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Phil Jones, managing director,
Brother UK
What do you see as the main
challenges facing SMEs and
corporates?
To use a military acronym I came
across a little while ago, the main
challenge I continue to see is
VUCA. The world has become very
Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and
Ambiguous. Every time I use that
term everyone goes ‘Yes, that’s
it; that’s how my life feels’. The
other one is that the sheer volume,
variety and velocity of change going
on around us is making it really
difficult to know what to focus on,
how to adapt and how to make the
right choices quickly for your long-
term business survival.
How is Brother helping to address
these challenges?
By coming up with really good
proposals that wrap a product up
into a service so customers don’t
have to think about it quite so
much. Better to use your thinking
time and your brain time on the
things that are really demanding
your attention and outsource the
things that are more bread and
butter about your organisation to
a company like us so that we can
take care of it for you.
What are some of the key selling
points of Brother and its products?
The key selling point, I believe, is
that we are a listening organisation.
Quite often, there’s a perception
that vendors don’t listen. But we
are a listening organisation, and we
are a highly flexible organisation, all
the way through our supply chain
back to our factory. We’ve won
large pieces of business because
somebody needed something to
be changed within a product. We
can make those changes; we can
work on those changes and we can
get software updates done quickly.
Equally, we’ve been able to deliver
services with a very high degree
of flexibility. I think this is one of
the really big advantages we have
in the marketplace – our ability to
change and flex very dynamically to
changing customer environments.
Does Brother’s range cover all
print, scan and copy requirements?
Brother printers, scanners and
copiers are primarily produced for a
decentralised printing environment;
that’s our core area of expertise.
We look to go into businesses
that have been centralised and
decentralise them, because what
we often find is that there will be
a lot of pain points associated
with centralisation – long queues,
devices being tied up etc.. In our
experience, a distributed print
environment delivers a lot more
benefit for smaller workgroups.
Do you think that customers today
want a supplier to provide a broad
Talking print
PrintIT
recently asked a number of leading print vendors about
developments in the print market and how their product portfolios
are evolving to meet changing needs. Here, we present edited
extracts from the videos. The interviews can be seen in full on our
website,
Next month, we will publish part
two, featuring an in-depth interview with Peter Silcock, Business
Manager for Business Imaging, Epson UK.
range of products and solutions?
For me, it’s not breadth of portfolio
that people are asking for. What
they are really saying is ‘Please
provide us with stuff that’s reliable,
where we understand how the
pricing works, that’s not too
complex and which meets a pain
point’. You don’t need a product
range 50 items wide if five products
will do. I’m a great believer in
keeping things simple. What I
have seen, though, is customers
requiring fewer suppliers. That’s for
sure, and that’s a real incentive for
vendors and channel partners to
make sure we can provide a range
of managed services to customers
so they don’t need to buy from too
many people.
Are there any product areas
Brother is diversifying into?
For a couple of years, Brother has
been quietly diversifying behind the
scenes, so much so that I wonder
whether people actually know who
Brother is nowadays. In particular,
our services business has been
growing really, really well. Part of that
is what we call Brother as a Service,
or Print as a Service, where large
system houses or managed services
specialists outsource elements of
print for us to deliver to large end
users on their behalf. In addition, we
have a developing web conferencing
business. As businesses start to
decentralise or have more mobile
workers, they need secure effective
ways to communicate and we’ve got
a really strong product capability in
this area.
Rob Brown, Head of Key Accounts,
OKI Systems UK
What do you see as the main
challenges facing SMEs and
corporates?
One of the biggest issues they face
is visibility over what they’ve got –
costing and control. A recent survey
we did with 150 decision-makers in
the SME market shows that there is
a distinct lack of awareness of how
In our
experience,
a distributed
print
environment
delivers a lot
more benefit
for smaller
workgroups
