and how we source more locally, more closer to the customers, reducing our carbon footprint. So I think there is a good momentum of many things that are happening and the industry is going through kind of a new era a bit.
Joan Perez-Pericot:If you think on the story of the print industry, it started with Gutenberg back in the 14th century with the analog presses. Since then analog has been really the king, with off-cell, litho, flexography and then in the late 80s, digital printer rise. For the last 20 years digital printing has been really a big revolution and probably the second era of printing. Probably internet has also become a disruptive engine with all the web-to-print, all the e-commerce that really have changed the way customers have been operating and I think we are now facing like a fourth era, that is, the era of what we call intelligent automation on how really the industry is going to see significant change, not maybe necessarily in the printing technology process, but on everything else that is around the printing, how automation will start being much more predominant all across the print workflows.
Joan Perez-Pericot:So that's how we see the moment we are in today and the transition or the new era that is about to start, especially with the power of AI.
Marcus Timson:Yeah, so really it's a number of factors that are aligning at the same time, isn't it? I guess the uncertainty, the changes, the availability of the new technology, and I guess the economic pressure tends to force change through quicker anyway. So, this has obviously led to strategic changes within your business, within HP, and sort of looking ahead really with that, and that's an exciting development for you. Obviously, you're leading that business, so tell us a bit about your vision for that business and explain a bit about the new organization, if you don't mind.
Joan Perez-Pericot:Sure, it always starts with the customers. Okay, we always start with the customers, we always start with the customers and somehow, the more we talk with the customers, it's becoming evident that there are a lot of unresolved challenges still in digital print. I think we have HP, and many other vendors have really helped to take digital printing to the next level. We are doing amazing presses with amazing technology. That really has moved the needle on how digital print has been scaling up. But still today it's only 18-20% of the volume is printed with digital print and the unlock the.
Joan Perez-Pericot:Really what is preventing really digital print to continue growing is not necessarily the technology of the printing itself. It is the challenges that the customers have everywhere else. Customers today are facing tremendous complexities with many different workflows, a lot of manual processes. They are running dozens of software, maybe hundreds of different hardware equipments in the press, in the factory, and nothing is connected, nothing is really interacting and it requires a lot of human power at the end to connect the dots, to plan, to manage, to react to unforeseen situations and to integrate everything into the finishing and into the shipping. So there is still a lot of complexity all across the print production processes. That has not been resolved and that's for us a bit the opportunity to help our customers be more productive, accelerate their growth and unleash the full potential of digital. For us, it's also an opportunity to expand our solution play beyond the hardware. We are playing today in a 5 billion plus opportunity of hardware supply services supply services. We see also software solutions as an adjacency where naturally, we can expand our offering and participate in this approximately $1.5 to $2 billion incremental opportunity that somehow we have. So at the end, the intent is really, on one side, to help our customers accelerate the digital growth and run more efficiently, but also complement our hardware businesses with this adjacency in the software and solutions. That we believe is a good opportunity for us to play.
Joan Perez-Pericot:And what's our vision on this? I think we want to really be very central around artificial intelligence. We believe artificial intelligence has the power to transform digital printing as we know it today and somehow, when we talk about our vision, the example we put is that we would like to become like the ways of print. Ways is a technology that has made driving very simple and somehow our vision is to make digital printing extremely simple and simplify the complexities of digital print developing like a Waze experience, and this is not just about automation, it's about dynamic automation.
Joan Perez-Pericot:Intelligent automation Waze not only tells you how to go from A to B. If there is a construction in a road or a problem or a traffic jam, it will change the plan and route you through a different way. So this concept of intelligent automation, this concept of dynamically being able to change on the spot, reacting to changes to problems, to machine down towns, to last minute orders, is very, very important because precisely is where the complexity is today. It's not about the simple things or the easy paths. It's about the complexity of the unforeseen that customers are managing today, that we can help to resolve. So that's a bit our vision on how we are trying to use not just software and solutions but AI to really transform industrial print.
