Print IT Reseller - issue 48

PRINT IT RESELLER.UK 39 VOX POP “Advances in biometric authentication, using fingerprint scans to release print jobs, also offer considerable time and security advantages, ensuring printed documents don’t get into the wrong hands. “Other major trends affecting the office printer industry will include the continued shifts toward multifunction printers and inkjet technology, and heightened competition in the A3 market. We expect MFPs to continue to expand their market share over the coming years, as businesses pursue cost efficiencies. The shift to MFPs also means that managed print services will become increasingly viable for SMEs, creating major new opportunities for resellers. “The market for A3 devices will also see increased competition as HP aims to disrupt the market with new A3 offerings based on its PageWide technology, following its acquisition of Samsung's print arm.” www.blackbox-solutions.co.uk Adam Gibbons, Group Managing Director, Xeretec “2018 is set to keep businesses of all sizes on their toes, dealing with challenging, broad issues that range from Brexit to GDPR. The latter, in particular, will have a direct impact on the print environment, and we’re already having discussions with our customers on how best to adapt their secure print policies and their print environments to ensure that they’re compliant with the regulation. “GDPR alone though won’t be the sole catalyst for private and public sector organisations taking a renewed interest in device security. With more companies implementing mobile print solutions – and mobile recognised as a potential security risk – we expect to see companies making even more of an effort to tighten up their security policies while ensuring that print devices are an integral part of it. “Another changing dynamic that will have a bearing on print in 2018, is the growing desire for real-time data and analytics. Customers are increasingly expecting greater insights into all aspects of their business, and this requirement now filters down to print usage, which is perhaps inevitable given print’s cost to a business. “We’ve anticipated this shift and we expect to see interest in Xeretec’s Pulse, our proprietary business intelligence platform. Pulse offers a centralised view of the entire print infrastructure status including KPIs such as single device usage per month and percentage of colour print output on the total. With Pulse, service delivery aspects are detailed in a very transparent fashion displaying overall uptime and other met/unmet SLAs, list of incidents and helpdesk call resolutions. With the spotlight on all aspects of a businesses’ operational expenses, what we’ll see in 2018 is that print can no longer hide its expenses, nor how it’s performing under an SLA. Therefore, we anticipate more demand for the on-device apps and solutions that we offer which provide the detailed insight into print that business needs.” www.xeretec.co.uk Mark Smyth, Chief Operating Officer, Vision “I believe 2018 will be a year of continued and further consolidation in our market with both resellers and vendors looking to protect and grow their market positions, whilst this will also force change. I also believe there will be financial challenges for some vendors and resellers as Brexit negotiations and the process of exiting the EU continues. It will be more essential than ever to have a well-run, efficient business in our sector that can stand up to market conditions through consolidation that will inevitably expose any inefficient businesses and make it far more difficult for them to compete. “I believe increased adoption of digital transformation and ways to support and improve security will continue and I expect take up rates to increase as businesses look to become more efficient and drive down cost through automation of manual process, whilst becoming more secure. “We aim to capitalise on both opportunities from market consolidation and disruption that I believe will create a potential client shift to new resellers, and digital transformation and increased security that will increase demand for improved infrastructure. 2018 will be another interesting year!” www.visionplc.co.uk Sebastiaan Crebolder, Group Operations & Marketing Director, Pinnacle Document Solutions “From a technology point of view, we will see a continued need for workflow automation and content management software bridging the gap between paper and electronic documents. We will see a continued... Customers are increasingly expecting greater insights into all aspects of their business, and this requirement now filters down to print usage Adam Gibbons, Xeretec Colin Griffin, Blackbox Soutions