Michelle Ryder discusses the industry changes both in terms of technology and customer needs, and what David has witnessed over the past ten years
Like many long-serving industry people – myself included – Smith’s career in the print sector began when fax was the next big thing. He first joined the sector in 1988, working alongside print territory sales reps but specialising in the early days of fax machines.
“It just so happened that the postal strike hit just after starting and the world went crazy for fax,” he explained.
When asked about what it was that attracted him to the print sector, Smith said: “To be honest I was drawn by being master of my own destiny, the attractiveness of working a large geographical patch, and getting my first ever company car!”
Moving into marketing
When at school, Smith’s holiday jobs included marking targets for rifle shooting at Bisley ranges – which couldn’t be further away from what he does now in terms of driving marketing excellence.
His career highlights include working in competitive marketing for International Computers Limited (ICL). “I focused on analysing strengths and weaknesses versus key competitors like IBM, DEC, Wang, Burroughs, Sperry and Honeywell,” he said. This was at the very birth of the personal computer (IBM’s Charlie Chapman global campaign), the heyday of ‘office automation’ with Wang, and mainframe and mini systems such as the DEC Vax PDP 11, IBM’s 3090 mainframe (code named Sierra).
“ICL had just introduced a product that they called the ‘One Per Desk’. I wrote some research about the foreign content of IBM products used in the UK public sector and it caused a debate in Parliament about inward investment versus UK money going abroad,” Smith shared.
Evolving go-to-market
Reflecting on changes in go-to-market strategy over the past decade Smith said: “ Looking back to early 2013 in managed print there continued to be a large focus on consolidation. The A3 vendors were attacking the distributed A4 printers and driving centralisation as much as possible. And capturing pages onto larger devices drove the adoption of secure pull printing.”
He continued: “With the advent of the pandemic and offices being left empty, offices full of unused large copiers was the norm. Many went to
buy distributed devices for home use, whilst others just stopped printing. Today, secure pull printing is a given, flexible estates with distributed and centralised devices is more common, and many have also focused on building cloud-based infrastructures to give them future-proof capabilities.”
Smith asserts that with lower print volumes fast becoming the status quo within the MPS sector, diversification has been a must. “Today a wider IT portfolio of offerings has delivered greater stability and less reliance on an infrastructure typically associated with well-populated office spaces,” he said.
Changing customer needs
Smith believes that customers are looking for a supplier with solidity and capability in print, whilst taking into account the additional services they can deliver. “They are much more amenable to exploring cloud-based infrastructure, and many manifest a ‘mood for change’ from any supplier who has been less than supportive during the lockdown days.
“We are also seeing a big push to demonstrate leadership from a sustainability perspective and evidence of eco-credentials for products and services,” he added.
Change is exciting
For Smith, change is the thing that excites him most about the future. “The world of work has seen quite some shift in terms of its resilience to cope with unforeseen impacts, and this has driven adoption of different ways to communicate, work and conduct business.
“Equipping the workforce with appropriate tools for the long-term rather than an emergency measure brings opportunity to provide customers with better intelligence in how IT is being used, and providing best practice advice helps differentiate and deliver value,” he concluded.
