PRINTITRESELLER.UK 39 VOX POP This month, PrintIT Reseller invites key industry vendors to share their thoughts on digital transformation and how it has impacted the print industry Keeping up in the digital age James Overton, Director, SOS Systems: Digital transformation is a phrase that has been used for a long time now, but many businesses have still not fully grasped its concept. It is more than just digitising forms or automating a process, used correctly and combined with the right technology it can transform the way your entire business operates and improve your customer experience by enabling them to communicate with you on multiple channels and making it easy to do business with you. If a print partner understands this and can deliver this via a combination of different technologies, it is absolutely an opportunity. Chris Bates, Business Unit Manager – Print and Supplies, UK, TD SYNNEX: The growing dependence that we have on technology, as organisations and individuals, means that we need to be able to access IT just about everywhere. The ability to print a hard copy of a document is an important productivity aid for many people – and sometimes, it’s absolutely necessary. It’s become quite commonplace for people to print work documents at home from a version of Office they are using on their smartphone, for example. Printed documents are still a part of many business processes, and many people prefer to review a printed document or will print something to share it with others – at a meeting or an event. What that means is you need more printers in more places. While it is probable that many print devices will be used less than they have been in the past, and will thus have a longer lifespan, there will be more devices in the digitalised, hybrid working world than there were in the old world of manual processes and officebased working. What this also means for partners is there is more potential to offer managed print services. This is really starting to take hold in the SMB market now – businesses don’t want the hassle of managing devices and ordering consumables. They want to get on with their core activity and that essentially, is what digital transformation is all about. Rory Gallagher, Director of Workspace Services, Vision: I think that very much depends on the business in question. For businesses that haven’t made the investment in people and technology the new and emerging landscape could absolutely be seen as a challenge. Offering scalable solutions in the process, and the hyper automation space takes a great deal of investment; something that Vision did nearly ten years ago. Back then, we recognised the opportunity and have been helping our clients, both new and existing, on their digital journey with capture, automation and content management services. The results we’ve seen have been fantastic, with clients reducing their print volume, reducing their environmental impact and boosting productivity. We’re well positioned to continue support clients on that journey and continue to add value, remaining an integral part of their operations in the process. Richard Hall, Solutions Manager, UTAX: Digital transformation within the print industry is visible in the shift from a traditionally hardware-focused industry, to one that now needs to be at the forefront of software and security for document management. This shift does present a challenge, one that will eradicate any competition who doesn’t fully embrace it. This does make it an exciting time for end-users – new solutions are constantly being developed with specific industries and workflow issues in mind, so those painful processes that were made more complicated with the introduction PrintIT Reseller: What does digital transformation mean for the print industry – does it present challenge or opportunity? Printed documents are still a part of many business processes, and many people prefer to review a printed document or will print something to share it with others – at a meeting or an event James Overton Chris Bates continued...
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