PrintIT Reseller - issue 67

CONFERENCE PRINT IT RESELLER.UK 39 Some partners simply don’t have the resource or expertise to do marketing in-house, so we’re making it easy for them to market themselves, by leveraging our resources of services. Because, if they don’t, then someone else will,” Doyle said. Under its content services umbrella, Kyocera solutions include tools and technologies that capture, manage, store and distribute content, turning unstructured documents and forms into structured data. The solutions can analyse, improve and automate key business processes, increasing control and visibility, as well as improving security and compliance “IT is an extremely competitive marketplace and margins are typically higher than a lot of print deals,” Doyle said. “Increasingly organisations are looking for economies of scale by engaging with a trusted advisor that can provide multiple solutions – hardware, software and infrastructure that enable digital transformation and which support cloud strategies. If our partners aren’t offering a wider range of products and services, then they are leaving money on the table. So what we're going to do is support them to deliver comprehensive ICT services so that that they can start to increase the wallet share.” Support services He added: “One of the things that is a hugely attractive proposition for a lot of end-users is the availability of support services. We have invested £2 million in the Kyocera ICT service centre which is based in our Reading HQ and which provides our partners and their customers with a helpdesk that’s available 24/7/365.” Around 250 people sit within Kyocera’s service function which is multilingual and provides a best in class ITIL structured service desk spanning, first, second and third line support and problem management. The centre handles between 1,200 and 1,400 tickets and calls across print and document management, ICT, cloud and UC every day. “A lot of processes can be handled in a semi-automated way so not all of those tickets will require human interaction,” Doyle explained, adding: “Some requests are managed via email and we also have a self-healing diagnostic system, which can process some queries very quickly, but it is an impressive set-up and a valuable resource that’s available to partners and their customers.” Connect on the go Channel marketing has been another area where Kyocera has invested, it has appointed a channel marketing manager who acts as a conduit between partners and the OEM’s internal marketing experts. Partners can secure support across social media, events, website improvement and SEO, as well as have access to ‘campaigns in a box’, co-brandable assets such as digital banners, emails and brochures, and joint marketing planning. “Some partners simply don’t have the resource or expertise to do marketing in- house, so we’re making it easy for them to market themselves, by leveraging our resources,” Doyle said. The company has also created the Kyocera connected app, which provides partners’ field-based teams with access to product and solution information, the latest news and events, resources and videos, product configurator and key presentations, at a tap of a button. There is also a browser-based version for office- based staff. “We are very much at version one of this and there are a number of enhancements we are planning, but essentially it’s to help our partners stay connected whilst on the go. If, for example, a partner is with a customer and that customer asks for some product information, rather than having to leave and come back to them after having looked it up somewhere, now the salesperson has all of that information to hand on their mobile phone,” Doyle explained. Partners can tap into the social media section, connect with their company’s social media and easily repost, share and like new content. “We can also send push notifications to all of our users. We’re really happy with how it has been received. We did a soft launch in July, and we've got over 400 active users from that. The first real push was when we announced it at the conference.” Whilst the first iteration is aimed at sales people, Kyocera is already looking at ways that engineers can start to use it to access troubleshooting information for example or to identify any issues they may need to resolve from a product perspective. Targeting growth Doyle said that signing up new partners is definitely on the agenda. “We are absolutely looking for future growth within our indirect channel, we have a £90 million target to hit. Bringing new partners on board will be integral to that, but we’re not looking to onboard at large. We're looking for organisations that share our values and our vision. It’s about finding partners around the country that buy into the philosophy and values that we have, and to work together to help us grow market share,” he concluded. kyoceradocumentsolutions.co.uk ...continued