Mark Ash, Chief Revenue Officer, Konica Minolta: The UK print and IT sectors are both expected to grow in 2024, driven by increasing demand for digital printing and cloud computing services. In the print sector, we can anticipate a continued shift towards digitalisation, with an emphasis on sustainability and cost-efficiency. As businesses increasingly prioritise eco-friendly practices, Konica Minolta will be at the forefront of offering innovative solutions to reduce carbon footprints while improving productivity.
The adoption of cloud computing, cybersecurity, and AI-driven technologies will remain pivotal. Cloud computing is expected to continue to be adopted by businesses of all sizes in 2024, as it offers a number of benefits, including scalability, flexibility, and cost savings. Data security is becoming increasingly important for businesses of all sizes, and this is expected to drive demand for IT security solutions in 2024.
AI and machine learning are being used in a variety of ways in the print and IT sectors. For example, AI is being used to improve the accuracy and efficiency of digital printing processes, and machine learning is being used to develop new IT security solutions. A great example
of this is AI being overlaid on to CCTV to create intelligent video, where the use cases are vast – from detecting product defects, picking errors in warehousing and logistics, through to identifying potential fires in waste management. Each example can save business millions of pounds per annum!
Konica Minolta will align its IT services to provide comprehensive solutions that facilitate seamless integration with the print environment, enhancing overall operational efficiency for businesses.
We also believe that that collaboration and adaptability will be key to success in both sectors. Our indirect channel is continuing to grow, and Konica Minolta aims to foster partnerships and leverage its expertise to address the evolving needs of businesses. In summary, 2024 promises to be a dynamic year for the UK print and IT sectors, with Konica Minolta driving innovation and sustainability to meet the changing demands of the market.
Shaun Wilkinson, Managing Director, UTAX: 2024 will be a time of continued opportunity. Customers will continue to look for tighter cost control and efficiencies within their businesses and will want to procure their managed print systems from partners that show a high level of professional service, at the best possible price points.
Products such as the cloud-based Utax Fleet Services and Cloud Print and Scan are industry leading products that really help dealers to deliver fast efficient service at the best possible price points, whilst facilitating the removal of costly on-premise print server infrastructure.
Print volumes will continue to decline. Those partners that pivot to providing more value added services will thrive as they become more integrated into the customers’ IT service provision. www.utax.co.uk
Steve Hawkins, Owner and Managing Director, Xeretec: Next year will be an interesting one with employers Cloud computing is expected to continue to be adopted by businesses of all sizes in 2024, as it offers a number of benefits, including scalability, flexibility, and cost savings continuing to encourage employees back to workplaces, and a re-engaging of some traditional working practices. Volumes will remain below pre- pandemic levels with many processes now transitioned to full digital workflows. And this trend is likely to increase with additional AI capabilities – although the market for this will take time to mature and have a wider impact.
At a macro level, the continuing economic climate, the uncertain political backdrop with a possible General Election in 2024 (certainly before the end of January 2025) and the different crises around the world will all continue to have impacts. High interest rates, inflationary pressures, muted tax cuts and financial support for other nations in conflict all put costs into the spotlight for businesses. We anticipate refresh cycles will have a different feel to
them, with lower volumes and demand rebalancing the maths and placing a higher emphasis on equipment versus running costs.
We expect a few trends to continue. Customers will look harder outside their current incumbent supplier for their next print partner. In many cases they will look to reduce their total
fleet numbers and will consider lower specified devices. The growth of more A4 versus A3 devices is likely to continue. Larger organisations with sizeable fleets will be placing more emphasis on sustainability plans and capabilities in their considerations for their next provider, and migration of print services to a cloud infrastructure, negating the need for on- premise server hardware will appear in more specification documents.
Markus Rex, Managing Director, SYNAXON Managed Services: The most important and relevant trend for 2024 will continue to be the move toward managed services as end-user organisations continue their digital transformation and look to offload tasks such as management of IT and cybersecurity to expert partners.
We are seeing a steady rise in partners engaging with us on our pre- defined managed services offerings and this will unquestionably be the biggest area of opportunity for channel partners over the next year.
The biggest technology trend will be the acceleration of generative AI, which is already permeating every corner of the market. While we are sure to see AI being built into the functionality of many systems and solutions, it’s hard to see it having a really big impact for SMBs and small businesses. The way AI is likely to be used in IT printing solutions is a good example. While it may well be used to manage workflows, optimise paper usage and streamline processes, these are capabilities that will only really benefit high volume users.
Other technology trends will see increased use of 5G connectivity and of Wi-Fi 7, but these are really just evolutions of technologies we already have and while they will certainly attract interest and additional business, they won’t trigger any sudden upsurge in IT investment.
