Hard to believe, but we’ve almost clicked off the first full month of 2020. For those of us who still write paper checks, it’s time to stop scribbling out 2019 and get with the New Year.
Ah, but were it not for the lessons delivered by 2019, we would be ill-equipped to deal with the issues that will confront us sooner than later. As we wind down the State of the Industry trends and predictions talk track (we’ll offer a look at the great unknown next week), it’s time to pay homage to some final trends that shaped the needs of your clients and dictated the framing of your game plan.
Of course, any look back at 2019 would be incomplete without a few words about Xerox, which underwent more than its share of changes. Chip Crunk, president and CEO of RJ Young, believes Xerox’s decision to restructure the organization and bring Global Imaging Systems under the Xerox Business Systems umbrella was impactful and a significant play leading up to the current discussions with HP.
“Prior to the Fuji Xerox separation and potential HP merger, Xerox made strides to enhance the shareholder value,” Crunk observed. “The direction that many manufacturers were heading with the dealer channel versus direct operations will be interesting. As Ricoh moved away from direct and more into a dealer focus, Xerox took the opposite approach.”
Wouter Koelewijn, chief of products for Y Soft, firmly believes that the customer’s appetite for cloud-based services has accelerated development into print management for the cloud. He feels there is a better understanding of the limitations of the cloud in this regard, including latency and bandwidth.
“Based on the independent research that Y Soft commissioned, customers are still concerned about document security and data privacy,” Koelewijn said. “However, they are reassured that a cloud-based print management solution that still processes print jobs locally keeps documents secure, solving this concern.”
The Merits of Scale
While no one would dispute that M&A activity has visited quite an impact across the business landscape, creating a wider chasm between the biggest and smallest players, not everyone agrees that the activity will spell dire consequences at the lower end of the food chain.
Dean Swenson, president of The Swenson Group, feels many businesses—including those within the end-user pool—still find the qualities associated with smaller partners (more responsive, quicker turns, the personal experience) to be more compelling.
“The big are getting bigger,” he said. “While there are certainly some good things about the strategy, I believe the value proposition of the independent dealer resonates with a growing number of companies that aren’t enamored with big business.”
One technology that has been garnering a head of steam the past few years and promises to continue is undoubtedly artificial intelligence. Stephanie Keating Phillips, director of solutions for Advanced Imaging Solutions, traces the earliest examples of it several years earlier in the form of voice recognition capabilities within smart printers and MFPs. Now, she notes, dealers are leveraging it for smarter, more efficient printing and procuring accurate document information.
“We have the ability to protect and automate the document process and optimize workflows,” Phillips said. “According to various research analysts, the AI market is expected to grow to be worth around $15 billion by 2022. This is definitely a topic that needs to be on the radar of every dealer, in my opinion.”
Managed IT Caveats
IT security was a major issue that, although developing significantly over the last five-plus years, grew added legs in the dealer consciousness during 2019. Breaches in the BTA channel brought the subject sharply into perspective, causing dealer providers to take inventory of their offering as well as their potential liabilities, noted Marco CEO Jeff Gau.
Businesses turning their IT reins over to a copier dealer that is not as savvy as its reps make them out to be can be downright disastrous. But for those competent enough to answer the call, this managed service could be the significant growth catalyst in 2020.
“When I talk about the millions of dollars we have invested in our IT infrastructure, security is at the foreground,” Gau noted. “It’s hard to build your own platform, but it’s really lucrative. Cross-selling this offering to your copier customers…it doesn’t get any better than that.
“We’ve never had a security breach and we have 36,000 customers. Knock on wood, we built in all the infrastructure to mitigate those concerns to the degree that we can.”
Jim Coriddi, vice president, dealer division of Ricoh USA, notes that more affordable, intuitive production print technologies have emboldened even smaller businesses to bring some or all of their high-volume and specialty printing needs in-house. That paved the way for astute dealers to address these market demands in 2019—a growth catalyst that is certain to amplify as 2020 plays out.
“Good production print – like any implementation – fits seamlessly with the business,” Coriddi said. “Because of this, dealers who offered production capabilities in 2019 are better positioned to pivot to the adaptive, customer-success-centric approach that will characterize 2020’s top dealers.”
