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DSales (UK) Ltd., the UK
distributor of Develop MFPs,
has just enjoyed its best ever
year with sales of £9.5 million,
an increase of 40% on last
year’s fgures (fnancial year
2010).
DSales (UK) was set up in
2006 to distribute the Develop
range of document management
systems manufactured by Konica
Minolta Holdings. Originally
targeted at small and medium
sized businesses, it has seen
its appeal increase with an
expanding dealer base and
product range.
DSales’s range now includes
Develop ineo multifunction
devices (MFDs) with print speeds
of 16 to 75ppm; the ineo+ 8000
digital colour press; and an
expanding portfolio of software/
print solutions that has taken
the company into new areas.
Managing director Jonathan
Whitworth told PrintIT that the
breadth of Develop’s range was
increasingly attractive both to
dealers and corporate customers
looking to reduce the impact
of offce printing through better
print management.
“In the last two years our
dealer profle has changed
signifcantly. A lot of accounts
are spending £750,000 a year
with me when several years
ago I would have been happy
with £20,000 and that kind of
business is associated with MPS
contracts,” he said.
MPS is not an obvious market
A record year
DSales (UK) has just had a record year.
James Goulding reports
Distributor Profle
for DSales, as its dealer base
has historically addressed
smaller frms requiring two
or three machines. However,
Whitworth said that larger orders
for as many as 80 machines
were now coming in every couple
of months.
“MPS is not our bread and
butter business but the other
year we did 500 units under
MPS scenarios,” he said.
Develop is also increasingly
involved in solutions work and
is often required to integrate its
MFDs with a customer’s existing
IT infrastructure and enterprise
applications.
“For example, we may go to
a school that has signifcant
security requirements. If they
already have a keycard system
we will spend time integrating
that system with our equipment,”
explained Whitworth.
He said that the solutions
customers are most interested in
revolve around cost accounting
and secure print, as these allow
users to balance the need for
privacy and cost savings. “The
reason people have personal
printers is that they want to
protect their personal data
and their personal space. You
won’t get an MD printing on
a departmental device if the
fnancials are output under
the nose of another employee.
Things like FollowMe printing
mean that an MD will be able to
print to a shared device.”
To meet this demand,
DSales offers a number of third
party applications, notably
Pcounter, plus a growing range
of Develop’s own solutions. The
latest of these is store+fnd,
an electronic document
management system that
lets small and medium-sized
businesses reduce their reliance
on paper for faster, more
accurate document storage and
retrieval.
The software is available in
three versions that integrate
fully with Develop MFPs: Team,
a basic entry-level offering for
businesses with 1-3 employees;
Business for organisations
with multiple departments and
sophisticated needs, such as
direct import from MS Offce;
and Enterprise, which includes
advanced features like faster
e-mail import and integrated
user administration for
managing access rights to stored
documents.
This follows the launch
late last year of Develop’s
Personal Print and Personal
Scan applications. The former
is a classic secure print solution
that lets users authenticate
themselves at any Personal
Print-enabled MFP and pull one
or more of their print jobs down
from a print server for output.
Simpler and more affordable
than Pcounter, it is ideal for
customers who don’t require job
accounting functions.
Personal Scan simplifes and
speeds up the routing of scans
by removing the need to input
Dirk Roos, Managing Director for Develop GmbH, congratulates
Jonathan Whitworth (right) and the DSales (UK) team on their
record trading year. Image credit: Jim Fitton, The Halifax Courier
Develop solutions like
store+fnd help customers
make full use
of an MFP
destination addresses manually.
When a user logs on, they can
see their own address book
and any other Windows Active
Directories they are authorised
to access and copy the required
address straight from the
relevant address book.
The application can also be
used by administrators to defne
users’ rights, authorise access
to the corresponding directories,
update address books via
the Windows Active Directory
and determine which types of
documents can be scanned in
colour or black and white and in
what resolution to help restrict
storage volumes.
For Whitworth, these
launches are welcome because
they provide a clear point of
differentiation with Konica
Minolta. “Originally I would be
asked ‘why should I choose
Develop and not Konica
Minolta?’ and I would say
because we are quick, effcient
and have stock. Now I can add
that we have our own software
that you can’t get anywhere
else. Ours is not just a me-too
product,” he said.
0844 980 0377
www.developsalesuk.com
“In the last two years
our dealer profle has
changed signifcantly”