www.binfo.co.uk
magazine
12
Cloudforce / MPS
important customers would have
received this sort of personalised
attention. However, the volume of
information available online means
that businesses are now in a position
to develop closer relationships with any
customer.
Not everyone will welcome the
corporate harvesting of personal
details. Just because someone publishes
information on the public web doesn’t
mean that they are happy for businesses
to use it for sales and marketing purposes
– in the same way that a listing in a
public telephone directory isn’t an
invitation to cold callers.
However, Benioff is confdent that
social media has its own checks and
balances to ensure that businesses don’t
invade people’s privacy.
“The most important thing between
a business and its customers is trust
and you need to maintain that trust.
Businesses do have more access to
customer data than ever before and can
learn a huge amount about customers
in Facebook and Twitter. But if they
cross the line of what’s acceptable
they are going to hear about it on the
public network. The public network has
referential integrity to prevent businesses
overstepping the mark,” he said.
It is also true that many consumers
are eager to develop closer ties with
businesses and may not be averse
to these sorts of approaches. An
independent survey of 9,000 individuals
in 35 countries by InSite Consulting
found that 42% of British consumers
who have a social network site profle
follow at least one brand. Moreover,
49% of British social network users said
they would love to share ideas with a
company and 27% would like to co-
create new products and services with a
‘fun’ brand.
The question many small and
medium-sized businesses will be asking is
‘Can salesforce’s ‘social enterprise’ vision
be scaled to meet the needs of smaller
businesses? Dell may have the resources
to train 13,000 employees in social
media and set up a dedicated Dell Social
Media Listening Command Centre to
monitor 25,000 plus social connections
daily, but what about us?’
The answer is that many of salesforce.
com’s smaller companies are already
transforming themselves into social
enterprises through Chatter, which they
are using to make employees more self-
suffcient and productive for enhanced
customer service. Salesforce.com’s
expanding portfolio means that they
now have the tools to take customer
engagement to the next level.
Cloudforce continued...
There’s still time to register for the
Photizo Group European Managed Print Services (MPS) Conference 2011
If you want to fnd out more
about Managed Print Services,
what they can do for your
business and how they are
transforming the print industry,
the only place to be is Berlin.
Berlin
or bust!
Managed Print Services (MPS) is widely
recognised as an effective way for businesses to
gain control over offce printing and make big
fnancial, environmental and effciency savings.
In the current economic climate, European
businesses are fnding it hard to resist the
promise of savings in the region of 30%, so
much so that Photizo Group expects Europe to
overtake North America to become the largest
market for MPS by 2014.
At its simplest, an MPS combines remote
monitoring of print devices, just-in-time
consumables delivery and the ‘right-sizing’ of printer
feets to eliminate unnecessary paper, toner and
energy consumption and reduce maintenance and
support requirements.
There now exists a wide range of tools that
enable a business to do this in-house, including
print auditing and feet monitoring software,
automatic supplies ordering and secure print and
accounting solutions that form the basis of many
MPS implementations. Even so, most businesses still
choose to outsource printer management to the
extent that 50% of all print devices are predicted to
be under an MPS by 2014.
“Some companies do do internally-managed
MPS,” explained Ed Crowley, CEO and founder of
MPS consultancy Photizo Group, “but the reality is
that going externally has the advantages of any
outsourcing project in that an outsourcing company
can bring greater effciency and competencies to
the implementation.”
This is more true than ever as MPS evolves from
a focus on hard copy output to the management of
both electronic and paper documents throughout
their lifecycle. Today’s more sophisticated
implementations start with simple digitisation
of document workfows to reduce paper use and
streamline standard processes, such as invoice
processing, but can end up in full-scale business
process re-engineering.
High growth levels, the prospect of higher margin
sales from consultancy and solutions and the further
commoditisation of hardware are encouraging
resellers to enter a market that in its early stages
was dominated by the major printer vendors.
“The European market has been a strong growth
market for MPS – over 20% CAGR – and we are
seeing that continue,” Crowley told
Business
Info
. “But the most interesting thing is that up
until last year the market was very much a direct
market, with vendors providing services directly to
customers. Now we are really seeing printer resellers
embrace MPS as manufacturers introduce reseller
MPS programmes.”
These trends clearly have enormous
ramifcations. Printer resellers in particular will have
to acquire a new set of skills, from consultancy to
business processing analysis and optimisation, if
they are to prosper – or even survive.
“We think there will be a big shake-out in the
industry as the value and margin moves to services,”
Crowley explained. “Selling printers will become
more of a commodity business and as service-
oriented resellers discount hardware, it will be very
diffcult for hardware resellers to be competitive.
This is a huge transformation: it’s about changing
the business model. It’s a very diffcult thing to do
but it is going to happen.”
MPS customers, too, have important questions
to consider: what sort of MPS to implement; how to
choose a provider; how to ensure that the provider
delivers the savings promised; what metrics to use
to measure progress; how to sustain a process of
continuous improvement; how to ensure that your
MPS is a success.
What to do next?
The best place to fnd out more about Managed
Print Services is at the Photizo Group European
Managed Print Service (MPS) Conference 2011
being held at the Grand Hyatt in Berlin, Germany
on October 11-12. The conference, now in its third
year, combines panel discussions, an exhibition and
separate conference tracks for resellers and end
users. To fnd out more about the conference or to
register, please visit
http://www.photizogroup.com/europe2011