Marcus Timson:Yeah, and it's becoming an acute problem, isn't it? For production across the world really, is that disruption and that uncertainty? Sometimes it's even as deep as not having the right people to do the jobs. So that sort of skill shortage as well is an issue, and I guess that really tackles a number of problems. But overall, the exciting thing by the sound of it to me is it's about empowering production leaders with highly intelligent tools that will. I mean, does it lead to higher profit gains, or it leads to being able to deliver more efficiently, or all of it? And AI is among that as well. That's maybe a different question. The next one I'll explain a bit more about AI, but I guess, is this already something you're doing or is it something that you see doing more and more in the future?
Joan Perez-Pericot:So I think it's exactly this. No, we're trying to empower print leaders and print companies to unleash the full potential of digital print.
Joan Perez-Pericot:No, and this is something that, yes, we are already doing. We already are using artificial intelligence in many of our devices and many cases we have examples. For instance, in terms of image recognition. We have already systems today that are scanning the images and detecting quality errors with more precision than the human eyes. So we are already using in servicing, in print operations, many examples of AI since many, many years. What I think is different now is the concept of generative AI and how really we can take AI to the next level to provide a completely different experience of how the press operators interact with the systems, but also how the production managers can run the factory, how the business owners can understand their business, or how the technical teams can run the maintenance on the equipment, etc. So there are many, many different applications where the concept of generative AI, building on top of all the other technologies that we have, brings a lot of potential that we can use.
Joan Perez-Pericot:And it sounds to me like this is a strategic thing not a kind of tactical production advantage, it's an enterprise-wide impact that you're looking at overall is making ai as a central part of their strategy and and that's something very good for us at industrial print because we can leverage the big efforts hp is doing in terms of ai, not just in terms of the agents or the solutions of the applications, but in terms of the infrastructure to manage ai. You know the, the, the platforms, the, the data, the AI ML platforms. Probably a small business is not able to really have the funding or the capacity to invest on those things, so we can really leverage the investments that the big HP is doing to provide a more verticalized solution in industrial print. That really is very helpful to develop our solutions.
Joan Perez-Pericot:So that gives us a bit of a competitive edge or an advantage that probably other companies don't have because we can leverage the big brother of HP and really tune the applications and the AI and the disruption to the vertical industrial print industry.
Marcus Timson:Yeah, and it's that visibility to data as well, isn't it in terms of, you know, printers now need to, not just because they print, they need to be able to. Kind of it's not just about production facility, they've got to really understand how to control their business in one way and how to, you know, leverage that data, solve production issues, keep production flow going, delivery it's end to end, isn't it? It's kind of like if they haven't got a grip on that, it's really sort of a massive disadvantage in affecting the kind of pricing everything. Really, it's kind of really important, isn't it? It's fundamental, almost it is of really important, isn't it? It's fundamental?
Joan Perez-Pericot:almost it is, and also we need to acknowledge that there is a lot of hype on AI and it's a term that really is very abused. I will say today that everybody's talking about and not really understanding, maybe totally, what it takes to get there and how it can impact the business. Our approach is really again, starting by the customer, starting by the different personas within the customer. It's not the same what a production manager needs, that maybe a press operator or the business owner or the different people, and we are really trying to focus on what are the specific use cases for each one of the personas. For instance, if you think on an operator, ai can help to drastically change the way the operator interacts with the press. Today it's just some buttons and maybe, if there is a problem, you need to go to the press guide or call support to ask questions. What if you could interact with the press? What if you could ask questions to the press or send instructions or ask the press how to resolve a problem or how to do certain maintenance operation, etc. So we have all this information today, we have all the press data, we have all the product documentation and now we have the natural languages and the generative AI. So it's just about putting all the pieces together to completely disrupt the experience on how an operator can run the press, if you think on the production manager, for instance, we have SiteFlow today.
Joan Perez-Pericot:It's a great solution of workflow automation that contains a ton of information about orders, jobs, status, etc.
Joan Perez-Pericot:And we provide not just the automation but a lot of data.
Joan Perez-Pericot:What if we could take it to the next level and using again these kind of agents to help the production manager understand where are their orders, where a specific order from a brand is going to achieve, what has happened with something that has been a problem, where is this bottleneck or how to improve the production efficiency and what areas maybe can be opportunities for improvement?
