Print.IT Reseller - issue 79

...continued... 01732 759725 22 OPINION documents shared from the office and printed at home, to ensure that remote printing is secure and, of course, to reduce their print costs. It is important that the print best practice adhered to in the office is followed when working remotely. Therefore, vendors should work closely with their channel partners to help them educate their customers on the subject of remote printing, and the challenges that it brings, and what solutions are available to help them bring control and discipline to remote print.” COVID has accelerated digital transformation plans – including planning for transition plans to more nimble, flexible, cloud-based print solutions and Holmes expects to see this continue well into the new year. Holmes sees cloud-based print as an exciting development as it will provide companies with a better insight into onsite and offsite print, making it easier to manage, provision and control. “It took time for companies to fully realise the impact that unmanaged print has on their business and their bottom line. We think a process of education is now needed to stress the importance of managing remote print. The challenge – as ever – is how to encourage and support behavioural change outside of the workplace.” In order to address that, PaperCut will be working closely with its channel partners to help them ensure that their customers are able to support distributed working environments effectively. “Key needs for our partners will be to provide secure and seamless print options to customer staff working remotely, while guiding them on remote print best practice. Otherwise, there’s a real danger that print costs could spiral with the increase in home printing versus centralised office printing,” he warned. “That is a problem that could be set to grow; while the percentage of documents typically leaving the office may be fairly small due to vigorously enforced print rules, with distributed working becoming the norm, the number of documents printed remotely – and the risks that come with it – will increase exponentially. By working together, we think that’s a challenge that can be overcome.” More broadly speaking, Holmes said that COVID hasn’t just impacted organisations’ digital transformation plans, but it has impacted the print industry overall. “As we move into 2021, OEM, reseller and portfolio consolidation will characterise the first half of the year. While disruptive, this of course presents as many opportunities as it does challenges; not least, the opportunity to develop deeper relationships and drive mutual growth to benefit not just the industry and the print ecosystem, but also for meeting the ever-changing needs of the customers our industry serves.” He added: “With so much to think about – ensuring your business is COVID- resilient, your staff are safe and you can deliver business continuity to your customers – there’s a danger that print will fall a long way down businesses’ list of priorities. This could be a serious error, given that print taps right into the heart of board level priorities like security, cost reduction and environmental impact. Ignoring print now – whether it’s remote or onsite – could set businesses back just as they’re trying to recover from the significant disruption COVID caused to their business earlier this year. “We also have to think about the number of print devices being sold into the workplace in the post-pandemic world. Businesses are of course encouraging staff to work from home and are moving to smaller, more suitable, premises. This will have an impact on the number of devices they need; some devices may be removed from the fleet, and businesses may choose to ‘sweat’ their existing print assets rather than invest in new ones. While there is value in that, over time it introduces risk; the security and productivity benefits of newer print devices soon outpaces that of older ones, leaving companies trailing behind their competitors with outdated equipment while also making them more vulnerable to malicious attacks and online security risks.” Resilience and resourcefulness After reviewing his predictions for 2020, Phil Madders, Managing Director, PAE Business admitted that he could not have been more wrong! “I missed completely that we would spend several months in lockdown, even more time banished from the office, resulting in page volumes, by our calculations, across Europe dropping by 74 per cent at its lowest point.” On the other hand, what has been brilliant is the resilience and resourcefulness of the channel. “No sooner had PPE become a thing, than I received about three emails a day from the channel offering me a whole suite of protection,” he said, adding: “Our partner in Germany, Perform IT added a COVID-19 module to mySalesDrive auditing solution so our dealers could offer a professional back to the office to come. There are smart things dealers can do to ensure their operations are as environmentally-friendly as possible, such as ensuring technicians have a smart route, that they only go out once to fix a machine, and other tactics like that which can help to reduce the carbon footprint,” she continued. Looking ahead to next year, Davies- Carolan predicts that customers will require ECI to help monitor and manage a growing number of devices in the field to ensure that they’re able to derive more value from the increasing amount of data being produced to ensure their business is running as efficiently as possible. Remote working will continue “COVID will define many key business decisions in the first quarter of 2021, even if a vaccine is made widely available. Remote working will continue and will become part of the new norm – so from a print perspective, that means looking at how to make it secure, cost- effective and accountable when staff are not in the office,” said Steve Holmes, EMEA Regional Director, PaperCut. Given that remote printing from desktop printers is estimated to cost 3-5x that of networked multifunction devices, Holmes argues that companies need to focus on this issue now if they’re going to bring print costs under control. “Meanwhile, companies that have yet to adopt a print management strategy should do so in order to better secure Steve Holmes