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However, 2006 proved to be a high
water mark and thereafter the MIF declined
to 1,825 in 2007 and 1,720 in 2008.
Profts followed the same line, falling from
£800,000 in 2006 to £600,000 in 2007 and
£300,000 in 2008. It was becoming harder
to differentiate products; Konica Minolta
was being very aggressive on pricing;
and there was a shortage of sales people,
which meant “we were paying a lot more
for people who weren't really very good,”
explained Bedford.
The writing was on the wall even before
the crash of September 2008 when the
market stopped dead; bad debts rose (from
£35,000 in 2008 to £150,000 in 2009); and
the credit on which the copier leasing model
depends dried up. These developments
coincided with the discovery of a £300,000
fraud within the company and, to cap things
off, Xerox outsourced its service centre to
Manila and quickly earned a reputation for
poor service and over-priced products.
Bedford decided that the only option
was to get into managed print services.
“We knew we had to do it. It was a new
journey for us but it was one that would
save our business,” he said.
Mid-market appeal
After looking at what other suppliers were
offering, Bedford decided to use Xerox’s
infrastructure and toolset to deliver MPS to
mid-sized corporates.
“In the mid-corporate space the focus
was suddenly on how to strip down the
cost base: businesses were looking at any
way to save money. Their drivers – what
they wanted to talk to us about – were our
entry point into the MPS market. There was
a massive opportunity in that market for
high growth, improved margin and extra
annuity,” Bedford said.
Document Express moved fast. Over
a three-month period, it transformed its
sales approach – “not fddling with it but
smashing it to bits and re-building it”;
added a new business team focused on
MPS; brought in a CRM manager; and built
a powerful IT infrastructure and billing
platform, which included the ability to take
feeds from the Xerox system and produce
bespoke reports for customers.
In all of this Document Express’s guiding
principle was to put the customer frst.“The
secret of MPS is to truly put customers at
the heart of your proposition. You can be
clever and tie them into contracts that are
diffcult to get out of but that’s not MPS to
me,” Bedford said.
“We had a simple sales strategy, RAG:
to Retain our biggest customers and get
them using Xerox software and onto the
MPS offering; to Add – to work with them to
increase our share of a customer’s business;
and to Grow – to target and win new
accounts and to get sales people to sell 40
or 50 machines not 4, 5, or 6.”
In 2010, Document Express met nearly
all its targets, being especially successful
at winning bigger contracts: fve deals
alone added 1,100 MIF and £2 million of
contracted future revenue.
“We increased our sales margin by 9%
and never lost one of our large customers
because we were adding value rather than
adopting a ‘fog it and leg it’ approach. We
increased the MIF in user accounts and we
could beat the biggest and the best in the
industry. It is possible if you put the plan
together and execute it well,” Bedford said.
As the MPS market continues to grow,
many more resellers will be embarking on
the same journey and hoping for equally
impressive results.
MPS
14
As Samsung celebrates
its frst 20 years as a
printer vendor, Samsung
Print UK general manager
Dion Smith considers what
the future holds.
At Samsung Electronics, we recently
celebrated our 20th Year in Print with
business and consumer products. This
monumental milestone provided the
perfect opportunity to refect not
only on our own progress over the
last 20 years, but also the changes
within the wider technology industry.
We commissioned research of over
1,500 UK offce workers to fnd out what
technologies they think their offces
wouldn’t be able to function without over
the next two decades. Printers, along with
the Internet and WiFi, computers, email
and video conferencing, were all voted as
offce essentials, topping the poll.
Almost half (45%) of the UK offce
workers we spoke to believed they
would still be using printers over the
next 20 years. Samsung will be driving
the evolution of printers, with more and
more innovative features, and believe they
will continue to be at the heart of every
business.
We have seen a considerable change in
printers over the past two decades – from
original inkjet & laser printers, MFPs and
untidy cables to laser printing and WiFi
connectivity, enabling our printers to talk
intuitively to other offce devices. However,
one thing has remained the same and that
is the importance and value of printers in
the offce and home.
As we move to a more mobile
workforce, it’s inevitable that we are seeing
a rise in the demand for wireless and
mobile printing and we believe that fexible
working, cloud printing and wireless
mobile printing will be some of the key
demands of our customers in the future.
Samsung’s latest business devices
include Samsung’s MobilePrint feature
and offer network connectivity and WiFi
printing capabilities with a simple set up.
Users can simply download the “Samsung
MobilePrint” application software from the
Application store to their mobile device
The sweet
taste of
success:
Samsung
celebrates 20
years in print
and then print materials anytime, anywhere
from their smartphone, tablet or PC via a
Wi-Fi connection.
Statistics from IDC show that Samsung
Print is far ahead of its competitors,
selling 35% more Colour Laser Products
than its nearest competitor and 7% more
Mono Laser Products. We’ve packed all
our printers with innovative technologies
that make them network-friendly, easy to
install, environmentally responsible and
economical to run. You’ll fnd Samsung
printers are reliable, trouble-free and
simplify your printing experience, leaving
users to focus entirely on the business. All
of this is built from Samsung’s 20 years
of knowledge, experience and credibility
in manufacturing high quality and award
winning laser printing technology.
20 Years in Print
To view
presentations
from the
conference,
please visit
www.
photizogroup.
com.
...continued
Independents’ day