Kyocera Document Solutions UK is in the vanguard of the recovery in the print sector and, with a focus on sustainability and innovation, the company is determined to stay at the forefront in the future.
To say the print channel has had a rough couple of years is an understatement, with the pandemic, supply chain issues and more impacting on businesses and sales. But the last few months of stability – along with the slow return of employees to the office – have helped the sector to recover and those businesses that have been agile and alert to the changing demands of the market have been able to grow their market share.
One such company is Kyocera Document Solutions UK. As the sector has gradually recovered, Kyocera has gained market share, to a point where the company’s percentage share of the market is at its highest for years, according to Martin Fairman, sales and marketing director at Kyocera Document Solutions UK.
“That’s testament to the efforts here of the team and our dealer community for continuing to drive our products into the marketplace,” he says. “While I’m not saying it’s all been a bed of roses, Kyocera has performed well. We’re seeing more engagement and a lot more of our customers face to face again now. We’re also trying to communicate better with the channel and more frequently.”
This includes initiatives like quarterly Webexs with Kyocera dealers, which includes presentations on market data, trends in the marketplace and expert predictions for what may be happening in the coming months.
“We’re all struggling to know what the future holds for our industry and we as manufacturers are fortunate that we get information from IDC, Gartner and others that dealers don’t usually have access to,” explains Martin. “We disseminate that down to our reseller partners to help them drive their businesses and plan. That’s a key initiative that we’ve started this year and we’ll continue to do it in the future.”
Going green
One of the bigger trends in the industry now and for the foreseeable future is for sustainable products and initiatives, Martin says. “We have been talking about the green agenda for many years, but it really has momentum now, we have seen a complete shift in focus to it over the past two years.”
This is something Kyocera is in the vanguard of – the company is already carbon neutral in the UK. “This is throughout our UK offices,” he adds. “All of the production of our devices, everything we consume here, including our engineers and our salespeople, we offset all of that. We are now bringing carbon neutral printers to the marketplace for our dealers to sell to their end users.
“We also offer a carbon neutral managed print service for partners that want to sign up and use our infrastructure here to make that carbon offset as well.”
It is something that the market is driving. Martin points to a 2022 Quocirca survey that said 52% of IT decision markers now put sustainability priorities over price. “That’s the first time in my career that I’ve seen price not be number one,” he says. “It’s a real shift from IT buyers in the marketplace.
“We were always told there’s nothing greener than the dollar; while the green agenda was important, the power of price was stronger. But now that messaging has completely changed. At Kyocera we have always taken the environment very seriously, for example, through the ceramic drums within our machine, the packaging around our devices now is paper based, we hardly use any plastics, and everything is recyclable within our supply chain as well.”
When a customer purchases a carbon neutral product through one of Kyocera’s partners, they get certificate to show that it is carbon neutral through the life of the device, Martin adds. This means they can show its sustainability credentials to others – something that is increasingly important for customers.
Going neutral
Kyocera has achieved carbon neutrality in the UK through various initiatives, Martin says. This includes changing electricity suppliers to those that generate it from renewable sources, such as wind and solar. In addition, Kyocera engineers now use hybrid or fully electric vehicles, rather than petrol or diesel cars. Kyocera is also signed up to the United Nations Sustainability Initiative, which has several stringent projects to reduce emissions and Kyocera is focusing on these.
“In addition, Kyocera invests in sustainable industries and is a part of tree planting schemes as well,” Martin says. “There are lots of initiatives Kyocera are involved in to make the company carbon neutral.”
Working closely together
This is indicative of how the market’s changing and it means that Kyocera is working ever more closely with the vendor and reseller markets.
“Close working relationships with resellers has always been part of our industry and we do have this with our partners, and many are loyal to Kyocera,” says Martin. “The market has changed so fundamentally, and vendors and partners need to stay close together because we’re all finding our feet in this new world. There is greater collaboration and sharing of information to ensure we have all the insights we need from the marketplace.”