Joan Perez-Pericot:So there is a lot of things that we can think of leveraging the data we have either in the production floor or in the press, or even later on in the finishing, to really bring value to the users. And even you can think of the business owner. If you start really collecting all the data on cost, on prices, on lead times, on efficiency, you can also start providing more business information about customer value, about customer profitability, about many things inside that can help the business to improve. That's a bit how we are thinking on this, how we can really become transformational in the way we assist and we support the factory and the print processes end-to-end so really it's quite mind-blowing what the potential of this is for improving productivity, improving decision-making as well, right?
Marcus Timson:So it's not just a functional thing, it's actually can be used on in a number of ways. And what you were saying there persona so you're developing a persona for production manager, a different one for an operation manager, a different one for a business owner. That all links together in one kind of um loop, which um, which is hugely exciting with ai then. So obviously we're all unless somebody has been hiding under rock we're all pretty aware of chat, gbt and large language models. I think Copilot, microsoft, that's one type of AI. How's that work within the work you do, is it? You know? Are you developing the ai yourselves and then you're developing it to do specific things, and so it's very much an hp ai kind of strategy, and you have the developers there that that develop the language and and get this thing to work. Is that, is that how you're pulling this together?
Joan Perez-Pericot:so in the world of an ai, you have horizontal players and vertical players. Amazon, microsoft you mentioned Google are all horizontal players that provide somehow the generic tools, the infrastructure and general purpose kind of AI. What we are doing is more a vertical implementation of the AI. So what we are developing is models leveraging all this infrastructure that both those companies provide. We are a good partner, for instance, we are a great partner of Amazon Web Services. That's where we are building basically many of the solutions on.
Joan Perez-Pericot:But also we are leveraging the HP platforms in terms of security, in terms of customer management, onboarding so many things that we put on top of Amazon services that really are unique to HP. And then what we do is really we develop the models that are tuned for our industry. With our process data, with our customers' jobs data, we can really develop and train the models that are very specialized and very unique to the printing industry that they are not covered with this more kind of horizontal approach. So it's not that we are using different, radically different tools or technology. We are using all the leading-edge technology that is available. It's more how we are really focusing on industrial print and develop a solution that really is targeted for our industry. That's the uniqueness, somehow, that we have.
Marcus Timson:Yeah, very much from a strategic level. Give us a because obviously you HP Give us a because obviously you HP has strong positions in a number of sectors packaging, labels, commercial print and wide format and this is a strategy that would be potentially applicable to all. Do you see it being more acute and more needed in, maybe in faster moving sectors? What's your view on that? Is there a priority you're applying to sectors?
Joan Perez-Pericot:I think that's a very good question because we live indeed in a complex market with many sub-segments and you can talk in commercial. You can talk about publishing in general commercial. You can talk about direct mail. You can talk about transactional. You can talk about publishing in general commercial. You can talk about direct mail. You can talk about transactional, talk about labels, about corrugated, about folding cartons.
Joan Perez-Pericot:So there is a lot of sub-segments somehow in the industry where each one has a bit of a different ecosystem in terms of the solutions, the uniqueness of each one of the of the segments, and also is probably in a different level of adoption of digital printing. Some some industry, like general commercial printing are well advanced in terms of analog to digital conversion and digital penetration. Some others, like like maybe corvated or four link cartons, are still behind and probably will take still 10 years until they really start to scale up. So we see our play very connected to digital printing. So what we want to take is digital printing to the next level. So naturally our starting segments are going to be the ones that somehow are more advanced in digital printing today, especially in commercial maybe labels also.
Joan Perez-Pericot:But especially commercial is where we are starting and leveraging also the solutions we have today.
Joan Perez-Pericot:We have amazing solutions with the PrintOS PowerPacks that give us a ton of data.
