Print.IT Reseller - issue 79

PRINTITRESELLER.UK 43 VOX POP Technology will continue to accelerate, driven by the learnings of COVID-19, with clients expecting a holistic service offering. Allowing flexible, secure, and nimble working practices. continued... and those who successfully delivered in a time of client need, will move in to 2021 with momentum, and a proven ability to expedite change. Personally, I believe that more flexible working practices will appear. With office-based working yet again becoming ‘normal’, although it will not be unusual to see a hybrid model where employees spend a percentage of their working week at home. This breeds a fantastic opportunity for vendors who had the foresight to invest in an infrastructure capable of offering, not only managed print services, but also managed IT solutions, capable of driving digital transformation. I fear it may be too late for those who did not. Technology will continue to accelerate, driven by the learnings of COVID-19, with clients expecting a holistic service offering. Allowing flexible, secure, and nimble working practices. 2021 brings a real and tangible opportunity for forward-thinking, technologically advanced, and service dedicated vendors to benefit from the lessons learned in 2020. I, for one, am excited to see what the new normal looks like. But more importantly, ready to grasp the opportunity it brings. www.workflo-solutions.co.uk Nigel Allen, Marketing Director, ASL Normally when I submit this, I review what I wrote last year and look at others to see who was closest to reality. I haven’t bothered this year. At the time of writing we are still in a situation where the health of the nation is paramount, the economy has started to fail again after some encouraging signs, and local lockdowns are in force. For ASL the fact that we are nationwide and focus on the SME market, this does help balance out our business. In terms of 2021, even if a vaccine is found and rolled out, over six months people are used to working in a hybrid manner and businesses are getting much better at managing and accepting the remote worker. If you look at the analysts such as IDC or Gartner some of their predictions are focussed on the larger corporates, not the general SME market. I see an increase in the demands for effective IT solutions including improved unified comms, as people move from just being happy that they can communicate with others to improving cost and efficiency. 2020 has caused uncertainty in business like never before and there will be more demand for flexible contract solutions to enable the customer to have a degree of downsizing if required. It is a difficult one to offer but those who do find the right solution will be the winners Generally there will be employees returning to their common practices and habits, including printing. Although there was a huge increase in the amount of Teams and Zoom calls initially, I believe that people miss the benefits of face to face meetings which does drive printing demand. In some industries there is still a demand for large documents to be printed and circulated, where you have a remote workforce services such as web2print where the documents can be uploaded, printed and despatched within 24 hours will see new customers requiring their services. Above all else, whatever happens in print, we will all be glad to see the back of 2020 and really hope for a different new year! www.asl-group.co.uk Nigel Allen Michael Field