While it’s not strictly ‘tech’, I believe we will see even more focus on sustainability, and this is extremely relevant for the print market. Major vendors are putting more focus on products with refillable ink systems and on low power consumption. They will also need to start making products from more sustainable materials. This is a growing, long-term trend and a very significant one.
Beyond that, for most MSPs and reseller partners, 2024 will be more about driving higher value and resilience in IT systems and solutions for their customers. It will be about consolidation, regaining strength and returning to growth. https://synaxon-services.com
Chris Bates, Business Unit Director, Print & Supplies, UK, TD SYNNEX: The two major trends that really matter for the channel are the move to managed services, and sustainability. These have been the biggest and most significant trends in the print channel over the last 12 months and we’d expect them to dominate strategic thinking and to keep growing and developing in 2024.
On managed print, there is a clear desire on the part of end-user customers to hand the monitoring and maintenance of the print estate over to a third-party who can look after consumables replenishment and ensure that devices keep working.
The need to drive down carbon emissions and move towards net zero will be an even higher priority in 2024. We are seeing more interest in eco- printing, ink tank printers and energy- efficient devices and we’ll see more products with these features launched in 2024.
Cybersecurity is also a big trend. The safety of printers and MFPs is now being considered and scrutinised much more and demonstrating that the device cannot be used as a back door through which cybercriminals can get onto the network, is going to be more important than ever.
Finally, and this is very much a personal view, but I think there is a possibility that we’ll see a recovery in sales of office printers as hybrid working plans are reviewed and revised. The impression I get is that many organisations have still not settled on a policy for hybrid work. While there are certainly more business-owned print devices being used in homes now – and they need to be managed and maintained – if we start to see a more sustained return to the office, that could result in more demand for shared, networkable devices. https://uk.tdsynnex.com
Andrew Ellis, Sales and Marketing Director, PCL Direct Group: I feel the exposure and demand for remanufactured products will increase year on year, as the current system is not sustainable. The focus in the media is climate change, which is happening all around
us and affecting all our lives. This is all interlinked and I can see how this will help create more demand for sustainable products in all business sectors.
Sadly, I don’t feel all dealers have fully embraced the environmental values and, more importantly, the marketing power of remanufactured products. Instead, they are looking more at the cost saving, which means they are comparing our fully remanufactured products to cheap compatible products coming from companies that portray exactly ‘what we do and how we do
it’, highlighting the true benefits of purchasing remanufactured products from PCL Direct. This has led to more new customer enquiries and requests to produce products in new business areas, which we have embraced and have plans to expand on in 2024.
I feel our industry is slowly contracting and this has been accelerated by COVID 19. Our focus, in 2024, is to continue delivering high quality remanufactured products to our customers and diversify into other remanufactured product areas; concentrating on Canon and Ricoh, which have been requested by new and existing customers. We are also looking to grow our manufacturing by exporting to more countries around Europe, by forming new partnership alliances.
The past 12 months has been a difficult year in all business sectors, especially, the print industry. It’s been a ‘perfect storm’ created from COVID
19, where people and businesses have learned to work without a printing device, which has reduced print volumes by 20-30 per cent.
Globally, there have been major supply chain issues with microchips. That has had a major impact on hardware and consumable production with manufacturers in our industry.
The past 12 months has seen a drop in demand for print devices, due to consolidation, with has led to increased stock levels, which, in turn, has driven prices down in the industry. On top of this, the war in Ukraine has created further uncertainty. Based on this, I don’t see business levels going back to those pre-COVID, which will create a bigger demand for dealers to sell more cost-effective and profitable solutions to their customers.
www.pcl-direct.com
Mick Bailey, Chairman, EBM Managed Services: In 2022, in issue 99 of PrintIT Reseller, we responded to a similar question about the outlook for 2023. As we look ahead to 2024, it appears that not much will change. Geopolitical issues continue to cast their shadow, impacting every country and, consequently, affecting businesses in various ways, from the prices of machinery, toner, fuel, and electricity to the overall cost of living. The ongoing cost of living crisis remains a top concern for most people.
In the copier industry, there seems to be an ongoing race to the bottom, with dealers engaged in aggressive pricing competition and offering what appear to be excessively low CPCs.
We anticipate further consolidation in the industry, with smaller companies likely to be acquired and larger ones potentially being bought out by manufacturers and equity firms.
Additionally, it’s expected that the demand for traditional printing will continue to decline across various business sectors. Even those with extensive experience in the industry, such as myself, the founder of EBM, who has been involved in print for 36 years, can see this decline. The copier business is increasingly embracing a paperless future, and this trend appears to be at its most pronounced.
