Johannesburg, 21 Nov 2019
A big technology shift is going to come along and change print as we know it in the next five to 10 years, says Bernice Hynard, Managing Director of OKI. “While the end of print has been predicted for a while, what we’re really seeing is a shift away from box-dropping and towards print services. While print is declining at a rate of between 1% and 3% per annum, print services are growing, depending on the region, at between 5% and 10% per annum. Print is morphing into something that offers better efficiencies in terms of business process and better cost control, says Hynard.
Print itself will always be relevant as some professions just can’t avoid it. Think lawyers and accountants. There are legislative requirements that require certain documents to be printed out. If we accept that print will be with us for some time to come, we need to decide how we’re going to manage that environment. This requires a shift within the printing industry. “Everyone wants to sell a box, but today, businesses don’t really care what’s inside that box. They want a solution. So the challenge we all face is, how do we turn a box into a solution?” says Hynard.
Just as other industries have had to adapt their supply chains to counter declining volumes, so too does the printing sector have to evolve. “We can’t keep selling products in the same way that we always have. Regardless of whether you’re in distribution or a vendor, we’re all feeling the effects of a changing economy.
“It’s unwise to think that you can continue doing business as you have always done and expect your business to thrive. It’s important for business survival that we understand that the end-user holds the buying power and that they can determine the future of our industry. We also need to understand what today’s businesses need – and it isn’t necessarily to upgrade every couple of years. Businesses need us to come up with business solutions that help them achieve their business goals. Companies that do that are making bigger margins. During times when there’s less money to go around, we need to work harder to get the money that is available.”
In today’s business environment, businesses face a lot of challenges that they can’t control, and the biggest challenge that local businesses are currently facing is probably political instability and the exchange rate. While there isn’t a lot that businesses can do to respond to a lot of the challenges out there, they can try to put some mitigating factors in place to keep the business profitable.
The alternative to blaming the economy for a tough business environment is to put your head down and work harder and see what you can do to make your business more profitable. Hynard says: “For instance, you need to spend the same amount on marketing, just allocating it differently. If a business can grow during difficult economic times, it will be better positioned in the future, should things improve. This is when businesses need to push harder, they can’t afford to go into defence mode. They still need to grow and uncover other opportunities and make sure that the business they do is both good and profitable. If a business can grow a little in tough times, when things improve, that growth will accelerate. It’s vital to have a plan for positive growth. You need to work harder and smarter, be more strategic and make the most of existing clients.”
In the past, customers tended to buy all of their equipment from a single source. However, times have changed and businesses want to use best-of-breed solutions. It’s good for a company to know what it does really well, and to be able to put together a best-of-breed solution that solves the client’s business problems. A solution that works doesn’t always have to be built out of your offering alone. Competitors may have products that can fill the gaps, which requires that businesses develop smart partnerships.
It doesn’t matter what brand you supply to your clients, as long as you take the time to understand what they really need and solve their problems. Different sectors have different priorities, so where in healthcare it may be important to have instant access to information, an office environment might care more about cost per copy. Sometimes there’s a tendency to think about the client’s challenges from purely an IT perspective and miss the point of what matters to the client.
She says: “Supply chain efficiency is everything across all industries. Retailers are setting a great example, they’re so innovative in their supply chain solutions. We need to consider things like our carbon footprint and introducing efficiencies so that we can get the item to the client for less money, which will enable us to sell more products. If we can cut out some of the steps in between, we can save costs.”
The distribution model is going to have to evolve and the market is going to determine how products are distributed going forward. “You have to ask yourself, what do I offer that nobody else does? You have to have something or do something that nobody else has. Failure to differentiate yourself will be fatal. Businesses need to know who they are and where they’re positioning themselves.”
Businesses are having to do more end-user engagement so they can understand what clients are using their product for, so they can structure a solution around it. They need to incorporate pre-sales advice, analytics, software solutions or even financing options with various billing mechanisms, so that they’re more flexible when offering a solution to a client. The aim is to morph into a print-as-a-service company.
Everybody is thinking about device-as-a-service, but nobody is quite there yet. When it comes, it’s going to happen in a big slide. “How are we, as an industry, going to respond?
“Online is changing how people buy. They can research solutions online, find out which technologies will meet their needs. They can even order equipment online; by the time they speak to us, they know more or less what they want and how they want it. We need to adapt to this new way of doing things and consider how we want to position our business. How will we future-proof ourselves? Regardless of the size of the business, it is possible to make the shift. Digital platforms are encroaching. We need to come up with solutions where we can work with the big systems integrators; the box becomes a by-product. We’ve been speaking about these kinds of mind shifts for a long time, but we have to take action now,” she concludes.
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