Print.IT Reseller
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38
Year in review
...continued
Jonathan Whitworth,
managing director
,
DSales (UK) Ltd
The future’s so bright...
2013 was an excellent year for DSales
(UK) with record sales of £11.7
million and the opening of our new
showroom at Heathrow serving our
channel partners and their customers
in London and south-east England.
Manufactured by Konica Minolta, the
Develop ineo range continues to be at the
cutting edge of technical innovation and
design. Solutions are now a major factor in
any sales proposal and Develop has some
excellent document management software
apps that are unique to the brand like
the award-winning ‘store+find’ electronic
archiving solution.
Sales of production print systems
remain small. This end of the market hasn’t
lived up to early predictions, possibly
because the downturn hit the commercial
print sector hard and also because of
the step-change needed in dealer service
provision to support this high performance
kit. However, with the economic recovery
sales are picking up.
Prospects for 2014 look excellent.
DSales now has a record number of dealer
channel partners and has the resources
to support partners in very big contract
sales – not only is the volume of orders
increasing, order value is growing too.
Paul Mills,
VP of Business Development, EMEA,
Ringdale
MPS opportunities to grow within the SMB market
With the rapid development of MPS and the increased awareness of
the benefits of MPS within SMBs, the year ahead presents a valuable
opportunity for partners to add value to their SMB propositions.
Over the past few years technology and demand drivers have raised the
bar for MPS providers, where we see customer expectations are continuing
to increase regardless of the organisation’s size. More and more, decision-
makers are looking beyond the more obvious cost savings to address their total
document workflow and output needs.
SMBs are looking to drive efficiency and improve their business processes. The challenge, like in
the enterprise market, continues to be that conventional MPS is no longer enough: providers need to
continually adapt their propositions whilst keeping them commercially viable for the customer. It will
therefore be critical for providers to incorporate solutions, such as FollowMe, which offer business
intelligence and flexibility to support business requirements whilst remaining cost effective.
Peter Knight,
managing
director,
Printerbase
It’s time to
refresh old,
uneconomical
machines
We’ve had some year, that’s for
sure! Printerbase has grown rapidly,
embracing new technology and
ideas and, as a result, has expanded
various areas of the business and
taken on new staff.
Admittedly, it was still a struggle to get
customers to invest in new printers: we
found they were keen to hold onto existing
kit until it really was at the end of its life.
Hopefully, in 2014, we will find customers
are more open to refreshing older, less
reliable, non-economical machines for
newer devices that offer better features and
running costs.
In terms of our printer sales, we’ve seen
A4 mono lasers fall by 12% and A4 colour
lasers fall by 19%. However, there was real
growth in A4 MFPs, with colour up 26% and
mono up 23%. Our biggest growth areas
have been in A3, with A3 laser MFP sales
up 33% and A3 inkjet sales up 30% on the
previous year – quite an improvement!
As we head into 2014, we are looking
towards Managed Print Services (MPS),
which is sure to be a key growth area for
Printerbase. We have developed a number
of key strategic partnerships around MPS
this year and we expect these to bear fruit in
the New Year, helping us achieve over 30%
growth.
Overall, within the print industry, it’s
quite clear that the emergence of 3D
Printing will continue at some pace in 2014
– particularly now that the likes of Midwich
are distributing 3D printers. However, we
still see this as a very niche market and
we’re unlikely to see the devices sold off
the shelf any time soon given the technical
knowledge needed to use them – it’s not
quite plug and print yet!
In 2013, we also found that
customers were turning their backs on the
environmental side of printing, preferring to
focus on cost of ownership when choosing a
printer. However, the environmental message
is still something that, as a forward-thinking
business, we are looking to encourage, and
Printerbase will continue to offer expert
advice and customer service. Here’s to more
success in 2014!
Tony Burnett,
sales director,
Altodigital
Mobile print must be driven
by employers not employees
This year has been interesting for
the print industry. We have seen real
progress towards the ‘less visible’
print and document technologies
that have the potential to really
improve workflow and drive
organisational efficiencies. One key
area for our customers is mobile
print technology, and we’re seeing
increasing demand for mobile print
solutions, as BYOD becomes more
common in the workplace and
employees become increasingly
mobile.
Its two main applications are public
printing through specific print apps and
public hotspots, and corporate printing
utilising solutions that enable printing
from smartphone and tablet technology
to any device within the business
network. In both cases, security remains
the biggest concern. For businesses that
handle sensitive data, it’s essential that
the opportunity for staff to use unproven
and un-tested mobile print software is
minimised and that any mobile print
solution is driven by the company, not the
employee.
Throughout 2014, we’ll see more
companies embracing mobility, and IT
departments will increasingly integrate
secure mobile print applications as part
of a broader BYOD strategy. This has the
potential to increase print volumes, as
employees benefit from total flexibility
and are able to print remotely from any
device, rather than being tethered to a
desktop computer.