Joan Perez-Pericot:We are sitting on 10 years of data based on the solutions that really we can use to train our AI and really build on top of those solutions the experience of the agent and the intelligence assistants. And also we are sitting on Sideflow. That is an amazing workflow automation solution we have today in commercial. Progressively we'll take it also to labels and packaging that give us also a ton of information about job management, about job processing, about workflows, about scheduling, about planning, about order management that we can again take not just to improve the solution but also to provide this kind of agent. So we are sitting on a solid foundation and naturally we'll start probably focusing more in the commercial markets where digital adoption has been more prominent, but our aim is really to cover all the segments progressively. So also labels and packaging is going to be a big focus in our terms of both the solutions development but also the AI that will come after after yes, you have such a strong presence in the market as a really sort of a market leader, really on your own.
Marcus Timson:Let's be fair, that is the case. So you have a strong market presence and that means that you've got the channels and access and so on. If somebody's so, obviously you've got hardware and now software and that's fantastic for a customer because they're getting the best of both worlds, how does it work? If somebody's thinking, oh, hp, I haven't worked with HP before, I guess is that fairly? I mean, you wouldn't have the data on them and that, but maybe they've got a bunch of other machines and that. How do you deal with that, them and that? But maybe they've got a bunch of other machines and that. How do you deal with that? Is that sort of like you know, make it more complex or difficult for them, or not?
Joan Perez-Pericot:I guess we like to think on HP as the partner for growth for our customers. We are not just a hardware vendor. We are not here to sell you a press or to sell you a software. We really are here to partner, to help to take your business to the next level and really help you grow your business with digital print, no matter if it's in commercial, in labels, no matter if maybe you are a commercial customer that want to expand into new segments.
Joan Perez-Pericot:And we provide a lot of things, not just the press.
Joan Perez-Pericot:We provide education, training, we provide community with the scope we provide.
Joan Perez-Pericot:So it's not just about innovation and technology, it's also about all the direct sales and the support that we provide to really help our customers grow.
Joan Perez-Pericot:And now, basically, we are opening a new chapter where we want to help our customers not just with the press and the printing, we want to help our customers with the workflow. And that's why we are also not just forming this new organization and developing new software and solutions that you will see soon in the market, building on the current side flow and the current print OS solutions we have, but also we are investing in solution consultants that can help our customers with customizations, with integrations, with workflow assessments and really how we can help our customers to really understand better the challenges they have today and how we can help them to improve, either with our solutions or with third-party solutions. But really we can help a lot on really providing this roadmap about how to help a lot on really providing this roadmap about how to we call it an automation journey, how customers can move progressively in the automation journey to become more efficient and scale up the growth. So we are here to help.
Marcus Timson:Yeah, I like that word journey, and I think I know you're also very committed to sustainability too, and I would imagine a lot of this work goes hand in hand with that, doesn't it? I mean, it must be about optimization, which is only good for sustainability and helping people really understand their numbers, right totally.
Joan Perez-Pericot:Yeah, we really believe a big impact in terms of making this industry more sustainable is digital printing.
Joan Perez-Pericot:No, it's how we can move from the waste that analog generates and shipping things from the Far East to a more local, on-demand digital printing technology Solutions also should help to accelerate and unleash the potential of digital printing and take it to the next level that will have a massive impact on the sustainability.
Joan Perez-Pericot:Besides this, we are also measuring our footprint, trying to really compensate, decarbonize, not just on the hardware, on the supplies, but also on the software all across. We are also very conscious of our footprint and we have the mission, as you know, to continually reduce our scope one, scope two and scope three sustainability impact. In fact, we have just launched the amplifier program, where we offer our print service providers the opportunity to do a self-assessment and really understand where are they today, and we propose a lot of trainings, tools and a roadmap on really how they can progressively improve and improve their sustainability or carbon footprint and sustainability impact, and we even give certifications and somehow awards to the customers that are really successful in this journey. So we launch it now. We already have many customers going through the journey and it's something we are very proud because it can help us together to decarbonize the industry, in joint forces with our PSPs. Definitely.
Marcus Timson:And so, looking ahead, I suppose we're sort of at the beginning of 25, definitely.