However, despite the prevailing pessimism, it’s worth noting that
some companies, like ours, have demonstrated resilience to these challenges. We have experienced steady growth over the years, and we plan to continue this trend into 2024. Rather than engaging in the race to the bottom, we focus on offering value through a robust training program and ongoing investments in our staff.
While hybrid working from home was the buzzword for 2022 and 2023, with expectations of a significant shift towards remote work, we have found that many people are returning to the workplace and are still relying on printing, albeit perhaps not at pre- pandemic levels.
Moreover, as customers become increasingly conscious of environmental issues, we’ve observed a rising demand for eco-friendly solutions in office settings. This shift is likely to contribute to increased revenue for our business in 2024. https://www.ebmltd.co.uk
Phil Madders, Managing Director, PAE Business: How was your 2023?
My perception was that things were improving over the years of 2021 and 2022. We had had some political stability with the same Prime Minister and Chancellor (at the time of writing). The Ukrainian conflict whilst still a terrible situation, was baked into the forecasts and economic data, inflation is coming down overall and businesses seem to be prospering again as hardware and supplies availability is better, and the Northen Ireland Protocol offered a way forward to a better trading partnership with the EU post Brexit.
In the negative column we had teachers on strike, and swathes of the medical profession still on strike, and then as the year draws to a close and you begin to look forward to 2024, events get in the way and we have Gaza erupting in violence and an international crisis which will have impact on the business world globally, the extent of which will hopefully be mitigated by the statesmanship of our political leaders. Let’s hope they find a positive way forward for all parties affected.
So where does this leave our channel as we enter 2024? The runners and riders for the PAE Business ‘prediction sweepstake for business trends’ are as follows:
+ Automation, Automation is going to be the key activity for the reseller channel in
2024. It is the reason that underpins so many of the activities our partners are engaged in daily. If you step back and consider the opportunities automation of processes at the customer level that the channel engages in daily: An MFP is supplied which can scan invoices to an accounts system and by doing so triggering workflows to process them. The success of DocuWare, and Therefore in the Document management/ workflow space and the recurring revenue generated, which in turn, is beginning to change how we sell our services.
Automation is also entering our customers’ back-office. We launched Cloudquote in April 2023. It is a quotation automation tool which massively reduces the time spent creating quotations for salespeople, ensures they have high quality quotations, up to date pricing and lease rates, and provides visibility of the pipeline for forecasting, stock control, invoicing and ordering the configuration the customer has ordered. We have not had a day since launch where
the solution was not being installed somewhere, and our customers include an OEM at the top level, systems integrators, and your traditional office equipment dealer with one salesperson. The reason they are adopting it as with all automation processes is the need
to deliver more with less people, and free people up from the mundane and repetitive, in this case compiling a quote, to being free to focus on activities which sell more.
It is the same motivation that underpins data entry into an accounts package, or an HR department automating its onboarding process.
It also drives cloud services as a lot of the automation is provided by access to fantastic technology at a price which is accessible to most organisations and takes them to a level of sophistication that was never affordable in the world of on-premise, non-SaaS services. If you need convincing, look at the features offered by Office 365 and the tools you have available as subscriber. As a result, migration to cloud services will still be a significant opportunity for the channel in 2024.
+ Artificial intelligence, Automation also comes into play with the hot topic of the moment – artificial intelligence. I am not clever enough to comprehend the full power and reach of AI but have no doubt we will be hearing a lot about it going forward into 2024 and beyond. I have used ChatGPT to see what it produces, and how it works. It is obvious that it will start to turn up
in Chatbots, in back-office processing.
It will manifest itself in solutions like Kofax’s Intelligent Automation Platform, which means it is already in play in the channel and what we are delivering to our end-users.
It is also going be launched as part of our marketing platform Evolved Office, providing the capability to generate unique content, bespoke to the brand voice of our users and deliver it to their target market all from within one platform, in any language they choose. This is groundbreaking technology, accessible at a fraction of the cost of a marketing agency and on demand. AI is going to be an all-pervasive term in everything we do from now on, however the extent it is being used in various solutions and offering may vary. It will also be a trend in 2025, and 2026 just in case PITR do not ask me to do this again – you heard it first here…
+Augmented reality, If you add to the trends offered and combine it with a headset, glasses,
or a tablet, we can see another trend that will affect business in 2024 – augmented reality. You may recall the bus shelter ad from Pepsi Max which introduced AR to advertising. However, Microsoft are positioning it in things like HR and identify the following areas as areas where AR could play a role going forward: performance support, learning and training modules, new hire onboarding, on demand training and customer service and experience.
