Print.IT Reseller - issue 85

PRINTITRESELLER.UK 29 PRINT IT AWARDS 2021 MR: What’s your main focus in terms of engaging with the IT reseller channel? MF: For existing and new partners that may not sell print today, we have our comprehensive solutions portfolio. So we’re now engaging with customers that wouldn’t have considered Kyocera because of our hardware – purely as a solutions provider – to help them find new revenue streams, or complementing what they already have and adding value to their clients. We see a couple of opportunities in the market – the first being traditional hardware replacements offered as a managed print service which we can deliver on partners’ behalf. We can provide a fully managed wraparound service which they can then bill to their clients. And then the other area is to complement what they’ve got from a hardware point of view, with our wider portfolio that includes unified comms, security to cloud right through to fully outsourced services. We have already gained some outsourcing contracts via partners, and we’re maintaining them here from the UK and that really is an area that we want to significantly grow over the next 12 to 18 months. MR: The pandemic has to some extent dramatically changed the climate for the print channel, we’ve seen mass acceleration of cloud and digital transformation – what do you think this will mean for the channel’s go to market strategy? MF: The last year has thrown up a number of challenges for businesses operating in the print and document management space, but Kyocera has continued to deliver despite these pressures. The adoption of digital technology such as Teams or Zoom in the past 18 months has been much quicker. We’ve also seen a massive uptake in enterprise content management as clients look to get information quicker, and make sure it’s secure as people are working from home. So that is an area that we want to help our partners really capitalise on and secure additional revenue streams and profitability, without necessarily having to do all the upskilling. Partners are now having a different type of conversation with their end- user customers around cloud, ICT and ECM solutions. We are looking to further expand our product and service portfolio, offering a range of holistic solutions that cover areas such as cloud, disaster recovery, automated workflow software and full managed ICT services, so partners can quickly sell into their clients. Our solutions don't require too much heavy lifting and we will support partners through the process. I think we all recognise that print volumes have significantly declined as a result of the pandemic. We are seeing volumes increase now, but if you look at IDC’s predictions, output is not going to come back to pre-pandemic levels. Partners will need to evolve their business to become less reliant on historical print-based revenue streams. Kyocera is in a fantastic place to help them on that journey of transformation and support them all the way, helping partners to have a different conversation and find new revenue streams with their existing clients, and ultimately new net new clients as well. Printing will always be our heritage, the bit that anchors where we've got to today, and there’s still an opportunity to grow within this marketplace. Moving forward, I think dealers will have to change, they will have to train their salespeople maybe in a more consultative way to sell these new types of solutions. And I think that will bring a number of challenges, so it's really important that they find a vendor like Kyocera that has the credibility and the people that can support them on their journey as they evolve their business and expand beyond their roots in traditional print. kyoceradocumentsolutions.co.uk Partners are now having a different type of conversation with their end-user customers around cloud, ICT and ECM solutions. We are looking to further expand our product and service portfolio, offering a range of holistic solutions