Check printing appears to be a very lucrative business

Well, I say this because I recently had to reorder checks and the cost of my reorder – for 300 pages (of 3 checks on a page) was around $90.00.  A page of three checks, size-wise, is a bit less than an 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper.  If I subtract the cost of the box and UPS charges, the cost of the checks came to, say, around $80.00.  Divide $80.00 by 300 (sheets), and you arrive at the math that each printed sheet cost approximately $0.267.

Compare that to what you get – per page – for printing a spec book. !!!%#$%&!!!

Deluxe Corporation, I think, is the largest U.S. printer of checks.  Last year (2013) Deluxe (NYSE: DLX) reported sales of $1.584 billion and pre-tax income of $186.65 million, around 11.7% pre-tax.  Not bad, huh.

CEO Lee Schram pulled down a bit more than $3.1 million in compensation last year (per Reuters.com).

Check out the graph in this article and see Blog Publisher's Comment

TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 2014

New Home Sales at 440,000 Annual Rate in February

The first graph shows New Home Sales vs. recessions since 1963. The dashed line is the current sales rate.

Read the full article at this link:

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2014/03/new-home-sales-at-440000-annual-rate-in.html

Blog Publisher’s Comment:

When I looked at the first chart/graph that appears in this article, I said to myself, “hmmm, the zig-zag red-line in this chart appears to mirror gross revenues achieved by the total of all firms in the reprographics business in the U.S.”  Well, not in dollars, maybe, but the trend-line. 

I got into the reprographics business in 1970.  We experienced a downturn in sales in 73-74.  We did not experience a downturn in sales in 79-82, but that’s because we were actively involved in acquisitions and mergers; those acquisitions and mergers boosted our sales.  We sold our business in 1988, so I missed out on the downturn in sales from 89-91 (but my former company did not miss out on that downturn; its sales plunged.)  I got back into the business in 1997, rock and roll times for the next 10 years.  But, I missed out on the incredible downturn that started in 2007; we sold our company in December 2007.

For those of you who’ve been in the reprographics business since the 60’s or 70’s, reflect back on your annual sales and sales trends and compare your historical results to the red line in that chart.

There’s simply no need to print anymore (??? !!!)

From the EADOC Blog

Printing And Paper Pushing: Fuel To The Fire Of Inefficiency In Construction

The construction industry is one of few industries that hasn’t experienced significant productivity gains in the last decade. In fact, construction productivity is actually on the decline according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), to the tune of a whopping $19.2 billion in efficiency losses per year.

Why? A lack of technology adoption and inefficient hard-copy paper pushing is among the top 3 contributors. Thankfully, the cost of lagging technology is probably the easiest to reclaim. We are all concerned with project cost, but in a manner of speaking, our budgets are consistently being busted by that rotund machine in the corner. It’s not the cost of the machine, paper or ink that will sink our budgets, but the labor inefficiencies that it fuels. Remove that fuel from the job site and watch bottom lines improve.

Read the rest of this blog post by clicking on this link:

http://blog.eadocsoftware.com/2014/03/fuel-fire-of-inefficiency-in-construction/

Holmbergs (Sweden) and Allkopi (Norway) drop mention of any connection to or with Service Point Solutions

Enough said.  See for yourself:

www.allkopi.no

www.holmbergs.com

Kenesto offers cloud-based project collaboration and workflow management solution for A/E/C

Inside the most recent AECBytes newsletter, Dr. Khemiani profiles Kenesto.

Lachmi Khemlani is founder and editor of AECbytes. She has a Ph.D. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, specializing in intelligent building modeling, and consults and writes on AEC technology. She can be reached at lachmi@aecbytes.com.

Here’s her lead-in to the profile of Kenesto’s cloud-based project collaboration and workflow management solution for firms in the A/E/C Industry:

Project Collaboration and Review

“I recently came across a new cloud-based project collaboration and workflow management solution, Kenesto, that helps companies organize, manage and collaborate around their project information, including files, tasks, business processes, and other related data. It is intended to serve several different industries, of which the AEC industry is a key one. Given that there are so many collaboration solutions and platforms already available for the AEC industry, what makes Kenesto different is the way it uses the cloud to enable companies to work and collaborate in new and more effective ways across their teams, enterprises and value chains.”

To read the rest of her comments about Kenesto's solution, click on this link, then scroll down in the newsletter until you reach the words, “Project Collaboration and Review”:

http://www.aecbytes.com/newsletter/2014/issue_68.html

You can read more about Kenesto’s solution for A/E/C firms by clicking on this link:

http://www.kenesto.com/industries