What a fantastic automation opportunity this presents to the channel. If the OEMS are not already using it to train technicians, I suspect it is only a matter of time before they do, and it will remove the most basic of requirements – attending a classroom to become accredited for repairing or servicing an MFP. It will also dovetail into provision of the personalised user experience, which we currently deliver through tools like desktop profiles or user profiles at a device level being determined by the login credentials. This will be a trend where company-wide services are delivered but the end- user receives a tailored experience to these requirements, so the adoption is improved, and the project delivers.
+Sustainability, All these trends will be underpinned by the continuing drive to sustainability. Customers will continue to prioritise the environmental impact of their operations and strive for net zero. If our channel can tap into this market, pick a winner and deliver solutions that make a difference, as they have done in the past, then 2024 will be a successful year for us all.
https://paebusiness.com
Richard Wells, Head of Office Print Sales, Epson: In 2024, sustainability will further rise in importance to end-users and vendors as everyone continues to become more familiarised with sustainable behaviour. The difficulty for sustainably minded buyers will be to decipher and understand the multiple claims over sustainability made by vendors and determine what version of sustainability is the most important to them, their organisations and the planet.
Separating greenwashing initiatives from measured environmental impact such as reduced energy use, long-life consumables, use/reuse of recycled plastics and components etc. is often confusing, and marketing is often confused with actual action. Epson has always worked on a sustainability platform with consideration taken on our products and how we operate, and we highlight this annually in our European Sustainability Report. Understanding the commercial benefit of sustainability is also key as well, and to inform and assist we offer our online optimisation tool that our partners and customers use to show how changing to Epson heat-free inkjet printing could reduce energy consumption and subsequent CO2 emissions, reduce waste, and increase staff efficiency and productivity.
The industry is alight with acquisition, mergers, diversification, and as-a-service offerings, all competing for the contracted print pound. I foresee much consolidation in the next 12 months as some of these acquisitions and mergers happen, as-a-service offerings expand from the IT sector, and others pull out to concentrate back on core activities. Consolidation at vendor level is also a strong possibility as some who purchase and rebrand equipment are, in essence, just sales businesses now effectively reducing choice for the end-user. Epson is pleased to have grown our production capabilities and built all our own products in our own facilities, and we’re pleased to continue offering customers a true alternative technology built on our three pillars
of sustainability, productivity and reliability.
I see the printing landscape changing further in terms of where and what end-users print. Over the last three years, as a result of the pandemic we have seen print move from office, to home, to hybrid. This is changing the landscape of what users want and need. Flexibility is especially key as office use has seemingly changed forever, with agile working now the norm for many, but with office and commercial space demand increasing.
Corporates who quickly shut facilities post-pandemic have been re-opening them, but many with changed layouts that champion collaborative work environments. I think this will lead to more changes as current print operations span a variety of locations and demands a different approach.
Home print is often higher, and the traditional ‘cost-effective’ cartridge printer isn’t appropriate given the high consumables cost, which is why we see the ever increasing demand for our cartridge-free EcoTank printers. High volume office copier fleets of low volume personal A4 devices and standard A3 devices will change as fewer A3 devices and higher volume A4 devices are used to meet workgroup demands. Identifying this as a growing transition of print has made us consider our product portfolio and we introduced the first
line of our WorkForce Enterprise AM-C range earlier this year to allow compact A3 workhorses (40/50 and 60ppm) with space saving inner finishers as well as traditional external staple finishers and booklet makers.
www.epson.co.uk
Steve Pearce, Group Head of Marketing, Kyocera: Good change will be driven by the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive in 2024. Vendors and channel partners will be inspired by others’ actions and there will be a cultural shift as business leaders tackle environmental considerations alongside commercial goals.
Products will become more environmentally-conscious and there will be greater focus on the supply of goods from packaging materials, shipping emissions to circularity; end of life improvements in pursuit of zero waste to landfill goals.
Channel partners will join vendors on the road to net zero, we are already seeing this at Kyocera and we are proactively helping them become carbon neutral businesses. Vendors will extend this support and provide tools and metrics to enable both direct and indirect customers to make eco-conscious decisions when choosing the brands and suppliers that best fit their green values.
The demand for zero-trust cybersecurity will rise in 2024 as we see AI start to play an increasing role in the threat landscape, benefiting vendors that are already able to offer this capability to their end customers and channel partners.
Finally, the industry will start to explore product longevity in relation to lease lengths to address the current trend of ‘sweating assets’ as businesses seek to minimise outlay due to current economic forces. www.kyoceradocumentsolutions.co.uk
