A: We need to stop thinking about the challenges driven by manufacturers or markets, and instead really start focusing on our own businesses. By that I mean, how we structure our business to take advantage of innovations such as IoT and AI for example and think about how these technologies relate to our client base.
As a reseller, we’ve been monitoring devices for 15 years, in essence working with a (rough) version of IoT and we’ve also always been an annuity focused business. Now you’ll see a lot of the software and managed services companies trying to get into the annuity business, that’s their focus now, but that’s what we’ve always done. As a channel business, we’ve got a lot of knowledge and a lot of experience and we need to really start focusing on that rather than on what the manufacturers and the global market are doing, because that’s changing every day.
We also need to be much more proactive around developing proper business analytics within our organisations. We have a lot of visibility on what our clients do, but what many companies in the MPS space don’t do, is leverage detailed analytics on contract performance. Contracts are becoming much longer now, running up to seven years, and within that timeframe, the client’s business and their requirements are going to change.
So rather than focus on revenue on a monthly or quarterly basis within these accounts, we need to be looking at the data and reacting to that. For example, you could have a fleet of 200 devices, and 2% of that fleet could be dragging your profitability down significantly. But you’re not fixing that until renewal time. So, we need to design flexible contracts that enable us to impose design changes over a period of time so we can ensure that revenues are stable.
I think another challenge is around the OEMs’ value propositions. There’s been a lot of consolidation in the manufacturer market, and we see a lot of those ‘value propositions’ becoming much more boilerplate. So as a reseller, we have to take the best strengths of those manufacturers and be more creative in our offerings to the customer.
That means designing the solution around our values, to make sure that we differentiate against another reseller who’s just taking that boiler plate to the customer site. And remember, many customers have had MPS contracts for years, so they have a lot of data. What we need to do is make sure that we’re not just giving them the same as they had the last time and really designing the solution to meet their current requirements.
Project complexity is another big thing. The days of rolling in printers, plugging in a print management solution and walking away are gone. Today, you need to be experienced in project management and cloud services and to understand the compliance elements around that. We now interact with every element of a client’s IT system – their security team, the compliance team, the logistics team, health and safety etc. and this all adds to project costs. We have to ensure that the customer is paying for that. I think the power is with ourselves, we need to stop being driven by market or market conditions, be who we are and become better.
Q: Which OEMs do you partner with and why?
A: We sell 90% Lexmark. We also have a long relationship with Ricoh, but for us, their offering is very specific to certain industries.
Lexmark fits well across all sectors and there are lots of reasons why we lead with them. Firstly, they are an engineering company, they build to a really high standard and the devices last. The people are also fantastic, particularly their channel teams, when we ask our account manager
a question, they may not have the answer, but they’ll go and get it for you. I guarantee that somebody in Lexmark will give you an answer. They are also really agile and I really like that.
In addition, there are advantages in using an OEM’s software set, it aligns with their hardware, their analytics etc., so for us, having a single manufacturer that can provide an enterprise-level cloud service and enterprise-level devices is a real value-add.
Q: What are your customers most interested in currently?
A: Clients who are really security focused want consistency, the same brand of hardware and software and a single provider to manage it from end to end. Our customers have used MPS in some shape or form for years, but they are now telling us: we want you to own the print system, to own the devices, the solutions etc. and manage everything for a set cost per month or per quarter.
Our customers are looking for a partner that’s going to manage their cloud environment and their printers, as well as all of the elements of service delivery, under one single managed service.
Q: How have you changed/are you changing business operations to exploit new opportunities?
A: As I mentioned earlier, we’re focusing on our business. For example, previously, we had technicians on customers’ sites doing really complex tasks on printers and big MFPs.
Now it’s most mostly a modular swap out. Previously within the Lexmark environment, we would have done 20% remote fix and 80% field service fix, that’s now flipped completely, and 80% of issues are now resolved remotely.
Our engineers have become much more technology-focussed, we now bring them into projects, utilise them within technical help desks and customer service help desks.
Cloud has also been a game- changer, when we really embraced it, the time to install a single printer went down from 40 minutes to 10 minutes, because all of the tasks that were previously done onsite are now pre- configured in the cloud. So, while projects have become more complex, the actual machine delivery and installation piece is a lot easier.
Q: When selling MFPs, what are the most popular software solutions you provide and why?
A: What is interesting, is in the education market the Lexmark translation assistant has become a really huge selling point. We surveyed some of our schools, and we found that in some instances, the student base could have up to 80% foreign nationals where English may not be their first language. Within those school environments, communicating to students and parents is a huge challenge.
The translation assistant enables a teacher to submit a document in English and retrieve it in up to 100 different languages. We actually don’t talk about MFPs now; they’re just endpoints like any other – the MFP doesn’t exist purely to print a page; it’s a key endpoint for inclusivity, innovation and data management.
We currently manage devices in the cloud for large customers, so what we’re currently looking at is how we get to a point where we have no network dependencies for clients. This is particularly relevant in zero trust network environments.
We’ve tested this and it’s worked really well, particularly in pop up environments such as the engineering and construction industry, where the client needs an MFP installed on a site that might only be up and running for three to four months. So, what we typically do is enable the device in the cloud on a 5G network, that enables anyone to print from anywhere and allows us to effectively monitor and manage the device.
Q: How do you spend your week – time on phone, face to face meetings with customers etc.?
A: Mostly on Teams. That’s because we serve customers across 30 different countries at the moment, and that allows me to easily meet with clients in different geographies and across different time zones. In reality, our customers in the enterprise space simply want a quick 10 minute meeting, and with Teams we can do that on the fly, when they’re in the car, waiting at an airport or in between appointments. It’s different to how we traditionally interacted with customers, but I think it just needs a focus on honing a different skillset.
Q: What would make your job easier?
A: Print is the vinyl record of technology – but we’re still here, we’re still popular, and we’re still needed. A little bit more confidence in our own industry would make the day job easier. Many resellers believe that manufacturers are the market.
However, I believe, the channel and our end clients are the real-life marketplace. In essence, we are the market and hold its survival in our hands. I still maintain that the print industry has some of the most talented people in the tech world. There’s still money to be made, there’s a lot of expertise, heritage and knowledge within our teams, we just need to stay focused and have confidence in our abilities.
