The three day event also saw the annual Oce-sponsored Nippa Awards given to the inplants producing the best work during the year, with the University of Southern Queensland and Massey University taking top honours in number of Awards.
Nippa also honoured two of its leading lights, with former president David Harrison and former vice president Martin Booth being awarded Lifetime Membership Awards.
As corporations, educational institutes, hospitals and others who have traditionally had an inplant come under increasing pressure to focus on core competency and outsource everything else, the inplant printing department is often seen as an easy cost to take out.
The conference gained a thorough understanding of the way outsource companies talk to management and try to persuade them to close their implants, delivered by John Kirk, who was inplant manager at law firm Clayton UTZ until ironically he lost his job due to reorganisation four weeks ago.
Barbara Nitis from Otago University in Dunedin heartened delegates as she recounted how she had turned around the university’s inplant in the last four years when closure was on the cards, mainly through focusing on customer service, with the result that growth is now running at 37 per cent.
However the biggest cheer of the event went to Gavin Williamson of the Chisholm Tafe, as he told the story of the college outsourcing in2002, then creating an inplant again five years later, and which has seen its turnover double every year since.
Overseas speakers included Lisa Hoover from a US University who highlighted the preferable stats her university achieved through direct mail as opposed to email, and Andrew Scott from Glasgow University, who described how his inplant has grown in recent years.
Nippa president, Karen Birch says, “The Nippa conference is a vital and valuable opportunity for inplant managers to share their experiences, their concerns and their successes. This year has been no exception.”
A mini exhibition ran alongside the conference, with Oce, Konica Minolta, Ricoh, HP, KW Doggett and Renz Masterbind among those with booths.
