COLIN BOSHER PROFILE
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seemingly adverse conditions, that helped EKM to grow exponentially during the pandemic. “What we observed then and continue to see is a big drop in output volume produced from devices our platform is managing, where some of the office equipment market would have been very concerned about the corresponding revenue drop during that period,” he says. “Around the world there was a similar trend. However, at this point, most have generally recovered to between 60% and 80% of their original volume prior to the pandemic, which is surprising, although we have witnessed a new load balanced approach with far more devices deployed to support work from home (WFH). “A positive we saw was an adjustment from centralised sharing of a single device in an office to many more devices being bought and managed remotely in homeworking environments. Home and hybrid offices had already started to become a reality and that process accelerated. But that aligns to what we have always recommended – i.e. a load balanced fleet design having the right devices to support the volume where it is being produced, which in turn reflects our commitment in enabling our customers to make confident and informed decisions that are based upon facts using objective and fully ratified data.” Trends Another post-pandemic trend Colin is witnessing is a change back to smaller, desktop A4 devices that are colour capable and much more accessible for the user. “We are seeing more incremental print, especially in the homeworking environment as the whole family can access the device – whether they should be or not is another matter and clearly beyond our control,” he laughs. Other areas of the print sector are growing too, such as thermal imaging and label printing, something EKM Global is increasingly working in. “This is going in the opposite direction to the overall office printing market which is gradually flattening out,” he says. “I wouldn’t say it is dying because I believe people will continue to print as paper is tangible, convenient, secure, and portable. “However, by 2025 thermal imaging is predicted to be a $42 billion vertical market opportunity. As such, we are now actively managing thermal imaging devices label printers in business-critical environments such as medical, distribution and logistics and manufacturing where if that device is down or not printing it is going to have a major disruptive effect. We are offering service critical availability via our core RMM platform, coupled to fleet administration and configuration of those devices, and also including Remote Technician with optional Augmented Reality, which are emerging
that deskilled the process, whilst fully supporting any brand,” he says. “We pioneered the audit assessment design methodology by creating the first industry technologies ahead of any other company and enabled the delivery of the significant multi-million- pound corporate enterprise contracts. For instance, we supported the UK’s leading corporate reseller of the time from January 2000 and secured a multi- million managed print contract for a major mobile telco by April, something that they had never delivered before, and into an account where they had lost the desktop business in their heartland a year earlier. “This immediate success with a major corporate enterprise organisation indicated there was something in this that could be made repeatable, and so that’s what we did. We continued to utilise the revenue income from consulting projects on behalf of corporate clients to develop the software from the ground up, which enabled us to support the channel to secure and implement significant managed print service projects. By fine tuning a highly detailed and comprehensive specification EKM was able to create the most advanced industry platform available. The plan was always to develop middleware to integrate a seamless set of processes from RFP to BAU and by-so-doing enable any industry vendor to deliver far higher value at significantly lower operational cost by using fewer resources than any other industry approach. “Because we delivered corporate enterprise scale consulting, we had a deep understanding and appreciation for the relevant bill materials and device usage data necessary to establish a comprehensive solution that reflects an established IT managed service. We wanted to be sure that what we developed would be acceptable corporate enterprise clients by enabling our industry partners to lead the field by delivering on the most efficient effective basis. Over the years, EKM Global has worked with major corporate and Fortune 500 clients such as KPMG, HSBC, Ernst & Young and Deloitte and delivered some of the most significant projects. “By 2005 we had created the first version of our own native RMM software,” he says. “That’s where we began to develop the series of middleware technologies that we have today. “Today, we are deployed across 110 countries with thousands of channel customers, hundreds of thousands of end users, whilst processing more than 70 billion impressions of volumetric billing.” Creating opportunities It is the strength of the RMM business, combined with a keen eye for creating opportunities out of
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Today, we
are deployed across 110 countries with thousands of channel customers, hundreds of thousands of end users, whilst processing more than 70 billion
impressions of volumetric billing
”
EKM Global, Basingstoke
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