01732 759725
INTERVIEW
44
We extended
our range
of hardware
products into
the scanner
marketplace
and have
been busy
building our
footprint in
that sector to
emerge as the
second largest
vendor in the
UK
...continued
at our portfolio, pricing policies and offers,
to make sure that we are in a position to
respond to that. And, more importantly, are
the channel partners who play a really key
role in delivering our promise to end-users,
also capable of delivering those promises
underneath our banner of ‘At your side’.
So, it’s a really interesting time for the
channel in my view and it’s also a time
when I think we’ve got to be talking,
openly communicating and working
together to deliver the future blueprint
based upon a very, very fast-changing
customer expectation.
PITR:
Where do you see the future
growth for print vendors and
resellers?
PJ:
It’s really interesting that we’ve got
quite an uncertain marketplace and we’ve
also got uncertainty within customers, so
the absolute opportunities for growth in my
view are about having quality conversations
with your customers. Because I heard
one of the major research groups talk in
a conference recently about not leaving
money on that table, and I thought that
was a really really good way of describing
these conversations. If you can go and
talk to an end-user customer and just talk
quite generally rather than about specific
things that you do, what you’ll begin to
see developing from those conversations
is really good opportunities. For example
in print, you know print isn’t just A4 pages
and A3 pages, it can also mean labels, it
can mean safety labelling, it can mean
badges for conferences, it can mean
elements for labelling in a warehouse, it
can mean print on the move. So, widen
out the conversation as much as possible
to understand those customer pain points,
because I think you’ll be surprised by those
outcomes.
Now with the technology level clearly,
we’ve talked about services, so I guess
having a very good and strong services
offering is key in my view in 2017. You
need to be able to offer customers anything
fundamentally that you do as a service and
I guess from a pure print technology point
of view, of course emphasis remains on
colour, on all-in-one devices and around
balanced deployment processes of the
brand. What that means is putting printers
in the right places to ensure maximum
productivity. That’s what really matters I
think to the customers that have engaged
with us, they’re less worried about a
centralised departmental offer, what they’re
really concerned about is people being as
productive as they possibly can be. So, I
think the quality of your conversations will
determine the quality of your opportunity
that you might see in the year ahead.
PITR:
And of course, Brother doesn’t
just sell printers, you also diversify
into other areas that resellers can
profit from.
PJ:
For sure, we’ve been busy diversifying
for some years now, and those partners
that are close to us will really understand
that journey quite well. We’ve developed
our services portfolio extensively now so we
have a very, very strong services catalogue
that we can offer, that our partners can
offer.
We extended our range of hardware
products into the scanner marketplace and
Brother has been busy building our footprint
in that sector to have now emerged as the
second largest vendor in the UK. We’ve
seen a lot of emphasis now in much higher
volume scanning and vertical applications,
and that’s going
particularly well.
Of course,
we have our
labelling
business and
identification
business,
that is
exploding
and there
are so many vertical
markets that we’re opening for
our partners there, that’s a really, really big
opportunity, which I think is money left
on the table in most conversations that
resellers might have with their customers.
And finally, Brother has built a really
significant footprint in the healthcare
arena using our web conferencing facility
OmniJoin, and that means now that
most GPs can deliver consultations in
the surgery using the web conferencing
system rather than you having to visit in
person. And we’ve now developed some
significant opportunities and installed sites,
working with some key partners who were
developing that marketplace for us. I would
encourage any reseller that wants to try
and diversify their product portfolio to talk
with us.
PITR:
You mentioned some of the
uncertainty in disruption in the
global market, what do you see as
some of the key strengths of the
printer industry and resellers that
will enable them to prosper and
survive in the future?
PJ:
I’ve been in the printer industry now
for over 20 years, so one thing I do know
is that we’ve got a bunch of people that
really do understand products very, very
well. I think if you go back to basics and
you understand product features and
functionality, which much of the industry
does, you can quite easily translate a
customer pain point into a benefit that you
could quite easily match.
Sometimes it’s the simplest things – I
recall us winning a very large piece of
business simply due to the fact that our
toner couldn’t be removed from the page
by a fingernail, that was the key winning
part of a significant piece of business, and
that’s all down to product knowledge.
I believe the printer industry does a
very good job of that, and I also believe
that the industry has for many, many years,
been intimate with customers and very
customer-first orientated, and long may
that continue.