Marcus Timson:And so, looking ahead, I suppose we're sort of the beginning of 25, and 24 was a big year and very, very busy year, I know, for you, and this strategy that you've been developing isn't something you've developed in a couple of ways, so you've really been building up, and last year was a great year really to assess what's happening in the industry, what the kind of with your massive presence of truth, what the kind of things your massive presence at Drupa, what the kind of things perhaps you learn, or was it more a process of validation that what you experienced at Drupa really was? Whatever way we look at it, the visitor numbers were massively down, but it was still a the best way to look at the entire print industry really in a live format. What, what your sort of takeaways from from that? And then, looking ahead, did it really say to you do you know this strategy is perfect, this is exactly what's needed? What kind of thoughts did drupa give you? Or or or ideas, or or um learnings?
Joan Perez-Pericot:I think drupa has been very reassuring no on on what, what we see and how we are taking the strategy and the action of travel overall that we have in industrial print. I think there was a great reception of the new product interactions that we have launched, both in commercial and in labels and packaging, both in Injet and in Indigo in the electrophotography. So I think it has been very reassuring on our plans, on our investments and how, basically, we are taking it to the next level. But especially, if there is one thing that really has come very, very clear, is this need for automation, is this need to go beyond the press, is this need to really start tackling the problems at a bigger level, at a bigger scope and somehow being more serious about software and solutions as a key element for the success of our customers.
Joan Perez-Pericot:And that's something I think has been also very reassuring to see and something we are putting a lot of investment and a lot of focus by creating this new organization complementing the hardware businesses, but that somehow we cannot pretend Digital Print to grow just by focusing on the hardware.
Joan Perez-Pericot:We really need to go on an end-to-end approach and somehow tackle the complexities that our customers are having end-to-end. So this has become also extremely clear, and that's what we are here for to really partner with the best-in-class vendors that we have, both in terms of software and hardware, to really build what we call this intelligent automation platform that's our vision of the future that really can help connect all the dots in the factory and leverage the data and the connectivity to build this intelligence all across that can help our customers to really drive automation to the next level. We really believe that this move can help to accelerate digital print and make our customers growing more efficiently and in a simpler way. I think customers today are facing a tremendous complexity and they're really desperate for new type of solutions that help them to streamline their production processes Absolutely.
Marcus Timson:There's that complexity in terms of delivery isn't there, but I guess another component of that complexity is ultimately as we discussed in a previous podcast really was the changing consumer behavior and brands are. You know how important really I guess it should be really for the, the general printing industry, to really understand that and, you know, connecting with brands is really important, isn't it?
Joan Perez-Pericot:totally. I, I think, uh, there is a big change on the demand that our customers are facing, if you think, for instance, on the impact that e-commerce is having. Psps, maybe 10 years ago, were mostly analog, were receiving maybe a dozen of orders a day. They had lead times of maybe several weeks or even months, so life was relatively simple months. So life was relatively simple. Not today, ecommerce is booming. They are connected to digital platforms or digital or content platforms or digital brands they have. They are receiving, instead of those enough orders. They are receiving hundreds or thousands of hundreds of thousands orders in big season of very, very short runs, or products of thousands. Orders in peak season of very, very short runs, or products of one, maybe working directly, even with consumers lead times of maybe 48 or even 24 hours. So this is creating a tremendous stress in the factory of managing hundreds of thousands of orders with delivery times of hours. That really is very, very complex to manage.
Joan Perez-Pericot:There is also a lot of problems still happening on the connection between brands and PSPs. There is no standardization, there is no common catalogs, there is integrations, take a lot of time to do, are costly and every time a PSP was with a new brand or a new brand is looking to expand into a new country or a new area. The complexity is very high. We have the example of Canva. We are helping Canva really to develop their print network for digital printing and we're trying to streamline the connections and really accelerate the setup and time to market that they have, but also provide a whole different level of information, of data, of intelligence on how to route the orders, how to really understand the status of the orders all across the supply chain.
Joan Perez-Pericot:So there is a lot of opportunities to create value both for the brands and the PSPs by connecting the dots and being the technology player that helps to unify the industry. Let me clarify here we intend not to intermediate. We don't want to be a marketplace. We don't want to be really in the middle between the PSP and the brand. What we want to be is the technology provider that makes things easy, that makes seamless integrations and that really creates value by the interconnection of the brand and PSP. At the end, our aim is to increase digital printing, and how we can help brands to drive digital printing to our PSPs at the end is our main focus. So we see a lot of value, not just for the print service providers, but also can help brands that really want to scale up digital by managing their supply chain in a much, much seamless way and much more automated way.
