In an exclusive video series with Epson, Michelle Ryder explored how resellers are utilising decades of industry expertise to optimise the new balanced deployment of print, along with some of the key challenges facing both dealers and vendors, including the increasing accountability businesses are taking the environment
Read on for an excerpt of the conversations with SOS Group, Certa MPS and KRL Group
John Behan, Managing Director, SOS Group
John Behan, Managing Director, SOS Group said that addressing customers’ requirements around sustainability and value for money, are among the key challenges facing dealers today.
“Most of the challenges revolve around sustainability, customers are far more aware of that question. Value for money is always the case, unfortunately, in a lot of cases that translates into cheap, but they claim value for money. And since the pandemic, there’s been a huge sea change in working and working styles, so they’re probably the key issues that we face at this point,” he explained.
Speaking about how print vendors can help dealers to address these challenges, Behan said that SOS Group’s experience has been that the vendors they partner with have been (within reason) as flexible as they can be. He mentioned new initiatives and new technologies – such as heat-free and the sustainability messaging, as key to helping them to differentiate by demonstrating what print fleet renewals can and should look like going forward.
Changing customer requirements
Changing customer requirements are driving change in terms of how print fleets are proposed, deployed and optimised on an ongoing basis. “The changing working environment, the hybrid office, for example, has driven a need and requirement for print and scan for users, but they’re in a home office environment. So, size can be critical, along with performance and indeed energy-saving, given the increase in energy costs,” he explained, adding: “Then, when we move back into the office environment, where previously, large spaces were basically packed full of desks, now you’ve got a lot more breakout spaces, you’ve got a lot more dissemination of where people are sitting and are working from, to segregate the workforce – not in a negative way, but to ensure that there is a little bit more separation of duty and things of that nature.”
Behan then spoke about the new balanced deployment of print. “We now need to change the style of how we function. So, where we were previously all printing or scanning from and to a single large multifunctional device, it has become a much greater separated fleet purpose and fleet need. And that probably is one of the largest single drivers that we see today.”
Balanced deployment
According to Behan, balanced deployment requires understanding customer needs and wants, he said that conducting a scoping exercise and data analysis are crucial for deployment success.
“It’s important to conduct a correct scoping exercise and use customers’ own data to help them understand what they are printing, where they’re printing it from and what are the demands of that print. There has always been a much greater print volume of A4 than A3. But people like us and all the vendors have traditionally pushed A3 devices.
“Those trends are reversing. Again, going back to what I said about size, space, scope and needs. So, all of those aspects being as I’ve said, correctly identified and correctly scoped give a much more sensible approach to a true balanced deployment, as opposed to, well, you just need ten of device type A,” he concluded.
George Baker, Managing Director, KRL Group
George Baker, Managing Director, KRL Group spoke about the impact of changing customer requirements on print fleet deployments and in particular how younger employees are now driving decision-making and proactively requesting information on the environmental impact of print solutions.
Baker said that the need to protect the planet is driving change and fast. “Most of our customers are now looking to achieve a carbon footprint saving. And more and more when we go to
see people and start talking about what we can save them in power usage and carbon footprint [with the Epson heat-free offering] – people are actually lighting up. Whereas in the past it would have been oh, they’re here to see me about a photocopier, not something that anyone really wants to talk about!”
Purchasing power has shifted
Baker said that previously, print purchasing would be agreed with the office manager or the IT Manager. “But now that there is a saving, and you start talking to a customer about how you can save them money on energy, you get financial and managing directors interested. People are trying to save money, and it’s the FD who’s charged with delivering that.”
Speaking about KRL Group’s approach to balanced deployment, Baker explained that KRL Group’s ethos has always been to listen to its customers, hear what it is they want and then start to advise them.
“That’s when we’ll ask them if they’ve considered moving to an A4 product rather than an A3, pointing out the space and power savings, we don’t tell them what they need rather we advise them,” he explained.
Climate change
With climate change becoming an increasingly pressing issue and businesses quite rightly taking steps to reduce their carbon footprint and environmental impact. Baker commented on the extent to which this is impacting discussions and decision- making around printers.
