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that operate only in Cornwall or Devon, for instance,” he says. “We need to have a mixture because in some regions small businesses only deal with local people and they will have a much better connexion rate in that SME space. The regional businesses typically operate in the high-end SME, maybe low corporate, and they have a better reach in that space. “Then you have the nationwide partners that are going for large tenders, etc. It’s to give us a balance, but a good geographical split to give us a reach across the entire country and ensure that we’ve got service coverage nationally too. We also want to target various vertical markets based on different partners’ capabilities.” Hiro adds that this onboarding of partners will be completed in the coming months. He adds that partners will have a direct relationship with Fujifilm for hardware purchases, while suppliers will go through distribution. “This is just because of the number of moving parts in the supplier’s business, and these distributors do that on a regular basis, working with the partners, that’s what they do, so it makes life a lot easier for us,” he says. “We’re going to build a channel team that will cover sales, service, support and marketing. And that’s our mission for 2024 to 2026.” Honesty, integrity, trust But as well as the quality of the printers and back-up that Fujifilm offers, Hiro says it is the values of the company that they will look to sell to partners and end users. “Our focus is on honesty, integrity and trust,” he says. “We want to be the partner that you can depend upon. We want our partners to feel like they can trust us, work with us and grow with us. Overall, it is about being reliable. We want to be seen as the reliable brand. “It isn’t just about reliability of the products, but reliability for our channel partners and to develop a business model that allows mutual growth. Our partners need to be able to grow with us and there needs to be capacity to grow. We want to do that through innovation, through expansion in the market and by opening new avenues for our partners.” Partner programme Gary adds that Fujifilm will focus on its core products and solutions initially, and giving channel partners the tools and the assets that they are going to need to be able to sell successfully to the marketplace. “That’s things
like partner portals to give partners access to all the materials they need. That’s already live and running,” he says. “We’ve already developed a partner programme that will launch in July to give a structure and an infrastructure to the way in which we transact with our partners, which will include benefits and rewards, as well as targets and accreditation levels that they have to achieve. This will give reassurance to end users that they can choose a partner of a certain level of credibility and capability. In terms of channel engagement, we’ll be looking to do engagement through social media on different platforms, as well as through the sector media. “We are going to gradually expand in line with our resource, but equally, we’ve got really strong growth ambitions, so we need to act quickly. Phase one is traditional print partners. Phase two, we will look to look at IT resellers, MSPs and the like. “Once the partner programme has launched, we’ll start to onboard further partners. We’ll have conversations with partners in due course, with more gradual, organic onboarding of partners from October, November onwards. “We’ll be looking to appoint people to channel marketing and product marketing roles in due course too.”
We've already developed a partner programme that “
will launch in July to give a
structure and an infrastructure to the way in which we transact with our partners, which will include benefits and rewards, as well as targets and accreditation levels that they have to achieve.
”
First partner Fujifilm has already announced its first nationwide partner, Aurora. “We are partnering with Aurora because their core values align with ours,” says Hiro. “They focus on honesty, integrity, customer focus, innovation and partnership. Those were the key standout reasons in our decision to partner with them. “They’ve got a nationwide business and service coverage, which gives us the reassurance that they can manage opportunities for us from day one across the UK, and they’ve already got their service engineers trained up. We’ve gone through that process, and so they’ve got trained service capability nationwide. And we’ve already gone through a training process with their sales community as well, so they are ready to go live. “Aurora is a leading player in the market, with turnover of about £50 million and they have got growth ambitions to grow that, through 2024 and beyond.”
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