Technology Reseller v20 2019

01732 759725 36 SCANNERS No one would deny that the scanner market is a mature one, but for Gerry Kelliher, Kodak Alaris EMEA Sales Director, it is still full of opportunity, not least because of the gap that still exists between digitisation and automation. “There are plenty of process workflows out there that are digitised but not yet fully automated, and we are looking for partners who can help us identify the decision-makers who own them,” he said. The sorts of process Kelliher is talking about are where someone captures a digital image of a document by scanning- to-the-desktop and then manually entering details into an electronic system or forwarding the image to a shared service centre, perhaps with the message ‘Here is an invoice. Please can you approve it or pass it on’. “We still see lots of steps, lots of hands on a process from start to finish, and every one of those interactions costs money, opens up compliance risks and introduces errors,” he said. “A bank in Latin America we worked with were getting 1,600 new 10-page customer application forms a week. Forms were being scanned on an MFP and delivered to a shared service centre where 26 people performed manual data entry. You can just imagine the spelling mistakes, the incorrect addresses, the compliance problems and the time it took to open an account. We need partners who can recognise inefficiencies in their accounts and want to provide an end-to-end solution, using our hardware, our software and our professional services.” Kelliher says that Alaris is unique in the scanner space for its ability to bundle those three elements together in what he calls ‘an information capture cog’ that can be plugged into a partner’s solution. “We can deliver the information capture front-end to make a partner’s solution more effective for their end user accounts,” he said. A key aspect of Alaris’s proposition that Kelleher says has real significance in the context of end-to-end automated solutions is image quality. “With the advent of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), we are seeing image quality and some of the core attributes that Alaris has always delivered coming to the fore in terms of their impact on read rate and the accuracy of images for post- processing. We are now seeing partners that insist on using our solutions because of the high image quality we guarantee and the fact that our PerfectPage technology delivers the crisp images they need 100% of the time,” he said. New partners Kelliher says that while existing channel partners have been successful at identifying the owners of processes ripe Great expectations for automation, especially in production capture environments, Alaris will be looking to develop relationships with new partners as it expands into new markets. “Traditionally, we have been very strong in production capture, but as we move more into distributed capture, we are looking for new partners who have access to those enterprise accounts. Our end-to-end proposition is very attractive to partners that are focusing on delivering value to a smaller set of more specialised end user accounts. They want vendors who can provide an end-to-end bundle they can fit into their solutions,” he said. To help existing and new partners exploit such opportunities, Alaris is expanding its channel programme with a new platform designed to make it easier for Alaris and its partners to do business together. “In addition to market development funds, rebate programmes and rewards programmes, we are adding more capabilities to enable partners in our software solutions. We are investing in creating bundles – pricing bundles and hardware and software bundles – where we pick out components that are perfect for a partner’s needs and provide marketing collateral that can go around that and sales enablement for their sales teams,” Kelliher explained. “People appreciate the investment we are making to drive value for the channel. We are not just producing new scanners and saying ‘Here you are. Isn’t it great? You have to take it.’ We are saying ‘This is where we see it fitting; this is where we see the opportunities; this is where we are having successes in other countries’ and really showcasing that to people.” The full gamut of partner tools offered by Alaris now includes a business plan As Alaris introduces an expanded channel programme, Gerry Kelliher, Sales Director EMEA for Kodak Alaris, explains how Alaris and its partners can work together to exploit opportunities in the scanner market