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networks.
“The other area now really beginning
to show growth is our document
management solutions product group.
Document solutions within larger
corporates has been a fundamental part
of our business for many years, and now
we’re beginning to see smaller businesses
take an interest in workflow processes.
We’re very much expecting these trends to
continue into 2017.”
Colin Griffin,
Managing Director,
Blackbox Solutions
:
“Much of our
growth in the past six months has been
a direct result of launching our own IT
services and support division, alongside our
established print services. We’re now able
to offer our clients a full office technology
package, including document solutions,
IT and telecoms. This has helped us to
attract plenty of new customers, but we’ve
also been able to sell new services to our
existing clients.
“We see IT and document solutions
as complementary services. So while
we expect the IT and printing arms of
the business to continue to grow, the
opportunity to provide a comprehensive
package of document solutions and IT
services and support puts us in a very
strong position.
“Another area that has contributed
to our continued growth is high volume
production printing. Although it’s a
fairly niche area, Blackbox is one of very
few regional suppliers able to install
and maintain high volume devices, and
demand for these services is growing. We
have a number of technicians currently
undergoing manufacturer programmes
with Konica Minolta and we’ve even
made our engineers available to other
distributors in the area, which provides
additional revenue.”
What can we expect from your
company in the coming months?
Scott Walker:
“ZenOffice MPS is growing
and will continue to grow. The range
of partnerships we have with software
providers is also growing, which ensures
we are best placed to provide clients in any
sector with the best possible solution.
“We view ourselves as document
management specialists, as this seems
to fit the bill now more than ever. More
and more clients are looking beyond their
print requirements and are exploring what
we can do to automate their internal
document journeys, digitise their branded
collateral and make areas such as their
mailroom, accounts or even HR more
efficient through use of the cloud or new
hardware. Apart from obvious (and often
substantial) cost savings, the time we’re
freeing up for clients to allow them to
grow their business is becoming more and
more obvious.”
Mark Smyth:
“Vision will continue to
execute on its growth plans, with a specific
focus on its core business of managed
print, document solutions and, more
specifically, capture and workflow. This will
also drive continued development of both
its services and sales professionals and
support infrastructure.
“We also have a focus on adding value
to MPS and MDS sales through IT Services
and by introducing other hardware and
software lines including display, tablets,
mobile and software applications. We
market matures and our good reputation
spreads.”
Joe Doyle,
Marketing Director,
Annodata
:
“We’ve been very successful
over the past few years, having seen big
increases in both revenue and profitability.
In fact, we were ranked #24 in this
year’s
Sunday Times Profit Track
, making
us one of the most profitable privately
owned companies in the UK. Print is, of
course, a key part of the business and has
contributed significantly to this growth,
but we’ve also been rapidly growing our
communications and broader IT sales.
“Looking ahead, I think there’s a lot of
opportunity in several key areas, notably
security, mobility and cloud computing.
High profile security breaches, both in the
UK and overseas, have captured people’s
attention and the fines that are coming
into play can be huge. All web-enabled
devices connected to the network, such
as MFDs and printers, have to have their
security reinforced. They need to be
protected from hackers and no longer
present a weak link in the security chain.
“People don’t want to be restricted to
printing just from their desktops; they want
to be truly mobile, printing directly from
their tablets, remotely from their phones
or even their smart watches. Finally, cloud
is growing in popularity across the whole
of the IT estate, and print is no different.
We’ve seen considerable growth in cloud-
based printing and fully expect this to
continue going forward.”
Matt Goodall,
Service Director,
Office
Evolution
:
“We continue to see a
steady increase in customers seeking to
modernise their onsite capabilities, speed
up the processing of ever larger file types
and gain the ability to print from multiple
devices. These remain the biggest growth
areas.”
Toni Gibiino,
Group Marketing Director,
RDT Office Solutions Group
:
“At the
beginning of the year we set growth
objectives around vertical markets and
product groups, in addition to our business
units. This reporting change allowed us
to analyse with accuracy the key areas
of growth and adjust resources where
necessary.
“The biggest growth area for RDT has
been in the education market. We’ve seen
triple figure growth in a sector that has
previously returned growth in line with the
rest of the business. There are a couple of
reasons we’ve identified as the catalysts.
The first is the increase in academies and
the second is a noticeable appetite in
schools to invest in technology to secure
and manage devices on their internal
continued...
Scott Walker,
ZenOffice MPS
Mark Smyth,
Vision
Colin Griffin,
Blackbox Solutions
Toni Gibiino,
RDT Office Solutions
Group
We see IT
and document
solutions as
complementary
services
