Cover Story CYBERSECURITY Tech Data – the complete print solutions provider INTERVIEW WITH PETER LUNN, TECH DATA’S UK LEAD FOR PRINT SOLUTIONS Peter, what’s happening in print services at Tech Data? We have been working hard to pull together a fantastic set of services that together offer unprecedented value. We want our partners to leverage these services to support their growth or enter into the print and supplies market. Now our partners can offer print installation, automated consumables ordering via Open MPS, finance with TaaS and flexibility across all leading print vendors. Tell us more about your new installation service. Our print installation service will provide partners with access for pre-delivery inspection, testing, network installation by qualified and trained engineers, and end user training. Printers and multi-functional devices can be delivered and installed as instructed. Customers and partners will also have access to a dedicated support line with escalation to a Level 2 Support Desk included. What is OpenMPS? OpenMPS is our world-class managed print solution, offering predictive consumables ordering, invoice-ready meter billing and simple integrations to most ERP systems. It enables the channel to deliver significantly higher value at much lower operational cost by automating processes and order handling, reducing stock and driving out wastage. Traditional MPS programmes are non-flexible, vendor-centric and based on new machines, which results in resellers only selling printers and losing out on the opportunity for recurring revenue from supplies. Tech Data has changed all that, offering a simple, affordable and transparent all-in managed print solution for the channel, where the partner retains full ownership of their end-user customer relationship. We are vendor-agnostic, working with most leading print brands. Our channel-orientated approach gives partners the opportunity to offer an added value service to their customers, as well as cross-selling to gain and retain recurring business and revenue streams that they’re not yet tapping into. There is zero cost investment, no lock in period and no restriction on the amount of printers that are purchased, managed or installed. With full visibility of print fleet and asset management, as well as a transparent billing model, it’s a win-win for our partners! How does it work? I’d love to hear from our partners who are interested in OpenMPS; I can run through a demo and support the easy sign up. Once resellers are onboarded (through a process that takes less than 24 hours), they are granted access to the Open MPS platform. From there, they can download the DCA (Data Collection Agent) software to install into their customer’s network. Set up is simple and secure and the OpenMPS support portal has extended guides and tutorials. Software is vendor-agnostic so it can be used to monitor both new printers and any existing print fleet with a soft takeover. The software uses machine learning and AI to assess toner levels on the managed printers, predict their consumption and send replenishment alerts when they are about to run out, so toner and print cartridges are dispatched exactly when they are needed, avoiding wastage and over-charging. These alerts are received by Tech Data who will ship supplies directly to the reseller’s end customer, then invoice the reseller for the supplies fulfilled. For more information on Tech Data’s end-to-end managed print services, you can contact “ “
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