01732 759725 20 PITR: What (or who) has had the greatest impact in the sector in the last 10 years? MA: If you look at our industry over the last 10 years and what’s changed, it’s cloud. The whole way people print and where documents are stored has completely changed. There is no longer a one box fits all kind of answer. Now, it’s about understanding your customers, understanding how they work, understanding where they are on their cloud journey and also understanding what they mean by cloud. I have this conversation with a lot of people, they say we are moving to the cloud but what does that actually mean – is it public, private, hybrid? PITR: If you could change one thing about the last decade, what would it be? MA: Nothing. Because everything that’s happened in the last 10 years has brought me to where I am now, and I wouldn’t want to change that. Sometimes I reflect and think I might do that slightly differently or I might like to have a little bit more time there, but I wouldn’t be where I am today, so I would never change anything. PITR: What has been your proudest moment of the past 10 years? MA: The first is MyQ Showtime, because we all put in an awful lot of work into it, and seeing it all come together was incredible. I was really proud to see everybody achieve what they achieved. The second one hasn’t happened yet, we’re about to release a new update of MyQ X, that’s something that we’ve been working on for the last six months so I will be really proud when that goes live. PITR: Sum up the decade in three words. MA: Challenging. Changing. Rewarding. printers and a print management solution, and I was responsible for managing the print fleet. I started to get to know the engineers and the software side of things quite well, I fancied a change and I really liked the idea of getting into print. The guy who serviced our printers was retiring, so it was pure coincidence that I mentioned I was after a new challenge, which led to me joining Xerox as a hardware engineer and taking on his area. PITR: What has been the high point of the decade? MA: For me, the high point of the decade was joining MyQ. I had worked with them for over eight years as a partner selling their software and I had a great relationship with them. I had a close relationship with all of our partners, but MyQ was slightly different, because I got to work with the developers and I really felt a part of the team. So going from being a partner, to them recruiting me to come and join them was my high point. PITR: And the low point? MA: I know many people would say COVID was the low point, but for me, that period was great. ASL really looked after their employees and I had time with my children that I would never have got anywhere else. The real low point was leaving ASL to join MyQ, because I’d been there for 10 years. I had such a fantastic team and leaving that behind was a lot harder than I initially anticipated. As much as I knew MyQ and I’d worked with them for a long time, the shift from partner to employee was different. It probably took me about six weeks to actually settle in and start to get to know everybody and then start building up those friendships with extended colleagues. So, the low point was leaving my comfort zone within ASL and the relationships that I still have with my former colleagues. PrintIT Reseller (PITR): What was your first job? Mark Asbridge (MA): I was an IT technician at a large senior school. Interestingly, it was the school that I went to. The IT team knew me really well as a student and I told them that I didn’t want to continue into college or go to university, I wanted to work and asked if they had any IT jobs. So, I officially left as a student on the Wednesday and the following Monday, I was an employee. PITR: You’ve been working in the print and IT industry for more than ten years. What led you to enter the sector? MA: That relates back to my first job. We had a fleet of about 100 Xerox Mark Asbridge, Head of Business Consultancy, MyQ, shares his experiences over the past decade, what he’s learned, and the highs and the lows of our unique and challenging industry A decade in print INTERVIEW Mark Asbridge
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