01732 759725 INTERVIEW 20 In 2023, PrintIT Reseller is celebrating ten years in print. In a series of exclusive interviews over the next year, we’re inviting industry veterans to share their experiences over the past decade, what they’ve learned, and the highs and the lows of our unique and challenging industry. Here, Louella Fernandes, Director, Quocirca shares her thoughts A decade in print PITR: What was your first job? LF: During my degree, I spent my placement year at IBM in Portsmouth – that was my first job in the IT industry. I worked in the personnel planning department and largely did coding. It was around 1989/90 and the company was laying off staff for the first time, I actually ended up writing the system to do their redundancies. PITR: What has been the high point of the decade? LF: On a personal level, it has to be elevating the Quocirca brand and being recognised as a thought leader at a global level. Highlights include launching the industry’s first MPS, print security, cloud and sustainability competitive landscape reports. In terms of the print sector, I think digital disruption and the evolution from transactional sales to servicesled business models have been a real turning point for the industry. As an analyst, it’s exciting to look forward and rather than focus on market sizing, say, to instead predict coming trends and share insight that will (hopefully) help channel businesses to capitalise on new opportunities. PITR: What (or who) has had the greatest impact in the sector in the last 10 years? LF: If you consider that I see digital disruption as having had the biggest impact on the sector, then it would have to be the leaders of some of the software vendor companies, because they have pro-actively driven innovation within the industry. PITR: If you could change one thing about the last decade, what would it be? LF: Mind-set is what I would say needs to change. In general terms, the channel can be a bit more dynamic than some of the OEMs by virtue of their size. Also the majority of channel partners are ownermanaged businesses rather than large multinational corporates. The channel recognises the need for change, but they need more support from their suppliers. Some OEMs are much more softwarefocused than others, and overall the pace of change from a hardware-centric mind-set to one that leads on solutions and software, needs to ramp up. PITR: What has been your proudest moment of the past 10 years? LF: I am very proud that Quocirca is globally recognised as a leader in the print sector. There is a saying along the lines of: if you do what your competitors do, you’re a follower; but if you look outside of your industry, you’re an innovator. That’s the mantra we follow every day – we always look outward and forward to ensure we continue to innovate. As a small business, I’m also proud that Quocirca grew during the challenging COVID period. We had to pivot very quickly to address the demand for fresh insight, conducting research and creating topical reports in a much quicker timeframe that we would typically work to. And, I also launched a new podcast which has been extremely popular. PITR: Sum up the decade in three words. LF: Disruptive. Transformative. Exciting. https://quocirca.com PrintIT Reseller (PITR): You’ve been working in the print and IT industry for more than ten years. What led you to enter the sector? Louella Fernandes (LF): Even though I didn’t specifically choose print, I knew I wanted to be a research analyst in the technology sector. After graduating with a Computer Science degree, my first job was with a market research company called Romtec. I started off analysing the UK monitor market, then subsequently became a senior research analyst for the UK print market. That marked my entry into the print sector, I was a print analyst there for about 18 months, mostly looking at all the specs and recording sales of every printer in the UK. During that time, I forged strong relationships with the major OEMs like HP and Canon, and in fact I ended up working at Canon for 11 years. My roles there included responsibility for buying market research and I also managed their software developer programme and ISV relationships for a number of years. I joined Quocirca as an associate analyst around 2006. Louella Fernandes
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