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Q&A
20
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.
PrintIT Reseller
spoke to Director of
Strategic Alliances Eric Crump about
the company’s strengths and the
enhancements it has made to the
latest version of FollowMe.
PITR:
What proportion of Ringdale’s
revenue comes from FollowMe
and what is its share of the print
management market globally and in
the UK?
Eric Crump (EC)
:
Over 80% of Ringdale’s
revenue still comes from FollowMe.
Outside the US, we are in the Top 5 of
secure document output solutions for
enterprises. This is a very fragmented
market with many, many providers, yet we
are continuing to see double-digit growth
year-on-year at 16%.
PITR:
Print management software has
been a big growth area in the last
decade. Are sales still rising or has
the market become saturated?
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 it’s growing
at more than twice the rate of 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.
Our channel partners, whether system
integrators or OEMs, are focusing on
these key segments, and are growing
sales because the requirement for MPS
is greater in mid-market and large
enterprise organisations. Over 75% of
these companies 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.
PITR:
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
hundreds and thousands 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, so we are
working with providers who have access
to framework agreements. Some of them
are OEMs who have contracts with the
NHS; some are channel partners that have
multiple offices across the UK.
PrintIT Reseller
talks to Eric Crump, Director of Strategic Alliances at Ringdale,
about the company’s FollowMe print management software.
Following the leader
PITR:
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 are seeing 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 be
able to print. And this has benefits for our
channel partners. Page volumes have been
declining and mobile printing is are a way
to get additional pages. In the end, it has
to be simple and easy for end users to
print, or they won’t.
PITR:
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
The NHS
is looking
to use less
paper and
accelerate
digitisation
and our
solution is
right in line
with that
Eric Crump,
Ringdale
Continued...
