Print.IT Reseller - issue76

VOX POP 01732 759725 40 Our view is that COVID-19 has simply accelerated changes that were already taking place ...continued... has increased but it is still nowhere near pre-COVID-19 levels. Our plans are fluid at present so we can react accordingly to the changing circumstances we find ourselves in and the impact of any second wave or continued absence from the office through working at home becomes clearer.” Clive Hamilton, Managing Director, Pinnacle: “We need to be more focussed than ever before in giving support to our clients in all areas of their business to help drive retention, diversification and growth in the remaining part of 2020.” Michael Field, Managing Director, Workflo Solutions: “COVID-19 impacted our lives in ways which no-one could have predicted. But our business plans, goals, and ambitions remain steadfast. We have worked hard to bring together the fragmented managed service market, and to offer clients a holistic solution, one which delivers greater value than that of its individual parts. “Strategic employment and intelligent acquisition, allow us to offer end to end services. Enabling digitisation services for archives and records, managed print and workflow solutions, on-premise and cloud document management solutions, IT managed services, migration, back up and disaster recovery. “COVID-19 has shown us just how quickly our world can change. To me, it’s shown us that we must move at an even quicker pace. August 2020 has seen Workflo appoint five new staff members; covering managed print, print production (PPD), data centre management, and to support our growth, credit control.” Mike Barron, Managing Director, SYNAXON UK: “Our view is that COVID-19 has simply accelerated changes that were already taking place. We’re adapting to that, of course, and in turn accelerating the progression and development of our overall value proposition. We’re placing an even stronger focus on managed services, which now becoming increasingly important for most of our membership. “The pandemic has accelerated the move towards home/remote working and cloud adoption and that’s increased demand for managed services such as back-up/recovery, network management, cybersecurity and, of course, print. “We have responded by launching an updated framework for SynMSP, with the aim of encouraging more MSPs to join. It offers new members access to an extended series of community events, tools, and learning resources, which they can use to develop their competence and capabilities. We identified four key challenges that new and developing MSPs face right now: n How do you become more competitive in a busy marketplace? n How do you find the right solutions and opportunities to grow sales and become more profitable? n How do you optimise your resources and identify best practice? “Over the past month, we’ve seen how colleagues that have returned to our offices at Brother UK have enjoyed the familiarity of having something that resembles their old routine, albeit in a more flexible way than previously.” Emma Davies-Carolan, Director of Marketing, Europe, ECI Solutions: “Like all businesses we have had to re-evaluate our processes, goals and targets in keeping with the ‘new normal.’ Luckily, cloud-based systems have been in high demand as entire organisations or specific growth areas of businesses have looked to move operations online during the pandemic. If anything this meant our customers were now relying on our software and solutions more than ever. “Customers have been able to easily scale up or add on new modules or users to our solutions like e-automate – which has provided peace of mind for those concerned about a sudden surge in customer demand or who have had to alter the way they work. “We’ve been able to conduct all of our implementation training online or via video calls and our customer service representatives remain on call to help resolve any issues customers might be experiencing.” Phil Madders, Managing Director, PAE Business: “That the situation becomes clearer in terms of people returning to work and commercial activity in offices restarts at some level. We can see from page volumes going through the devices managed by our customers that print volumes are severely reduced on normal levels in the UK. The rest of Europe continued... Phil Jones Emma Davies-Carolan