Changing rules of the printing industry game

There has been a distinct shift in the way South African companies make their printer purchasing decisions over the past year. They are no longer just buying printers, but are instead investing in total solutions that help them to reduce and control printing costs and administrative burdens.

This changing dynamic is changing the rules of the game for office automation companies. That's the word from group chief executive officer at Itec Group, Philip Perkins. He says office automation vendors and resellers have had to move away from selling printer hardware with maintenance contracts towards selling solutions that balance cost and productivity through tighter management of the print environment.

"Customers are increasingly looking beyond pure functional hardware requirements and are looking for solutions that enable them to manage the entire document output environment in a holistic manner. Often, they'll want to buy print output on a monthly basis rather than investing capital in printer hardware," says Perkins.

"In this environment, savvy companies are looking for office automation companies that take a consulting-led approach to device sales. They want partners that will work with them to identify opportunities to centralise and consolidate document output devices; uncover opportunities to reduce wastage; and put in place and enforce policies that ensure users can remain productive while helping to reduce costs."

This change in customer needs means that the proprietary and third-party software tools that help companies manage their office automation infrastructure and workflow in an optimal manner are becoming more important than the hardware in a printer purchase, Perkins adds.

Whereas many printer vendors only offered proprietary management tools in the past, there is now a trend towards supporting open source software tools, which allows one common management platform to be installed across multiple devices through the application programming interface (API) of these devices. This amounts to a recognition of the fact that technologies and devices are converging and that companies are managing a mix of multifunctional products (MFPs), printers, copiers, fax and scanning devices from a number of different vendors.

Software tools give companies a view into the print and device-related costs of the entire organisation and how their document output devices are serving their business needs. These tools can help organisations to centralise management of printing infrastructure, conduct internal billing and reduce waste of consumables and paper.

As more companies have begun to centralise and consolidate their document output environments in a bid to improve efficiencies and drive down costs, so the demand for MFPs has increased, says Perkins. These devices - offering printing, faxing, scanning and copying - can ease management of the document output environment and help to bring down costs such as support, maintenance and consumables.

"Companies are no longer buying based on hardware brands, but looking at the solution in its entirety. They should be working with resellers that have already moved away from box-dropping and that offer a range of solutions and brands that can be combined to address their business needs," he concludes.