Print.IT Reseller - issue 88

01732 759725 42 VOX POP According to Deloitte, the subscription business model has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The firm’s research found that eight out of 10 subscription-based companies are either maintaining or growing their subscriber base The subscription economy Mike Barron, Managing Director, SYNAXON UK: “The move to as-a-service is having a profound and lasting impact on the entire IT sector. With print, we saw a surge in demand for devices being driven by WFH. That’s been followed by a wave of interest in managed services, as businesses look to regulate the costs of home-based printing. That said, a lot of smaller businesses and home users will continue to manage print in the ‘traditional’ way, buying replacement cartridges and consumables as they are needed. “While we will see more businesses adopting the as-a-service or managed approach to devices and consumables, it will be a gradual shift. There is certainly an opportunity here for any channel partners that can offer a cost-effective, as-a-service offering, or managed print proposition that is simple enough to attract SMBs and home users. Doing the former, will take a lot of resource and investment, but the latter has a lower barrier to entry, and I’d expect to see a lot of activity in this area over the next year or two. “Print-as-a-service and managed print are areas SYNAXON UK will be watching with keen interest along with our MSP partners. If we can identify suitable service offerings, we’ll be looking to partner with those providers and actively take them to SYNAXON UK partners.” Chris Bates, Business Unit Manager – Print & Supplies, Tech Data, UK & Ireland: “As-a-service is clearly the direction in which everything is moving, and we’ve seen that accelerating over the past 18 months. In particular, we have seen significant growth in our tech-as-a-service offering, which allows partners to bundle hardware, software, and their own services together as an all-in-one, subscription offering. That is being used to finance upgrades to print estates – in education and the public sector as well as the commercial market. “There is also a really good opportunity to provide a simple and effective way for partners to offer managed print services – and that’s something we have addressed with our OpenMPS service. This is a simple managed print service that reseller partners can take to their customers right away – without any up-front investment. “OpenMPS is a highly-automated process and extremely low-touch, both for the partner and end-user customers. It enables partners to start moving away from a low margin transactional model, towards more profitable, pay- per-use subscription business. Supplies are re-ordered automatically and invoiced per delivery, but only when they are truly needed. Compared with conventional cost-per-page plans that often conceal excessive overcharge, OpenMPS can reduce hard costs by 25 per cent through the optimisation of supplies replenishment and by driving out unnecessary wastage, making it much more efficient, cost-effective and beneficial for everyone.” PrintIT Reseller: To what extent do you believe the desire to purchase ‘everything-as-a-service’ is impacting the traditional print market? Mike Barron Chris Bates