01732 759725 40 BIG ISSUE continued... I think IT resellers and or non-print resellers and providers typically shy away from print, they’re not really interested in it Are resellers making the most of the opportunity? Rod Tonna-Barthet: “According to Quocirca, 86 per cent of organisations will consider using a single provider for their MPS and IT services. The reality is the customer is demanding this, that creates a huge opportunity for the print organisations in this space to be able to expand those services. The customer is going to do it anyway, and that’s the risk, if you’re not having these conversations, the customer is moving along and doing this as a matter of course. So, I don’t think this is an option to consider whether you do it or not, it’s that you must do it. It’s more a question of how you do it and where do you do it. “Customers are not expecting one provider to do everything and to have all the answers. But they are expecting one provider to be able to manage the relationship and to manage the partnerships for them. And if you do that well, then the customer will just grow and grow and grow with you.” Phil Jones: “As OEMs we have partner programmes and we’re desperate for new partners, primarily ones who have the attributes to talk about digital transformation with the CIO, understand the relevancy of print, etc. But, in our experience, so far, the quality of some of those conversations isn’t good enough and people are not even on the journey yet. “Entering this market space is very lucrative. But it takes some work and cash. We’re talking about everything from your systems, being able to handle recurring billing, salespeople, long life cycles, sales and financial reporting, cash flow etc. moving organisation and you’re doing £10m and making one mil on EBIT, you’ll probably get something like three times that – you’ve got no forward recurring revenue just literally a bunch of talented salespeople, hopefully smashing their targets every month. The more recurring revenue you can build whether it be hardware, or SaaS, then fundamentally, you can go anywhere between six and 15x depending on how big your business is. “I think there’s a real incentive here to do the best for the customer. By becoming the go to person within the customer, you will get baked in, you’ll get more budget, you’ll get more certainty, etc. But fundamentally, if we start with baking the value into the customer through the provision of services, hardware, whatever that might be, and integrating it into their overall digital transformation journeys, then you can’t really go wrong and it’s a win win.” “A Microsoft paper reported that if you want to be in the MSP space, fundamentally, you should be expecting to invest £1.3 million with a breakeven somewhere in the region of 15 months and turning into profitability at year two. So, to put that in some context, this isn’t just a quick: here’s a product, a price, get on the phones and sell it to your customer. It requires a complete structural review about how you do the business. “Fundamentally, because of the way recurring revenues get booked on your P&L, you could write a deal for a few million and end up not booking a lot of it in your first year, which means there’s a big cash draw. I’ve got a specific example of this; we’ve recently taken all the printers (5,000 devices) out of a major supermarket and the reverse logistics alone on that was over £100,000. So, it takes a bit of cash and not every company can start the journey towards being a managed services reseller. It’s hard, and you need somebody to help you. We have people to help you, we’ve got programmes, resources, salespeople, assets, you name it, we can stand by your side when you’re going through that discussion with a customer. But you have to do that in a in a true partnership environment with each other.” Francis Thornhill: “I think IT resellers and or non-print resellers and providers typically shy away from print, they’re not really interested in it. But what I would say is that it does leave the door open, and it is an important and recurring revenue stream. IT teams really do not like dealing with print challenges, they’re not set up to do it, the need is there and obviously the revenues are there, and if that need is not addressed the door is open and what you’re basically doing is introducing your competitors into your customer base. “Our key focus is to help our partners cover the gaps, we provide any element of support right from generating demand through to sales enablement through to design, build and support and we can white label it as well. We’re here to stand by our partners and we go on the journey with them to close the gap and capture an additional revenue stream.” kyoceradocumentsolutions.co.uk konicaminolta.co.uk brother.co.uk Print Vendor Panel Discussion View the Print Vendor Panel Discussion in full at: https://vimeo.com/756405014 Francis Thornhill 13 September 2022 Business Design Centre · London 22 In partnership with
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