01732 759725
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INFORMATION CAPTURE
be scaled and extended throughout an
organisation.”
Not everything is perfect. Mancini
points out that businesses are frustrated by
the security implications of greater mobility
and the blurring of lines between home
and office; and that there is a massive
legacy drag – the gap between what they
can do with the systems they have and the
type of organisation they want to become.
Digitisation vs digitalisation
Mancini says that organisations need to do
three things to overcome this drag:
1
Get paper out of their
organisation.
“Of the end users we have
questioned, 72% agree that ‘business at
the speed of paper’ will be unacceptable
in a few years’ time. I think that time has
already come and gone”, he said.
2
Understand that digitalisation is
different to digitisation.
“When we
talk to people about how they are using
digital capture, you still get a scan-to-
archive type of game. We’ve been in scan-
to-process now for 10 years. Organisations
must figure out that this is not just about
digitising paper and sticking it in an
archive; this is about how you digitalise a
business; how you take capture and move
it from document capture to information
capture.”
3
Sort out back-end processes.
“Back-end business processes are still
a mess. Businesses could get away with
this in an earlier era when their processes
weren’t exposed to customers and
suppliers as directly as they are now. But
when an organisation opens up and when
walls become more transparent, back office
processes have to run efficiently,” warned
Mancini.
Lessons for the channel
So what do these trends mean for the
reseller community? Clearly, there is
potential for increased sales and deeper
relationships by helping customers achieve
the three goals outlined above and by
connecting the idea of information capture
with the broader digital transformation
initiatives that organisations are wrestling
with today.
However, Mancini points out that
digital transformation is also changing
the way that IT is bought by customers,
which is having an effect on resellers’ own
operations and their approach to market.
“Think about how the sales skill set
needs to change,” he said. “This is a big
issue for this industry. CEB, creator of
the Challenger Sales model, says that
57% of the buyer’s journey is complete
before the first customer contact with the
supplier. Think about how different that
is from the ‘lone wolf’ model that we
have traditionally had for the heroes in
our sales world – the person who is out
there meeting or exceeding sales quotas
all the time, sprinkling special dust that
turns prospects into customers. Those guys
still exist, but in a glasshouse world most
people are going to acquire most of their
information about who you are, what you
do and how you do it before they even talk
to any of your sales people.”
Mancini points out that in a world
where marketing is becoming increasingly
important it is essential for resellers
to overcome the huge gap that exists
between sales and marketing. “Customers
rate the sales person as the least influential
interaction in the buying process, while
online content is quickly becoming
the dominant driver of commerce.
Unfortunately, most people are still using
traditional selling models,” he said.
Mancini adds that this, and the fact
that growth in technology spend is coming
from ‘the business’ buying IT rather than
IT staff buying IT, requires a new sales
approach.
“Most people spend their sales
training dollar on sales models or making
sales people familiar with the product
portfolio. Yet, when we ask people what
stops them from achieving their goals, it
normally comes down to their inability to
establish a business case for change. That’s
a huge challenge for us moving forward
in this space. In a consumer-centric era,
in an application-centric era, in which
the business is buying you have to be
conversant in selling solutions. People
aren’t buying technology any more, they
are buying applications. So you really
need to think about how you build up
the confidence your sales people have
in selling solutions rather than selling
technology.”
In conclusion Mancini said: “Content
management is changing and changing
very rapidly, and that change will
accelerate. Customer stakes are rising; they
get that they have to change; they are
wrestling with the question of how to map
their legacy systems with these innovative
systems. Document capture is morphing
into something far more strategic and
that presents huge opportunities for this
space, but we have to help educate people
to connect the dots between what we
all know about information capture and
what the C-level is trying to achieve with
digital transformation in their organisation.
Neither side will get it organically. We have
to educate the C-level and we have to
educate existing people in organisations
that their competencies are relevant to the
new set of challenges. The last point is the
skills set needs to change.”
57% of
the buyer’s
journey is
complete
before the
first customer
contact with
the supplier
...continued
Award winners
No conference is complete without
an awards ceremony. Here are
Fujitsu’s 2016 award winners:
Partner of the Year: Western Europe
•
NotaSolutions, France
Partner of the Year: East Europe and
Russia
•
Koncept, Poland
Partner of the Year: Middle East &
Africa
•
PC Time Co., Saudi Arabia
Newcomer of the Year
•
NuSynergi, UK
Best Mobile Scanner Integration
•
Tconsult, The Netherlands
Best ScanSnap Integration
•
Telecomputer, Germany
Best PaperStream Integration
•
Marno, Italy
Best Network Scanner Integration
•
ALOS, Germany
AP Partner of the Year
•
Genapi, France
Best Marketing Program
•
Westcoast, UK
President’s Award
•
Indra, Spain
Imaging Alliance Program Award
•
Palaxo Technologies, United Arab
Emirates
Westcoast, UK
John Mancini,
AIIM
