IntroductionStudies detailed below show that the colour printing in corporations is an expensive mystery. Companies don’t seem to have a policy on how or why they do it, where they source materials from, who takes responsibility and what the costs are. All this whilst the demands of colour printing within their business are growing at a double digit rate. This has created a considerable business opportunity for print solutions providers who can provide cost effective colour print systems and services.
Executive Summary
This white paper is based on two studies which looked at the print industry from different perspectives. The first, by CRN’s sister title Computing, investigated printing costs from the IT buyer’s perspective in companies that typically print around 10,000 pages per month. The second study, by CRN, focused on the market dynamics of the channel.
This paper will argue that there is a significant gap to be filled in the UK market and that VARs who grasp the innovative new products available in colour printing can make revenues from existing customers and win new ones. The colour printing market is growing at 16% a year and VARs are faced with an end user audience dissatisfied and frustrated with the demands of escalating colour printing. This paper will show a considerable business opportunity.
The studies conducted by both Computing and CRN tell a story of mismanagement, lost revenue and new opportunity. Computing quizzed a sample of companies with a typical print output of 10,000 pages per month. CRN studied 232 decision makers in a variety of industries, of which 71.6% were VARs. Four main issues stand out.
The first is cost to end users. Incredibly, nearly half of all companies studied (44%) do not know how much they pay for colour printing and equally as many want help to rationalize costs. Meanwhile, the channel study indicates a massive lost opportunity for VARs to provide solutions. A staggering 64% of customers are frustrated with their current colour print solution, says the Computing survey. Furthermore, a high initial purchase cost is less of a problem to customers than high running costs, waste, reliability and pollutants. VARs who understand this issue and look at the right product set can therefore offer a printing solution for a genuine end user need.
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