Print.IT Reseller - issue 73

VOX POP The impact of the coronavirus pandemic continues to play out. There will undoubtedly be long-lasting implications to the economy and businesses worldwide. This issue PrintIT Reseller explores to what extent has the print and IT sectors been impacted, how are vendors adapting to fast-changing new market conditions and where future opportunity lies? COVID-19 Mike Barron, Managing Director, SYNAXON UK: “SYNAXON UK is a community and the very real and human challenge that the pandemic has presented to all of us has only served to underline that fact. Everyone has really pulled together, and we have actually seen a surge in activity and interaction between our members and our team. We ran a virtual meeting of our SynMSP group recently and it was a big success and we’re holding daily team meetings over Google Hangouts – and we know a lot of our members are doing the same. We have seen an uplift in our Central Trading distribution business and even higher use of our EGIS stock ordering platform.” Emma Davies-Carolan, Director of Marketing Europe , ECI: “As a global business, we knew we needed to act quickly to minimise disruption and maintain business continuity. Within days of the restrictions being announced, we’d successfully moved the European team onto virtual platforms as part of our ‘work from home first’ policy. “Of course, some existing customers and prospects needed to focus on prioritising their own response to the crisis – a decision we were fully supportive of at ECI. Luckily, cloud- based systems have been in higher demand, meaning many customers are now finding our products more essential than ever.” Phil Madders, Managing Director, PAE Business: “Although it seems to have been going on forever in terms of the business cycle, it is relatively early to assess the full impact of COVID-19. The obvious changes that we have already made are: the entire business has moved to working from home; Teams has become a crucial collaborative tool, we seem to almost live on; and customer-facing activity in terms of sales and to a lesser extent technical support has reduced dramatically. However, we have focussed on improving our back-office systems and reviewing new product offerings for the channel as we look forward to returning to the ‘new normal’.” Mike Nelson, Senior Vice President, PFU (EMEA) Limited: “Ours is a very international business. We sell our scanners in more than 140 countries in EMEA alone, so not being able to travel and visit our customers is a challenge. As for COVID-19 then it is the health and wellbeing of our staff, partners and customers which is foremost in our minds and in this then sadly no company can expect to escape with no impact at all. Hopefully for us and for others this will be minimal. Business is likely to dip for a while but our mission to enable the world’s flow of knowledge has become even more important in these difficult times as remote workers need access to the information locked up in paper records in their offices, so we expect new opportunities too. “We have continued with our hiring plan and recently welcomed two new team members who have joined us remotely and can only meet their new colleagues on video calls. It must feel very strange for them but they have adapted well and are already making a difference. “Interestingly, we’ve seen sales growth for our ScanSnap products, because these help personal productivity and can help organisations adapt to the new working environment we find ourselves in. “Organisations of all sizes have been forced to undergo some form of digital transformation in just a couple PrintIT Reseller: How much of an impact has COVID-19 had on your business? 01732 759725 38 continued... Mike Barron Emma Davies-Carolan