Print.IT Reseller - issue 61

The programme has already launched in the Americas and the European call centre opened on April 1. Partners now have coverage that wasn’t previously available and net new partners will be brought into our community and on boarded with white glove treatment. By that I mean it’s like a concierge service, we’ll ensure our partner community understand what they’re buying; we’ll inform them about the product features, functions and benefits; how programmes work; how incentives work, how warranties work; provide them with access to enablement and training – all of the things a partner needs – we’re putting it on a silver platter and serving it to them. It’s also important to point out that we own our technology, A4 patents and engineering, and because we own the A4 technology we’re first to understand efficiencies, market leadership, improvements in engineering etc. those are within our brand. Our R&D is in head office in Lexington and that makes us very nimble, we can give partners or large end-users feedback on an improvement or design request for example – that’s a strong advantage. PITR : How can Lexmark help non- traditional print resellers overcome some of the barriers to entry in the managed print services space? SK: If we look at our partner community, we have partners who have traditionally focused on contracted pages and managed print deployments, that’s where Lexmark has excelled and we have a long history in that space. There is now a new breed of partners – established players in the IT space looking to managed print to deliver new revenue streams. It’s fair to say a barrier to entry is that MPS can be resource-intensive which has separated the historic BSD players versus the VAR community who are typically focused on delivering IT services. My view is that partners should have an evolution – on both sides. We support that and we’re helping to change/remove the barriers to enter MPS. For example, we have just launched Lexmark Cloud Services, a suite of cloud solutions designed to help businesses remove the IT burden of managing their printing infrastructure, and help partners save time and money by managing their customers‘ devices remotely. We’re not charging partners for this, it’s a value statement for us. With Lexmark Cloud Services, partners who are new to the contracted pages space can easily update settings, reset the printer, check ink levels The first Two Series products – the single function Lexmark B2236dw and the multifunction Lexmark MB2236adw are now available, and this summer we will be launching new colour products to complement the mono offer. We are not simply dipping our toes in the water, this is about taking the power of the brand and the power of Lexmark into the SMB sector. These SMB focussed devices will enable us to recruit new partners and new end-users, and significantly grow. Lexmark has established field coverage but what we’ve realised is that there are only limited partners you can touch with field and in today’s world with IT expansion and growth, we need to do things more efficiently. I recognised straightaway that we needed a larger inside coverage model focused on VARs and smaller partners. We needed a way in which to reach these new partners and in order to do this we launched a major inside sales coverage model globally, which will help our partners enormously. Q&A 01732 759725 26 We are not simply dipping our toes in the water, this is about taking the power of the brand and the power of Lexmark into the SMB sector ...continued