Part of the evolution of the market is the move to cloud-based services. To that end, Kyocera is launching its own cloud native solutions. “These have been built specifically with the cloud in mind, which is in response to what we’re seeing in the marketplace,” says Martin. “There’s lots of server-based products in the market that are being morphed into the cloud, but we’ve launched specific cloud-based solutions, including a cloud print managed system called KCPS – Kyocera Cloud Print Manager.
“We’ve also got content services that we’re launching to our channel partners. As the market moves more to being cloud-based, we are giving our partners new avenues to generate revenue streams, but also to help migrate those customers from server-based to a cloud-based solutions. We are seeing that migration increase in pace.”
Inkjet innovation
Another evolution of the market is towards inkjet printing, which Kyocera provides solutions for. “A couple of years ago we launched a high-speed colour inkjet production print device,” Martin says. “We’re just about to add a monochrome only production printer to the range. This is a technology that we’ve had in our portfolio for many years, but it was sold under OEM licence. This is now our second voyage into launching our own production print. Hopefully there’ll be more to come. That’s driven from the fact that businesses are now moving more to hard copy printing for things like direct mailing rather than e-shots as they have a better response rate from customers.
“So, while we are witnessing a decline in the office environment for print, we’re seeing an increase in the number of pages printed. We need to help our partners migrate into inkjet technology and help them find new revenue streams for their organisation.
“It’s no secret that print is declining in the office environment and that’s been accelerated by COVID. But while print will always be here, the reality is we must diversify our portfolios and find new, innovative ways to help our customers.”
Beyond printers
This also means expanding the relationship beyond just printers and print services, Martin adds. “This industry has always been full of innovative people and entrepreneurial dealers and through that we’ve got great relationships with our end users,” he says. “We need to expand that relationship now beyond the managed print service into cloud production, print enterprise and content management. When you scan something on a MFP where does that document go? How do you archive it, how do you store it? Now you’re talking about content management. When you print a job and you’re in a different office, how do you release that job? You’re now talking about cloud services. This is what we are providing.”
Martin adds that Kyocera also has endpoint security as part of its offering as well. “It is essential – anything at the end of the network is an endpoint and it needs to be monitored for threats,” he says. “How to stop third parties infiltrating systems or stopping malware is paramount. We are being attacked all the time, which is why we’ve developed our own suite of security products, called Endpoint Security, to monitor activities on the network.
“We can monitor that 24 hours a day, seven days a week and detect an infiltration from a third party wherever it is in the network and isolate that. That’s something we sell into the channel as well. We are bringing new technologies into the marketplace to stimulate our sales and our partners.”
Strong position to push ahead
By constantly bringing new technologies to the market, and providing the back-up that resellers need, it means that Kyocera is in a strong position, not only in terms of product availability, but reputationally with its resellers and end users. “Our software portfolio continues to grow,” adds Martin. “We will add more to our cloud solutions and we’ll see more software developments and software packages come out that we can then sell through the channel.”
Alongside this, Kyocera will continue to push ahead with its green initiatives. “That is absolutely something we will drive and hopefully differentiate ourselves from the competition through it,” Martin says. “From our point of view, that green conversation needs to include the whole supply chain, not just a bit at the end. We are seeing some vendors that aren’t necessarily taking the whole supply chain into consideration when they announce their carbon neutrality. From that point of view, we’re in a good place.
“This agenda will only grow. I think we’ll see more products come out that are more environmentally friendly than they were 10 or five years ago. Likewise, the security aspect of print will also continue to become more important – that’s what keeps a lot of IT managers up at night!”
Of course, print solutions still play a big part in Kyocera’s immediate future, and Martin is excited by this. “We’re inventing and bringing out new technologies, such as with our production print inkjet technology. That’s an exciting avenue that our existing dealers should get involved with and I believe will lead us to gaining new partners as well.”
