Print.IT Reseller - issue 73

VOX POP 01732 759725 44 ...continued... opportunities which we support. The recovery time will depend on the length of the lockdown. If it continues into July or August the channel will look very different to the one we have today.” Mike Nelson: “The market may never be exactly as it was and we are expecting to see significant changes to working practices. We’ve learnt in the last few months that with the right technology we can all work away from the office, so we will likely see the fast tracking of digitisation and back-file conversion projects to reduce the number of documents companies are storing physically in their offices. “From a vertical perspective – we may see a similar pattern as companies look for ways to make their document management processes more resilient. In recent years we’ve seen the accountancy sector digitise as a result of the making tax digital initiative, and paper heavy sectors like legal may follow.” Rod Tonna-Barthet: “We are actually very optimistic about market recovery, as organisations will need trusted IT consultancy more than ever to ensure they can maintain business continuity both during this crisis and through any other similar situations in future. Many are now racing to build digital processes, operations and supply chains, so that they can continue to do business now and in any future periods of disruption. Organisations will have to look to strengthen their existing partner ecosystems and consider forming new partnerships to help them respond to these new market conditions quickly. “At Kyocera, our solutions are underpinned by comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity services, so we are in a good place to guide businesses as they look to rebuild following this crisis. “As far as ‘business as normal’ is concerned, agility and adaptability will be key, and below are where we see the key opportunities lie: 1 Process transformation and document flows: By taking previously manual or cumbersome processes and transforming them into digital workflows that can be deployed regardless of time or location where customer and suppliers are based, we can dramatically reduce the time to action in areas such as agreeing new projects, contract negotiation and signing or paying invoices. 2 Digital infrastructure on demand: Cloud-based IT that can be scaled up and down and remotely managed 24/7/365 will depend on highly resilient and flexible cloud service infrastructures that can quickly respond to new business opportunities whilst protecting the organisation from outside threats and attacks. 3 Connected teams: The ability to connect employees, partners, suppliers and customers quickly and securely so they can work seamlessly on video, voice and mobile telephony platforms and maintain productivity regardless of their size or location.” Jeremy Spencer: “Clearly, the new normal will involve a change in approach for many businesses, and the embrace of technology we have seen over the last month will continue apace, so we expect great demand for the IT services we provide, as a result. That said, we also expect a pick-up in print solutions for home and workgroup use to reflect changing work practices.” James Reed: “It is too early to predict what the ‘new normal’ will be and we would not want to make any assumptions in this respect. Certainly, as we start to return to normal levels of activity, we would expect end-user customer organisations to be reviewing their approach to IT and to things like home working, collaboration and the cloud.” Martin Randall: “A new ‘business as normal’ is inevitable, the question really is how close will that be to what it was pre-pandemic and how long will it take to get there? There is lots of discussion around more home working and whilst we will possibly see more of this when the pandemic is behind us and we have our new ‘normal’, I can’t envisage it will be such a dramatic shift as is being discussed in the media. People want and need face to face interaction, more likely the new ‘normal’ will be a slight increase in home worked days. “Whilst writing, it is too early to comment with any certainty over the timescales of returning to ‘normality’ but when lockdown starts to ease we’ll (hopefully!) see positive steps towards this every week.” Martin Fairman: “We believe the market will eventually recover as businesses go back to normal and offices begin to reopen, however, the landscape will certainly have changed. Businesses will have to evaluate their current processes and understand which processes proved inefficient during the lockdown period. From our perspective, Martin Fairman Anna Musket Businesses will have to evaluate their current processes and understand which processes proved inefficient during the lockdown period