How to Harness Automation

The professional landscape today is very different to how it appeared just five years ago.

The way that business gets done changed dramatically after the lockdown measures of 2020 caused offices across the UK to temporarily shut. While workers stayed at home, every task suddenly had to take place digitally, from running meetings to paying invoices or signing new contracts.

Far from being just a temporary measure, many companies adopted this more flexible way of working long after lockdown restrictions were lifted. According to 83% of HR professionals surveyed by IWG, an expert in flexible working, hybrid working is still essential for attracting the best talent in 2023. This isn’t surprising. In a landscape where consciousness is shifting towards sustainability, everything from the daily commute to consumption of paper comes under new scrutiny for its environmental impact.

The knock-on effect this has on MPS providers can’t be underestimated. According to research by International Data Corporation (IDC):

Gavin Auckland launched Parallel Office and Document Solutions Ltd in August 2020, when COVID-19 changed the way that the MPS sector would operate forever. Drawing on his 25 years of experience, he created a customer-focussed business model that “does things differently”. Here he explains why he invested in an automated ecosystem to help it scale-up.

Part of my frustration with companies I worked for previously was that there were few options for customers to benefit from variable contracts, but COVID-19 and the switch to hybrid working made that need become obvious for everyone to see. When I opened Parallel Group in 2020, we had to be very flexible with our customers. Setting up smaller desktops, single and multi-functional devices in people’s home offices, all at a reasonable price, was the core solution that kept us stable and grew our client base – and much of that fleet still remains in home offices today.

Selling machines was my speciality, and doing so in the early days was essential for generating cash flow. But servicing and maintaining those machines on an ongoing basis is so important for any MPS provider looking to form long-term client relationships, beyond the initial sale.

We decided to create our own service operation in-house, but that also meant we then had to grow our capabilities within finance, billing and scheduling very quickly in terms of process and staff – this is when I turned towards automation and found an ERP system that understood the nuances of our sector completely.

Becoming totally cloud-based has always been my priority. As well as saving costs by reducing the need to maintain an on-premise solution, I knew that the right ERP would be able to keep us competitive in a range of areas, including finance, stock management, engineer despatching and more. We went with ECI, first purchasing their e-automate ERP.

With a background in IT and technology, Paul Roberts has spent more than two decades working within the MPS sector. Now, as board advisor at Ethos, while also consulting a number of businesses on areas such as digital transformation, growth, and reorganisation. He explains why consolidating data across a business is an approach that every organisation should take.

Not operating from a single source of truth – or a centralised platform which holds data that can be referenced – is holding much of the MPS sector back, in my opinion.

It’s often the industry norm to use a number of different systems. That could be a CRM to manage clients, something else for service management and a generic payments platform to handle financial tasks. Many try to knit these together with the aim of forming a cohesive ERP, but it will almost always be flawed because no matter what, records are still being kept on multiple different systems, stored in different formats.

Creating a ‘cottage industry’ of internal processes and procedures might seem like the most cost-effective solution at the start, but it’s an easy way to waste valuable time and money that could be focussed on servicing clients or developing your business instead.

Businesses have coped so far by knowing the flaws in their current system and creating convoluted workarounds.

I’ve known one business that tried to create its own end-to-end platform by using Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing (SAP) technology, to find some way of creating that single source of truth. More often than not, though, when it’s time to update processes, many will choose to upgrade to the latest version of the same software packages they’ve been using for years, rather than switching over to a single, central ERP system – not to mention one that’s been specifically designed to meet the needs of the MPS market.

This isn’t surprising – though there are huge benefits, implementing an ERP requires the user to really analyse and often change how their business is structured, and introducing any kind of change at a large scale is very complicated. It’s more common in the MPS sector to invest in people or acquire new businesses rather than overhauling internal technology.

Cost is a real sticking point. Many of the separate systems on the market are free or low-cost. There’s also a fear within senior leadership around training and upskilling people to use a completely new system versus a generic platform that sales or finance teams will likely be well versed in. But with the initial investment, staff will be able to spend much more time on value-added tasks rather than simple, transactional duties, or fudging their way through flawed, disparate systems.