“What we’re finding is that the discussion is starting with the younger people working for these companies. One or two large companies that we’ve been dealing with, when we’ve discussed the actual products and what they can do, they’ve come back to us and said they have this request from the younger people that work for them on what is going to happen to save the planet for them and their children to come in the future. So, [sustainable decision-making] is driven, really, by younger people within the organisation.”
He continued: “It’s a very passionate subject and one which is driven at board level as the youngsters are coming through the ranks.”
Baker said that the Epson optimisation tool is helping KRL Group to win new business. “The optimisation tool is helping immensely, one company that I’ve just sold to recently, when we did the optimisation report, it showed that the money saved over the five-year term of the lease actually paid for the machine. So that was like the no brainer, it was sold and that was it , they didn’t really want to talk to anybody else, they just went with that product and us,” he concluded.
Amanda Kent and Jack Ranson, Directors, Certa MPS
Amanda Kent and Jack Ranson, Directors, Certa MPS cite stock shortages and managing customer expectations as key challenges and explore how better communication and collaboration between resellers and vendors can help overcome these challenges.
Dealing with stock shortages has been one of the biggest issues over the past few years. Amanda said: “Generally we’ve had to look at what we’ve got available to us and make it fit to what the customer needs. Sometimes we’ve had to wait a long time for stock, now I know we’ve come out the other side, but we’re still very mindful of the fact that it could change very quickly, and something could happen in the economy again, and we really wouldn’t want to have the same experience as two years ago.”
She added: “Because we provide our own service to customers, we have to fulfil toner, consumables and parts requirements and keep the machines operational. And sometimes when there’s a shortage of a widget because it’s been stuck somewhere in Europe, it causes a problem for us.”
Managing customer expectations
Ranson said that managing customer expectations is another big challenge. “We live in an age where customers are used to getting things the next day from the likes of Amazon, so when stock has been, not great, that’s been a challenge. We have to be mindful of making sure that we can deliver a service that’s as good as next-day as can be really.”
Better communication from print vendors would help address these challenges as Amanda explained: “Communication, I think is key and keeping us in the loop of what’s going on. Knowing when things are available, would really help us because we would then be able to plan a little bit better. If we know in advance that something potentially is going to be a problem, we can manage our way around it and find another solution to keep the customer happy, so that they don’t really know that there’s been a problem at all.”
Ranson added: “I think having a vendor that’s aligned with your way of thinking helps in marrying up with your service delivery as well. So, making sure you’re on the same page, so the end-user experience is exactly the same from start to finish and there are no hold ups because of one party or the other. So, I think that a close working relationship with the vendor and being aligned are key.”
Service delivery
Amanda said that today’s hybrid working model and changes in terms of how customers print and where they print, is impacting how Certa MPS delivers services. “We’ve got to manage a slightly different landscape than we did five years ago when it was just a centralised office with multifunctional devices and an in-house IT department. With people working from home now, they’re expecting the same from the equipment sitting on their dining room table as they are from what’s available in the office. And as a result of that we’ve had to adapt the way we look after customers and become more of a third-party IT resource for them. Customers working from home can call on us and we can help them directly rather than having to wait until they go back into the office.”
Ranson added: “Being able to adapt to customer requirements – future proofing a solution for instances where customers are hybrid working and being able to say yes, you can do that with what we’ve put in place already is key. Like Amanda said, customers want to be able to do the same thing with a document at home if it’s printed, scanned, filed, email, whatever it may be, as what they have been able to do previously in an office.”
The right device
Commenting on trends that point to a reduction in A3 printing, Amanda said that in some of the markets sectors they serve, A3 output is still prevalent. But general office printing, ourselves included is definitely less, we’re just assuming the customer is going to
carry on doing things the way that they have always done, when in reality, [with the new AM-C400 and AM-C550 MFPs] Epson’s probably come up with a better answer really, so that we can put the right machine into the right location. That’s created opportunity to have a different conversation and as salespeople we like that,” she concluded.
