REVIEW REVIEW OF 2022
CONTINUED
Colin Bosher , co-founder, EKM Global There are two major parts to our business: printing and imaging devices RMM (MPS) and everything as a service (XaaS). Our business mainly grew in terms of RMM across Central, South and North America in 2020 and 21 and we continued growing in 22 and throughout Europe and the UK with the same market. On top of that we have seen an appetite for simplified managed print across the volume IT reseller channel. What enabled that was they didn’t buy our software, they bought our software included in a fully integrated service from distribution, so they ended up with our software to manage their customers’ existing estates. We are beginning to see a polarisation of
Elsewhere, there have been some big influences on trading in 2022, including rising prices and inflation as well as problems within the supply chain. There is a lot to unpack because all those things had a direct impact on the industry and how it has adapted over the course of the year. In terms of supply chain, there was a bigger appetite for managing the existing estate, similar to what you would do with an IT managed service – there is no other managed IT service that we are aware of insists upon a fleet/asset refresh like print has in the past typically. Not surprisingly we have seen an appetite to move away from fleet refresh to managing what was there and then replacing on an iterative basis as an when needed. That’s a massive change that is growing rapidly. I think this is in part because there are new players coming in that don’t depend on their revenue income from office equipment and big refreshes. Their commercial model is different and far more service than product centric these days. The other trend we saw, again because of restricted supply chain to some degree, is a lot of organisations in the channel were asking for compatibles and remanufactured supplies because they couldn’t get the originals because they were stuck in the supply chain. The latest EU circular economy legislation changes and ongoing developments have encouraged this. There are a lot of dynamics conflicting with each other in terms of what manufacturers want, what customers prefer, and what the channel is adapting to as well as what they were all capable of ultimately delivering considering some of the recent challenges. Now, we are seeing a huge amount of pent-up demand that is starting to pop. The ‘as a service’ subscription economy is where the focus is for the industry right now, a bit like where managed print was in the late 90s, as-a-service is now more than simply replacing that in terms of a much larger $3 trillion technology industry frenzy to move from transactional to contractual business with everything highly automated and managed remotely.
Colin Bosher co-founder EKM Global
simplicity across the volume channel who seem to be perfectly happy with a solution that is almost business process outsourced for them. It seems to be growing faster across the volume channel – less specialism, more generic and including everything on a contract but remotely managed. The industry is evolving towards a more centrally managed brand agnostic approach that is less complex at the client because of powerful RMM technology doing far more of the heavy lifting at this stage. The larger office equipment players are proactively reinventing themselves and developing their own solutions to some degree, although many use our software or RMM and many take advantage of our subscription enablement and click to buy. However, regardless of whether they fully use our platforms, or just part of it and do the rest themselves, everything appears to be moving away from delivering managed print in isolation towards offering a broader subscription capability that includes managed print as a line item within a broader value stack. There is also a move away from A3 printers to more desktop devices – be they printers, MFPs or scanners – because work from home has redressed the balance. But the volume SME channel seems to be consuming all of it. For smaller office equipment providers and resellers, we are supporting them with both platforms, enabling them to cross the chasm from office automation to fully integrated modern workplace that includes a printer or MFP of whatever it might be and manage everything under one contract. We either partially support the larger operators or fully support the SME service providers with our technologies, where increasingly the smaller players in the volume technology channel are tending to be less precious about delivering it all themselves because they fully trust distribution to ‘never’ contract directly with the end customer.
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There is also a move away from A3 printers to more desktop devices – be they printers, MFPs or scanners
– because work from home has triggered the balance.
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ekmglobal.com
printinthechannel.co.uk
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