A better year in 2014 for everyone right? I still feel the economy here in the Northeast is not what is was and am wondering if we’ll ever get back to where we were in the mid 2000’s. I’ve been in this crazy business for 33 years and not once was I ever faced with a layoff. A CEO once told me that he’ll invest in technology before he adds to his labor force.
Here’s my top ten predictions for 2014:
- The Big 4 copier manufacturers (Ricoh, Xerox, Konica Minolta and Canon) will start buying document management software companies to enhance their “be everything to everyone mentality.”
- Just maybe this will be the year when one manufacturer finally calls it quits from manufacturing copiers and gets back to their core business. But, who will it be? Toshiba, Sharp or Kyocera?
- Larger dealers will escalate their efforts to acquire smaller dealers in order to maintain and grow market share in their territories.
- Document Management software finally hits home for SMB accounts as more dealers will have the talk with their prospects and customers about managing their documents.
- Capture software will also be a huge theme for this year. That next generation of dealer owners, sales managers and sales people understand that imaging systems will no longer pay the bills.
- Keywords for 2014 will be workflow and business process management. SMB businesses need to do more with less.
- One of the Big 4 copier will buy a 3D printing manufacturer to capture the consumable revenue stream that they had with imaging equipment.
- The Memjet “waterfall” print head will finally makes a splash in the MFP market place for SMB’s.
- Some of the largest copier dealers will acquire VAR’s to increase their MNS and BDR business.
- Look for more manufacturers to have offerings in Segment 5. Segment 6? I wouldn’t bet against it.
Have fun with this, I did!
Here’s the links for previous predictions: Top Ten MFP & Copier Predictions for 2013, Top Ten MFP & Copier Predictions for 2012, Top Ten MFP Copier Predictions for 2011, Top Ten MFP Copier Predictions for 2010, Top Ten MFP Copier Predictions for 2009
Good selling!