Marcus Timson:Yeah, it's about helping them learn the potential and power that isn't probably something that's obvious to them from where they're sitting. So it's fascinating stuff, john, I think you know obviously it's been a big year. And looking at 25, looking ahead, how do you see things? Just to finish off, how do you see things panning out? Ai just accelerates things so much, doesn't it? How do you sort of see the future? Do you see it sort of continual acceleration of change and technological development. It's exciting, but also some people are a bit frightened by that, aren't they?
Joan Perez-Pericot:I think if there is one trend that really is more significant than anyone else is that the pace of change is accelerating. I mean, you see the and it's due of the combination of technologies happening at the same time. The technology eruptions happen at the same time. You call it is internet, mobile cloud, now it's AI. When all those things are coming together, the ratio of change just accelerates and the possibilities are endless.
Joan Perez-Pericot:So I think we need to get used to that need to really be at the edge of the technology and continuously start monitoring and adopting the new technology that can help them to really be more efficient, because if you stop doing that, at the end you will be lagging behind and there are many newcomers that will take the new technologies and disrupt the market as it is today. So it's a continuous marathon that never ends, but it's also an exciting one that gives the opportunity to transform the businesses, to transform the companies and really continuously growing and being more efficient and really serving better our customers and the customers of our customers. So I think it's exciting times to really be connected with all these technology innovations, and HP is very proud to be always at the leading edge of innovation and trying to help our customers, making the technology easy and making this transition as simple as possible.
Marcus Timson:Yeah, I think the thing that's changed that I've noticed with software and user interfaces, which is the, you don't need to be adept at coding, it's about understanding, it's intuition. These things are not necessarily difficult to operate, are they so cleverly designed and intuitive to use. So, yeah, I'm sure that would be the case with your systems. Really interesting discussion, really exciting. I think the possibilities clearly are hugely compelling, whether you're a business owner on a strategic level, but also an operator on the more of a production level. I think the um, the fact is that sea change I saw this year is a real one, isn't it? And for all the factors you've mentioned, we do live in a vocal world which, on the one hand, can be quite stressful.
Marcus Timson:But if you have the technological capability and actually it's the open-mindedness as well I talk about I think the industry needs a new operating system. My new operating system is a bit more about how you think and how you behave, whereas it actually sounds like what you're developing. There is actually a new operating system that will empower somebody with the open-mindedness and the passion and enthusiasm for the future to really take control of their business and really build something enthusiasm for the future, to really take control of their business and really build something special for the future. So I think you know credit to you and HP for creating this new business. Thank you for joining us, john, because it's fascinating to hear. I'm really excited about how it develops and personally understanding a bit more about the AI and how that's so clever and so exciting, and I just think you know that's what you're saying. It's the next stage for the print industry, isn't it? It's the next evolution, and evolution is a good thing, right.
Joan Perez-Pericot:It's definitely. I would think. We call this new operating system you are talking about, we call it intelligent automation.
Joan Perez-Pericot:Okay that's for us. For us really how we envision that we are super excited of this journey and how we can help our customers really to do amazing and unleash the full potential of digital prim. And I also will say look, if we want to look what's coming, come to the Scope, and we have plans to start unleashing some of the new solutions, some of the new AI capabilities in the Scope this year. So I think that will be a good opportunity to start seeing live some of the things we have been talking about. Okay, so very, very exciting year ahead of us and I really cannot wait to get there.
Marcus Timson:Yeah, so where is DeScoop?
Joan Perez-Pericot:this year it's going to be in Long Beach this year.
Marcus Timson:OK, sounds nice and I think that that's key, isn't it? Learning? Yeah, be prepared to learn new things. It's exciting and really sort of freeing yourself from how we used to think and embracing the new potential. So thanks for joining us again, really fascinating. Looking forward to seeing and learning more about it and have a fantastic 2025 and D Scoop in Long Beach, and thank you for joining us.
Joan Perez-Pericot:Thank you, marcus, for the time and opportunity, and happy new year too.
