Print in the Channel - issue #11

LEXMARK

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Customer retention This growth strategy involves customer acquisition but also retention – and the latter is a big emphasis for Lexmark, with many customers staying loyal to the business for more than 10 years, according to Arjan. This longevity is down to a combination of reasons, he adds. “Everything has to click; if you do well in one area you can’t fall over in another,” he says. “It starts with technology. We manufacture our own technology, so we can very quickly act on questions from our customers and tweak things or do things differently. We’re also doing a lot of great work around AI and data analytics and how we monitor and manage print fleets – enterprise and channel – our devices have literally hundreds of sensors that give us data. And when you fold that in with algorithms, we can predict when a device will fail. “This means that when a technician is going to see a customer, we make sure to check whether any components are expected to fail and we’ll fix it so the customer doesn’t have an issue, although we rarely have issues with our fleet. Add in value added projects and initiatives and that customer becomes a customer for life.” Long relationship But it isn’t just customers that have long- standing relationships with Lexmark – Arjan has been with the company for more than 20 years. “I am fortunate to have been able to work in three different continents in that time,” he says. “I spent 17 years in the US, there was some time in Australia running the Lexmark business there and I’ve been back in Europe now for the past three. I’m originally from the Netherlands, and we left there in 1999, I thought that would be a two- or three- year gig, but it was 20 years later we returned

to Europe. “Lexmark has transformed quite a bit in that time,” says Arjan. “We like to say that we now create cloud enabled imaging technologies and IoT solutions and those help our customers to realise their business outcomes. We started as a spin off from IBM, but we’ve always taken an industry approach to the market and we combine that industry expertise with our proven technologies and that combination helps our customers to accelerate their business transformation. “As managing director for Western Europe and English-speaking Africa, part of my role is to run the business in the UK, which is one of Lexmark’s biggest markets in Europe. It’s been traditionally a very strong market for us. For instance, our contract renewal rate for managed print services is in the high 90s percent. “We enjoy a very strong indirect part of the business as well, where we work with channel partners and our partners enjoy the combination of the technology that is always robust and reliable and they can count on, combined with strong channel programmes to help them go to market.” Sustainability Another key for Lexmark, in the UK and around the world is sustainability. The company has a goal to become carbon neutral by 2035. “Since 2005, we’ve reduced our emissions by 62%, which is massive,” says Arjan. “We set a goal in 2015 to reduce our energy consumption by 20% by 2025 and last year we surpassed that and achieved a 26% reduction. “Externally, there’s a lot of focus on sustainable design, the efficient use of our devices and then at the end of the life, the responsible reuse through recycling or remanufacturing devices. Print is a churn industry – every three, four, five years, the device is picked up, sometimes it goes to a landfill, sometimes it’s recycled or there’s the secondary market. But Lexmark devices are manufactured to be robust with metal frames inside and such like, so they last seven, eight or nine years. We’ve even seen examples of devices that have printed millions of pages and been in the field for 18 years. We call this intentional engineering; we design and manufacture our devices to last a lot longer. “The environmental benefits of keeping a device in the field longer are big. We’re now

Since 2005,

we’ve reduced our emissions

by 62%, which is massive. We set a goal in 2015 to reduce our energy consumption by 20% by 2025 and last year we achieved a 26% reduction.

Watch Lexmark Sustainability

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