PRINT.IT
17
Q&A
Ringdale, best known as the
inventor of follow me printing
back in 1997, is still a force
to be reckoned with in print
management. A Top 5 ISV for
enterprise print management, it
continues to refine its software
to meet the needs of mid-market
and enterprise customers in
Healthcare, Finance, Government
and other sectors where security
and compliance are essential.
Here, its Director of Strategic
Alliances Eric Crump talks about
the company’s strengths and the
enhancements it has made to the
latest version of FollowMe.
PrintIT:
Print management
software has been a big growth
area in the last decade. Are sales
still rising or has the market
become saturated?
Eric Crump (EC)
:
Sales are
still going up. IDC states that
between now and 2020 the print
management market will have
a compound annual growth rate
(CAGR) of 7.1%. So Ringdale
is growing, and growing more
than twice as fast as the print
management market globally.
We focus on mid-market and
enterprise accounts, and we
definitely see an opportunity there,
because these organisations are
concerned about security and
compliance. Financial institutions,
investment firms, hospitals,
Government agencies – these are
the key market segments that we
focus on. Other solutions providers
in this space are more focused on
the legal sector, education or SMB
customers. That’s why there’s so
much fragmentation in the market.
Over 75% of mid-market and
large enterprise organisations
have multi-vendor fleets and they
need a solution that can work in
that space. OEM solutions on the
market typically only support their
own brand of product, so it’s very
important that we provide a multi-
vendor or vendor-neutral solution.
PrintIT:
What are some of the key
growth areas for FollowMe in the
UK?
EC:
There are some terrific
opportunities in government and
healthcare where we see 100s and
1,000s of devices being managed
through a print management
solution. The NHS is looking to
use less paper and accelerate
digitisation and our solution is right
in line with that.
PrintIT:
You mention digitisation.
Are there other workplace trends
that are driving FollowMe adoption
levels?
EC:
Mobile printing is definitely
having a big impact because while
there are lots of different ways
to enable mobile printing, most
don’t offer any kind of control
over saving paper or security or
connecting BYOD to the network to
enable printing. Ours is a complete
solution that incorporates mobile
printing as just another way of
doing network printing, with all the
security, all the recording, all the
auditing of other methods. Mobile
printing is not a special project for
these large organisations; it is just
part of the way they look to print.
They want a holistic approach: they
do not want to have one solution for
mobile print and another for office
print and have to manage that.
When it comes to digitisation,
the major request is for
authentication so that employees
can use the scanner and scan-to-
email. We make this process faster
and easier by pre-authenticating the
user so that when they swipe their
badge the scan goes straight to
their email account; they don’t have
to fumble with the touchscreen to
type in their email or password.
Authentication has to be this easy
if users are to adopt paper-saving
digital processes.
We see this also with mobile
printing. There are lots of solutions
on the market that require you to
type in a user name and password
to access your print jobs, whereas
we allow all that to be done
automatically by swiping a badge.
We are making it easy for people
to print.
PrintIT:
What do you think are
FollowMe’s unique selling points
compared to competitor offerings
?
EC
:
The first thing is the industrial
strength of the product. Some
larger organisations need a product
to work with 10s of 1,000s of
employees. We work with hospitals
that have 100s of devices and 15
or 20 people per device. That’s a
lot of people. That infrastructure
has to work and it has to work all
the time and within the security
parameters of the organisation.
If it doesn’t, it’s going to have
ramifications for patient care and
costs.
Another thing we focus on is
making everything easy for the
customer. One of the reasons most
of our channel partners work with
us is because there is not much
they need to do on the post-sales
side. After FollowMe has been
PrintIT
talks to Eric Crump, Director of Strategic Alliances at Ringdale,
about the company’s FollowMe print management software.
Following the leader
We focus on
mid-market
and enterprise
accounts, and
we definitely see
an opportunity
there,
because these
organisations
are concerned
about security
and compliance
Eric Crump, Ringdale
Continued...
