COMMENT
Speed and security The hospitality sector – among others – is still recovering from the pandemic and looking to increase efficiency wherever possible, and printers are helping with this, which means there are plenty of opportunities for resellers.
Sit in any restaurant or café around lunch or dinner time (or dinner and tea, depending on where you come from in the country) and watch the staff and you will see that many are rushed off their feet. While this is good news for the business – the hospitality sector was hit harder than most by the pandemic – it does mean that mistakes can happen, which can impact on efficiency and sales. Increasingly hospitality businesses are turning to printers to help increase accuracy and efficiency in their front-of-house and kitchen functions. Fast and reliable printers are the order of the day, with connectivity also becoming increasingly important, as are things like being able to print labels of different sizes or fonts. There are plenty of solutions on the market for this, and it is a market that is growing rapidly as competition is fierce in the hospitality industry and businesses look for solutions that can help them against the competition, which means there are plenty of opportunities for resellers. Read more on p20. Of course, a key part of printing solutions in the hospitality sector is that they are secure. IT security is paramount for all businesses today – its not a case of ‘if’ a business will be targeted by cybercriminals but ‘when’, no matter what their size. This includes the print fleet as they can be points of access for cybercriminals in a network if they are not properly secured. With the growth in popularity of multifunction printers (MFPs) comes the need to ensure they are secure, which also plays a vital part in keeping the wider network secure too. But keeping MFPs secure is a challenge, especially with the rise in hybrid working in the past few years. Again, there are plenty of security solutions on the market, so for resellers it is a case of reiterating the risks to customers and
Dan Parton
Every quarter we make an award for the best campaign run in the magazine. This quarter Kyocera has been chosen as the winner. See page 25 for more on the award.
ensuring that they invest in the right products for their needs. Read more on p32. Cloud printing is another growing market, and another solution where there have been concerns about security in recent years. Indeed, 36% of IT decision-makers said security was the top reason for not adopting it in a recent Quocirca survey. However, manufacturers have worked hard to address these concerns and ensure that cloud printing is as secure as possible. Explaining this, along with the various other benefits of cloud printing, is key for resellers to help businesses make that jump to the cloud. Read more on p28. As always, I hope you enjoy the issue. If there are any topics that you would like to see covered in a future issue, or you would like to get involved in the editorial in some capacity – I’m always on the lookout for thought leadership pieces, for instance – please email me at dan@printinthechannel.com .
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