Print.IT Reseller - issue76

Customer-centric initiatives such as these mean partners can feel secure that they are able to offer customers a broad suite of best-in-class solutions, to support a vast range of needs.” Stuart Sykes: “We remain optimistic about the rest of 2020. At Sharp, we feel well-placed to be able to pivot and adapt how we can support our partners to meet the requirements of the post-COVID workplace. Over the past few years, we have been evolving and building a wider portfolio of technology to help businesses more than ever before. “This ongoing evolution is part of our mission to help customers create their own workplace of the future and match the emerging trends we constantly monitor. Recent data from Quocirca shows that there will be a 96 per cent increase in demand for collaboration services, and an overwhelming 89 per cent increase in businesses looking for cloud digital workflow solutions. We are well-placed to provide solutions in these areas, which are of increasing importance as businesses aim to ‘come back better’. “Our efforts here will be underpinned by the support of Complete I.T., a market leading IT support services provider acquired by Sharp last year. This strengthens our position to offer customers a full package of business technologies; from cloud working, collaboration and workflow, to visitor management and remote working.” Alpesh Unalkat: “We are optimistic but also realistic about the future. Our business has already pivoted and adapted to accommodate new workplace requirements and so we are optimistic about our agility and capability to innovate. “We are realistic, however, about how new and existing clients’ own businesses adapt and change given COVID-19, which will be driven by a range of factors everyone knows and understands the value of networking and sharing ideas and best practices that it induces and enables – and the only way to do that right now is virtually. For events in particular, I think everyone will be pleased when we can go back to being physically present in the same location.” Nigel Allen: “A few years ago, ASL invested in developing and acquiring other businesses which offered other services such as unified communications, commercial & industrial print as well as IT services. It is these areas that have shown more resilience during the lockdown and with companies moving to a more hybrid office approach, the ability to help companies with the additional IT demands and unified communication requirements provide us with excellent revenue streams that are beyond office printing.” James Pittick: “This pandemic has caught everyone by surprise, but in terms of business changes, it’s accelerated requirements that we felt were already underway. For a long time, we have supported our partners’ ongoing evolution to selling services, and we made diversification a core pillar of our partner programme when we relaunched it in 2018. “We have a broad technology portfolio at Canon including scanners, desktop SFPs & MFPs, and LFPs, which leaves us well placed to support customers as they implement hybrid working plans and processes. We have also developed a campaign around device touchpoint awareness, which provides partners with guidance and best practice on how to minimise the use of common product touchpoints to increase safety across multiple working environments. Alongside the touchpoint awareness campaign, we also have a business transformation campaign. This campaign helps partners to incorporate agile working messaging into their digital transformation proposition, helping them support customers no matter where they are on their journey. “We have also explored technology partnerships and have a strong range of cloud-based offerings that are well- placed to meet evolving workplace requirements. A good recent example is Canon working at the forefront of Microsoft’s Universal Print initiative, a solution where organisations no longer require on-premises print servers or to install printer drivers on devices. PRINTITRESELLER.UK 45 VOX POP including sector, maturity and culture. However, overall we look forward to ‘life beyond COVID’ as it has meant that all businesses are reviewing how they operate and communicate using technology and this fits extremely well with our proposition.” James Reed: “Definitely optimistic. We were able to adjust quickly and indeed, went into lockdown before the directive came. We have been able to operate normally ever since that time and we’ve recently started a phased and entirely voluntary return to our re-configured workplaces. That’s going well, but we don’t expect to have everyone back and working in the office for some time to come. Indeed, like many organisations in all sectors, we expect to have more people working from home more often in the future.” www.flexitdistribution.com www.papercut.com www.visionplc.co.uk www.brother.co.uk www.ecisolutions.com www.paebusiness.com www.pinnaclecos.co.uk www.workflo-solutions.co.uk www.synaxon.co.uk www.asl-group.co.uk www.canon.co.uk www.sharp.co.uk www.aurafutures.com www.techdata.com Stuart Sykes Michael Field We have also explored technology partnerships and have a strong range of cloud-based offerings that are well- placed to meet evolving workplace requirements