Between booth meetings and educational workshops, the agenda for ITEX 2019 provided many opportunities for those who are swift of feet and adroit at time management. Indeed, the opportunities to meet, learn and grow at the annual expo, which took place April 24-25 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, greatly exceeded the allotted time. Two or three full days might have provided a better shot at covering all the bases, so you needed to keep on the move.
This week, we will offer a glimpse at several random stops on this reporter’s trek through the expo. Next week, we will provide dealer input into what made ITEX 2019 truly a chance to “Own the Office, Piece by Piece.”
OFFICE OF TOMORROW: Leading off the first day of the breakout sessions was a fascinating look at what the workplace of the future might look like. The hour-long discourse featured back-and-forth ideas being swapped by Eric Crump, director of strategic alliances for Ringdale; Randy Dazo, the group director for Keypoint Intelligence’s Office Technology Services and Office Editorial and Analyst team; and David Brown, business development specialist for PrintFleet.
Contrary to what we might have gleaned from The Jetsons, tomorrow’s office might not feature talking robots named Rosie, but we’re already getting a glimpse of how the office is currently evolving. For one, the definition of what constitutes “the office” is constantly broadening. For one, it’s smaller. With a subtle and not-so-subtle influence from the millennial generation, office work has taken a more team-based approach, and as a result, businesses require more collaborative environments.
Slowly, the era of the cubicle garden is starting to vanish, with offices encompassing more meeting rooms and huddle areas. Less cubicles mean fewer people, and businesses are more open to remote full-time workers and freelance employees than they were five years ago.
The trio also talked about how mobile and cloud solutions are fostering the remote movement. Citing a study by Upwork, the majority of workers will be freelance employees by 2027. Thus, perhaps the vision of Spacely Sprockets, at least from the office perspective, is indeed a cartoonish fantasy.
Regardless, an opportunity exists for dealers to offer products and software that will help facilitate meetings between people in multiple locations using platforms that will tie all of them together. Artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things have already pushed the office toward a future that is taking shape as we speak.
THE INSECURITY OF SECURITY: ITEX’s keynote speech actually occurred during a sponsored lunch for attendees, with Christopher Johnson, Google’s security and privacy product manager, holding court. He added a touch of hilarity to the discussion on security, which is difficult to pull off in front of an audience that is eating.
Johnson discussed Google’s approach to cloud security. It is important for security protocol to be built in as opposed to bolted on, and Google should know. It carries one-quarter of the world’s internet traffic and scans 694,000 site pages per minute.
When it comes to security, Johnson said, it is important not to “attach fire escapes.” One of the first slides Johnson showed illustrated a number of patented ideas that were devised for people seeking to escape a building fire in the late 1800s. One included wings that would presumably enable users to sail down from the top of a building (picture early planes from silent films where the wing-laden craft promptly crashes after going over a cliff). Another was a parachute-like contraption that was tethered to the escapee’s neck. So the escapee chokes to death instead of burning.
My, how far we’ve come.
EPSON’S INKJET REVOLUTION: Perhaps one of the biggest stories to come out of Las Vegas is Epson’s quest to shake up the BTA market with a line of inkjet printers for the office space. And one of the faces behind the effort is quite familiar to readers.
Joe Contreras, formerly with Toshiba America Business Solutions, signed on with Epson in February as the commercial marketing executive, Office Solution. He is the marketing face for a new unit at Epson dedicated to its upcoming line of inkjet printers for the dealer space. In 90 days, the OEM put together a cracker jack team of sales, service, field marketing and technical sales people. While Epson’s portfolio is currently limited, its goal is to sign up 200 dealers by the end of the current fiscal year.
Contreras made it clear that Epson’s objective is not to push aside other manufacturers that dealers have partnered with, but to add a complementary offering that enables dealers to change the conversation with their end users and capture net-new opportunities.
“That’s where inkjet comes into play,” Contreras said. “Laser technology is mature; I know because I’ve lived and breathed it for years. When you look at inkjet and the value proposition it offers, there are significant advantages in terms of the total cost of ownership and the amount of energy that’s consumed—that’s real tangible value that resonates with users.
“If you look at the market, history shows that wherever inkjet has gone, it has taken over and dominated,” he added. “It rules the consumer space; over 90 percent of the placements in consumer segment are inkjet. At the high end, over 90 percent of industrial presses are inkjet. But the office, that middle space, is the last open market where we see shifts. If you look at forecast and trends over time, it’s slowly tipping. More placements going forward over time will be inkjet, because of the cost of ownership and the scalability.”
From a dealership perspective, Contreras noted that there are less moving parts and it’s easier to service. Thus, Epson felt the market was ripe to showcase this potentially game-changing technology for a space that has long been associated with laser technology.
“It’s our time to come out and say here’s who we are, we’ve got a good team, and we’re looking for partners to come in on ground floor and really help us build toward future,” Contreras said.
MMM, QUOTES: One of the more innovative booths at ITEX 2019 was provided by Pahoda Image Products, which offered visitors a challenge in tandem with a demonstration of its Perfect Copier system for generating copier quotes. The platform officially launched at ITEX.
The task at hand: Try to eat a doughnut before the system could generate a quote.
Well, knowing that I was no Homer Simpson when it came to ingesting doughnuts, I decided to forego the tasty treat and instead watched the platform in action. Sure enough, as advertised, we filled out four questions regarding basic information: 1. Black and white only or color/b&w; 2. Paper size (letter/legal or letter/legal/11×17); 3. Type of device (copy/print/scan or print only); and 4. Average monthly print volume—all in less time than it would take a mere mortal to down a donut. An additional screen popped up to select
After entering contact information, the user is shown a list of available models that fit the criteria entered by the sales rep, complete with pricing and lease rates. Service and supplies are customizable, and a listing of options are shown that a user can update to account for the client’s additional requirements. Customers can also use the system to price compare one unit against others with similar specifications via graphs and charts. All in all, it reduces a process that normally takes up to 30 minutes and reduces it to a two-minute process. Learn more at perfectcoper.com.
