Print.IT Reseller - issue 79

01732 759725 OPINION 20 2020 has been dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has been turned on its head and despite news of a potential vaccine breakthrough, the likelihood is that coronavirus will be with us for some time to come. It’s fair to say that the impact on businesses in every sector will be far-reaching and this will define many key business decisions in 2021 Looking ahead to 2021 printed or scanned. By using this data, print resellers can work with their customers to identify manual processes that can be automated,” she explained. A recent poll of over 60 UK print resellers at the ITS reseller conference in October 2020 found that 63 per cent thought that traditional print reports are a thing of the past, with access to visual, interactive print data a must. “As resellers look to grow their revenues as print volumes decline, analytics will provide an opportunity to expand solutions out to other areas of the business for example in enterprise content management and process automation. Print management dashboards are a vital tool to help print providers differentiate their current offering to customers and win more business in 2021,” Kennedy concluded. A challenging year Emma Davies-Carolan, Director of Marketing EMEA & APAC, ECI Software Solutions says that this year has been challenging for field service and MPS businesses, with the pandemic dealing a number of blows no one could have predicted at the start of 2020. “Following a switch to remote working back in March, MPS businesses have had to significantly adapt throughout the course of the year to meet changing demands and ensure customer requirements continue to be met,” she said. “OEMs have probably taken the biggest hit as people are not buying devices in the same quantity as they once were. These manufacturers typically also supply large enterprise customers whose staff are more likely to work from home indefinitely; whereas we’ve seen small and medium sized businesses returning back to the office environment earlier. Of course, the pandemic has impacted all aspects of business, definitely leading to less usage at the office and potentially more usage at home. We’ve seen our print services customers around the world adapting to this and pivoting support to customers at home who in many cases are still very actively printing,” she added. Davies-Carolan said that ECI is encouraging customers to use all of the technology available to them and is continuing to build more automation into its products to help dealers to streamline service and supplies deliveries. “There’s a huge opportunity there for forward thinking dealers who are willing and able to embrace new systems and not settle for the status quo and how things have always been done. Being nimble and able to pivot quickly is key to survival and growth, especially now,” she said. Looking ahead to next year, Davies- Carolan thinks there will be a big focus on customers looking to print efficiently no matter the location of their team. “Also, the service in MPS is still, and will always be, at the forefront of a customer's mind. Buying printers and toner can be super easy – the real value-add comes from the excellent service provided by dealers. They want their printer to just work – this is likely to be even more important now. “While there is undoubtedly a trend towards reduced reliance on paper, there are industries, professions and roles that will rely on printing for a long time “The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly provided the impetus for an acceleration to digital working,” said Catherine Kennedy, Partner Marketing Manager, Intuitive. “If employees aren’t in offices and can’t print, we will need to find innovative ways to keep business processes running. We are aware of some employees who been overcoming this by printing out batches of work to take home and process. However, this isn’t an ideal long-term solution, and also has implications for data security too.” With the trend for remote working undoubtedly set to continue, Kennedy believes print providers will need to increase their understanding of customers’ processes and spot opportunities to innovate. “Print resellers have an ideal opportunity to work with their customers on digitisation projects, but where are the broken links in business processes that could be automated? Print management dashboards visualise printing data, identify print hotspots, and show areas where large volumes of data are being Continued... Catherine Kennedy Emma Davies-Carolan If employees aren’t in offices and can’t print, we will need to find innovative ways to keep business processes running