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opinion
14 Print.IT Reseller
As a supplier, the biggest challenge with
managed print services is you have to deliver.
The challenge
for us resellers
is to catch up.
Well the momentum that was
building in the latter half of last year
hasn’t shown any sign of slowing
down in the first month of 2014;
if anything, it’s accelerating!
Spurred on by New Year’s resolutions
to take action, whether it’s to reduce costs
or push back on suppliers’ indifferent
service delivery, we’ve seen a flurry of new
enquiries and appointments made this
month.
You have to deliver
Top of the list when it comes to complaints
about incumbent suppliers has been
declining service standards. As a supplier,
the biggest challenge with managed print
services is you have to deliver.
Just today I sat with the IT and
Procurement heads of a large organisation
that had run out of patience with their
current supplier, whose promises of
proactive managed services were just not
being delivered. Time and again they were
finding their business seriously impacted
because their print equipment was down.
Printers and MFDs might not be the
sexiest technology on the planet but,
ultimately, with MPS you are committing
to manage an infrastructure which their
business relies upon. Tales of remote
management, monitoring and proactive
support to clinch the deal unravel very
quickly when they are just stories, and, in
this case, it was only once the company
had put their faith in their supplier that
they learned the truth – to their cost.
Sadly, this sort of thing does no good to
our industry as everyone gets tarred with
the same brush. It’s for this very reason
that organisations like NAPPS have such
a positive impact, setting standards which
those outside our industry can rely upon to
deliver to their MPS expectations. And, on
our part, we always invite clients to visit
our MPS operations centre so they can see
for themselves just how real our dedicated
MPS team are and how we deliver the
managed service experience we promise.
Change is constant
Thinking about what the big trends for
2014 are got me thinking about the
milestones we have passed in this industry
over the years. There was the launch of
the first colour devices in the late 80s, and
the early 90s was the time of networked
devices and multifunctionals – you couldn’t
move for adverts with swiss army knives
in them! Then came the first wave of
occasional or colour capable devices. These
were followed by new fangled document
management systems, then scanning was a
hot topic and so it went on.
What is interesting is that these were
new technologies developed by the R&D
departments of manufacturers which we
in the reseller community then went and
sold. It was the reseller and the industry
creating a market. Initially the concept was
sold and then, as interest turned to desire,
the features and functionality competed
for the sale.
But that’s not true of today’s emerging
trends. With technologies such as the cloud
we resellers are not creating the market
and we are certainly not in control of it.
It’s the domestic user who is leading that
trend.
Think about who the early adopters
are. Corporate businesses looked at the
The big trends
for 2014
By Gary Downey,
Balreed Digitec Group
Marketing Director
cloud concept for years, but concerns over
security, resilience and corporate policies
tempered their enthusiasm. And then the
individual home user went and adopted
it overnight. Today there’s no-one in the
developed world who doesn’t know about
iTunes or Facebook. Everyone from young
children to octagenarians are using cloud
services, many of them free, to store, share
and communicate. Home PCs and hard
drives gather dust whilst the domestic
market leaps into the cloud. And these
individuals are bringing their expectations
into the office.
We need to catch up
The challenge for us resellers is to catch up.
We didn’t create this market, but we do
need to be able to satisfy it.
Instant access to scan documents into
a cloud, can you provide that? How about
retrieving and printing documents from a
personal cloud whilst in the office? And
what about security or control? There are
no boundaries in a smartphone or tablet
user's mind; everything they need and do is
available in their joined-up world, and this
train is heading our way at a pace. Are you
ready to jump on?
