Q: What’s currently having the greatest impact on your business?
A: I think the economic climate has had the biggest impact over the last 24 months. Between the ongoing wars, cost of living crisis and the prime ministerial change, business confidence is lower than it’s ever been. That is a challenge for our partners too, because their customers are choosing to extend existing contracts or put off new acquisitions until such time as business confidence comes back up.
Q: What’s one strategic decision your business made recently that you believe will pay off long-term?
A: The inclusion of AI in our devices, without a doubt. That has been a significant investment, and one that we believe will yield the greatest success. In fact, Canon was recently named a leader in Quocirca’s ACT Print Industry Ecosystem Leadership report. In particular, the report cited Canon’s integration of machine learning algorithms into its devices, software and services, to deliver predictive maintenance, optimal security and more intelligent workflow automation.
Q: What role do partnerships and collaboration play in driving innovation and growth in your sector?
A: It’s relationships, rather than partnerships, which underpin our industry. Building strong relationships between partners and customers and between OEMs and partners, is hugely important. The relationship is fundamental to collaboration and collaboration then helps in terms of driving innovation within the sector. As an example, partner feedback from our recent European Partner Conference was centred around the value they got from the opportunity to network – from Canon Business Centres (CBCs) sharing ideas, to our three new Platinum Partners being able to connect with long-standing Platinum Partners for the first time.
We also facilitate knowledge sharing among peer groups through events we hold such as our Tech Series. These events bring together individuals in technical rather than sales roles from across our partner network. In some businesses, there may only be one person in the entire organisation performing that specific role, so having a community of peers they can turn to for advice, support and shared experiences is incredibly valuable.
What that also does is drive business growth, CBCs for example, will provide pre- and post-sales support on software and solutions for partners not currently within that space but who are looking to expand and diversify their offering.
We’ve started replicating that model across the channel to build new communities, for example within production print, creating a space where people in similar roles can connect, learn from one another and share best practices.
Q: What do you see as the key challenges or pain points businesses are facing in today’s hybrid working model and how can you help your partners/customers to address these?
A: Hybrid working is here to stay; but in general, I think customers and certainly partners, see the benefit of having people in the office. For example, if you have senior salespeople working alongside junior salespeople they will benefit from in-person knowledge sharing and mentorship. It also drives greater interaction and agility, if a colleague is in the same office, it’s much easier to ask a question or have a quick conversation off the cuff.
The key challenges in the hybrid workplace are maintaining productivity, ensuring information security, and managing documents and workflows across multiple locations.
Specific to our industry, the continuation of customers’ digital journeys remains a challenge. Digitisation moves faster than anticipated. In many ways, cloud has been a real benefit in terms of the number of services that we can offer to try and mitigate declining print volumes, but actually, you’ve got to do much more in cloud than you would ever do in print volume or on-prem solutions to generate the same revenues.
Canon helps address these challenges by enabling secure access to information, automating document-intensive processes, and supporting collaboration through cloud-connected workflows and managed services.
Q: How do you see the print and IT reseller sector evolving over the next five years – any disruptors or opportunities on your radar?
A: I think Canon Smart Services will really come into its own. We see it as a real game-changer and it’s evolving rapidly. As the industry continues to face challenges around service profitability and diminishing margins, I think Smart Services will continue to come to the fore from a partner perspective, because of the enhanced efficiencies it brings.
Customers’ focus on security will continue to grow, that is and will remain a massive area of focus for Canon as we continue to boost our security solutions portfolio.
The other big thing is AI; we’re going to continue to see that evolve rapidly over the next five years.
Q: What advice would you give a young person starting a career in the industry?
A: I would say have strong ambitions coming into the industry, embrace the technology and believe in print.
Q: What excites you most about the future?
A: For me, it’s the challenges. Challenges create opportunities and without them, it would be boring! But it’s all about how we overcome those challenges. This industry is inherently resilient and always has been, it’s always found a way to overcome challenges, probably like no other