On the surface, some of the differences that an ERP can bring might look small. It could facilitate remote call management for engineers, for example. But beyond empowering engineers with autonomy, it could transform client management processes on a much deeper level. If an invoice is disputed, rather than searching in multiple locations for information, a credit controller can see the same dataset that the engineer who serviced them will have been working on, speeding the process up. Sales teams will also have information they need (such as average print amounts or spend) to hand rather than wasting time requesting basic information from a number of different people or systems.

From a senior leadership perspective, it’s impossible to make strategic decisions when information around how the business is functioning isn’t clearly available. But if data from billing, stock and sales is all in one place, managers can make decisions that could positively impact or change the outlook of each month – rather than looking back retrospectively when there are successes or failures.

This is absolutely essential. Consolidating data from lots of different systems can transform almost every area of your business. But to reap the benefits of doing things differently, you’ll also need to look at how your organisation should be structured to manage that change. Optimising and aligning your organisational structure to new technology ensures you make the most of your investment. Trying to “crowbar” technology to fit your current structure will dilute your ability to function effectively in the future.

I’ve worked with clients that have got this part very wrong and are now going back to the drawing board, as they missed out this important step.

Even the most streamlined structure won’t work unless you get genuine buy-in from your staff. These are the people who will be affected the most by any internal change, so it’s important to prepare them thoroughly. Start by challenging existing mindsets. Rather than sticking to the working culture of perfecting workarounds on your less-than-perfect systems, showcase the benefits that can happen by taking an agile approach. In some smaller businesses there’s a real hunger to invest in new technology – probably because they know it can help them to grow the business far quicker.

Nick Swindin has worked within the office technology sector for more than 30 years, spending two decades at one of Europe’s largest providers of outsourced services before forming Active8 Managed Technologies and becoming the Service and Operations Director for the Group. During this time he’s seen the many ways the sector has shifted - and has been using automation to guide his business towards its future goals.

Active8 turned 10 this year. From the outset, our bigger-picture ambitions were always to be more than solely a print provider, although this is our predominant offering. Our aim is to become a long-term business partner to our customers, helping them to adapt and thrive in the ever-changing environment. Of course, to keep up with this ambition then we also need to be able to flex in the direction that the winds of business are blowing ourselves.

To survive this volatile trading environment, service providers must be adaptable and proactive. We’ve all seen reduction in print volumes since Covid-19, so we need to be smarter to find different revenue streams and trim unnecessary costs.

Everything within the print industry has an IT element to it; every device has an IP address, so the MPS market lends itself well to exploring opportunities within the technology sector. IT services and VoIP phones, for example, are all very relevant and viable opportunities for diversification. We’ve actually just launched our new product, Safe Web, which monitors the dark web to check if our customer’s details have been breached, which is just one example of how we’re reacting to the needs of the market to develop our offering and widen our customer base.

We’ve always operated with this mindset, but the pandemic emphasised the importance of generating revenue from other services. As part of this mission, automation has been crucial to us from the start, without question, helping us to manage numerous revenue streams and different types of contracts while keeping everything as efficient as possible.

Delivering an exceptional customer experience has always been a big priority for MPS providers and is key to them securing longer term contracts. However, as the professional environment continues to evolve it will become increasingly difficult to do so if you’re not keeping up with the reality of what your customers expect from an office technology specialist, or what features and services are helpful as their needs change over time.

At ECI Software Solutions, we’re pleased to support:

Since launching into the MPS market two decades ago, we’ve been continuously committed to helping SME businesses to succeed. We do this through strategic supplier and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partnerships, to deliver added value all while constantly developing and improving our solutions.

This mission remains the same today. Our team understands the challenges for office technology providers; diversification, moving to cloud-based systems and harnessing the power of data will be key now, and in the years to come.

We move in the same direction as the businesses we’re serving, helping us to create our fully-integrated ERP system, e-automate, which can cope with all of these demands and more.

ECI has been working with office technology specialists for more than two decades, supporting thousands of customers across the globe with our solutions designed specifically for and by those working in the industry.

Our ECI ecosystem can help you to gain visibility into your entire business and boost profitability, with a comprehensive business management solution designed to manage the unique challenges faced by managed print service providers now, and in the future.