A new machine data driven advisory service by Virtulytix called PAGEpulse provides insight into printing trends and projects growing HP supplies inventory challenge.
Understanding page volume trends is critical to the manufacturers, dealers, and investors in the imaging industry. Supplies account for about 60% (pie chart) of print industry revenue and a higher percentage of profits. The volume of pages printed is the driver of supplies consumption, making it a critical metric for understanding supplies demand.
Worldwide revenue from Virtulytix Market Data and Forecast service
Virtulytix explained: “The industry has struggled to accurately gauge changes in the volume of pages printed for several reasons. First, user reporting of the number of pages they print are notoriously inaccurate making surveys of user page volumes largely ineffective. Users simply don’t know how much they print. Secondly, tracking the sales of supplies into the channel and end-customers is not a good indicator because these supplies often end-up as gradual increases in end-user and reseller supplies inventory, they only indicate purchases – not the demand for print.”
Virtulytix is addressing this problem with a new advisory service called PAGEpulse, which utilises multiple data sources to provide insight into the demand for supplies. One key metric provided by the service is page volumes captured daily from over 35,000 machines. This provides a cross-industry, cross customer sample of data which is extremely accurate and powerful in predicting supplies demand.
Estimate of HP’s Inventory Trends (in Dealers and Consumers locations) based on PAGEpulse data
The PAGEpulse service combines machine data with other sources including dealer page volume trends, financial data, and proprietary forecast models to identify key industry trends. For example, a recent analysis form the PAGEpulse service is projecting that the volume of HP supplies held in the channel and by customers (essentially inventory external to HP) is increasing due to a decline in page volumes (this report is available at this link) on HP devices. The estimate is shown in the graph below.
According to Virtulytix CEO, Ed Crowley, “This new service provides a comprehensive view into the key drivers, trends, and dynamics which are driving page volumes, and subsequently, the demand for supplies.”
