PrintIT Reseller - issue 72

dealers can go in and gather information about all of Lexmark’s offering – products, brochures and things like that. They can also complete training courses on print management as well as the other offerings we have,” he explained. With the company’s sales teams now working from home, many are conducting one-to-one training sessions with partners remotely. “We’re working on educating our partners in a number of ways,” Fairman said. “We are also doing marketing and creating brand awareness – education is key to success and we’re investing heavily in that area.” As reported in Issue 70, continued business growth is a key objective for Lexmark in 2020 and beyond, and the company has its sights firmly set on the channel to drive this growth, with this in mind, Lexmark CPM will be available to the company’s entire partner base. “We have our traditional BSD partners who are already well advanced in delivering a click charge-based managed print service, but we’re now building in CPM which means they can deploy, monitor and manage printing estates in a different way, lessening the financial burden associated with sending engineers out to set up devices, apply firmware upgrades etc. All of this can now be done remotely. We’ve had strong interest from many of our key partners already,” Fairman explained. When Lexmark announced the launch of its new global partner programme – Lexmark Connect, EMEA Channel VP Thomas Valjak, said that it was designed to empower Lexmark partners to reach new levels of success. The introduction of MPS Core in particular was designed to provide an opportunity for a new breed of reseller to partner with Lexmark. For example, IT resellers who don’t have the same capabilities that dedicated print dealers have can offer MPS without having to invest in developing the technical and service capabilities themselves. CPM works on the same premise and can easily be adopted by non-core print specialist dealers. “The fact it is a cloud- based solution makes it easy for partners of any size to get on board and offer an enhanced service to their customers. We also have a dedicated product line for that market too,” Fairman said. In conclusion, Fairman said: “What we are doing with this new offering is giving our partners different tools that will enable them to have different conversations with their customers, increase stickiness, deliver a real value- add and secure an ongoing revenue stream paid per device per month. Cloud print management is a great starting point, then hopefully they can explore that conversation further and open that up into other revenue streams for the future.” Lexmark enables partners to offer a complete suite of cloud services including Cloud Connector, Cloud Fleet Management and Cloud Print Management. Combined, Lexmark Cloud Services give partners a highly efficient, cost-effective platform, available through an easy-to-use portal. Lexmark Cloud Print Management and Lexmark Cloud Fleet Management solutions were honoured with 2019 Keypoint Intelligence – Buyers Lab (BLI) Pick awards in the Document Imaging Software category. www.lexmark.co.uk other business areas. With CPM, partners can easily monitor print usage and view data for better decision-making. “Resellers are able to remotely monitor customers’ print estates, and complete tasks such as ensuring firmware is always updated etc. So, from their point of view it reduces the cost to serve, there’s no requirement to be onsite to install, maintain and manage devices,” he added. Recurring revenue Fairman pointed out the opportunity for partners to combine Lexmark CPM with other managed services such as MPS to improve service levels. “It’s very easy to dovetail an MPS solution into this, rather than simply offering a basic managed print service based on clicks, partners can now overlay CPM on top,” he said. “Pricing is flexible and simple. It’s a pay per service – per device or per month. This provides customers with financing flexibility, simplifies selling for the partner and enables them to build new recurring revenue streams.” Training With the UK on lockdown, the launch and partner training will be conducted online. Fairman said a lot of training has already been done. Lexmark has launched a number of online training courses and provided information through its PartnerNet scheme. “Our partner portal offers access to a broad range of tools and resources to keep partners informed. Once registered, Lexmark has launched a number of online training courses and provided information through its PartnerNet scheme CLOUD PRINTITRESELLER.UK 21