Lexmark addresses unique issues faced by end-users

By Cassandra Mascarenhas

In a move to build a stronger and more sustainable relationship with their customers, EWIS Peripherals (Pvt.) Ltd., the sole distributor of Lexmark products in Sri Lanka, hosted a Lexmark Solution Seminar yesterday in order to address the unique issues faced by each of their end-users and to highlight some of their latest innovations.

Sri Lanka Country Manager Francis Chua explained that they see that their customers today are experiencing more than just printing issues. “With the intimacy that we have with our end-users, through this seminar, we are helping them address their unique issues which have more than to do with just printing. For instance, we are helping them manage unsecure data.”

Unsecure data which is a vital issue that no one really addresses, Chua stated, are documents that have already printed out – essentially hard copies. This can include private information about employees, prices, quotations and so on and apart from that, it also includes the information that is found on PCs – all of which are generally unsecured and need to be managed.

80 per cent of enterprise information is unstructured, of which 90 per cent is unmanaged. Unstructured data is scattered, hidden, and trapped and is growing fast which in turn impedes business processes, threatens security, results in poorly leveraged assets and burdens the IT infrastructure which puts a business at risk by hampering efficiency and productivity.

He added that this is one issue that they hope to enlighten their customers about from the perspective of the end-user, while noting that the acquisitions Lexmark has made over the years has helped the company deal with such issues in a better manner as well.

Another interesting point he made was the fact that they no longer address only IT personnel in organisations but also people from HR and finance functions as they generally have a better idea of the problems a business faces, more so than IT personnel.

“About 80 per cent of today’s attendees are already Lexmark customers and they get the opportunity to realise the potential of our machines and seeing that they are already our customers, we are taking a step further to address their individual issues.”

Chua praised EWIS Peripherals with whom they have been in partnership for over 20 years, and is in fact one their longest serving distributors. In terms of the Sri Lankan market, Chua observed that Lexmark is seeing a steady growth in printers and management products in the country.

“We also see an upscale trend of people moving away from mere entry-mode printers to what we call smart MFPs (multi function printers) through which more functions and features can be done on printing devices. No longer do organisations want to buy the cheapest printer – they want to do more with the products and there are a lot of things that can be done with them – and we see our Sri Lankan customers moving into this sphere,” he said.

When asked about expansion or entering partnerships with other distributors in the near future in Sri Lanka, Chua stated that this is unlikely to happen as Lexmark is very comfortable with their current partners and do not feel that they need to have another distributor in Colombo as of now. However, they are looking at venturing into more corporate partnerships so that they will be able to leverage from Lexmark’s wide expertise.

During a presentation held for the attendees of the seminar, some of the key trends in organisations were identified, namely that the need for management services in businesses is growing and that business mobility is spreading rapidly, to the extent where many IT companies are now implementing a ‘bring your own device’ policy for their employees.

Another key trend is the fact that many companies are now outsourcing their key infrastructure to the cloud, for instance e-mail.

Lexmark is focusing on moving diagonally upwards by providing end-to-end solutions for their customers where Lexmark will be able to manage all the processes between different functions. Their strategic vision here is to capture content easily and efficiently and manage it according to where it is supposed to go and give access to documents as and when an organisation’s personnel need it.

Gartner has also recognised Lexmark as a leader in multi function printers due to the holistic approach that they provide their customers with as well as identifying Lexmark as a leader in printers.

It was revealed that although there is now an explosion of information coming into organisations which should ideally mean more paperwork, 15 per cent of organisations have interestingly seen a decrease in paper consumption, a trend encouraged by the use of managed print services. Managed print services aim to achieve infrastructure optimisation, proactive management and business optimisation.

Lexmark has also implemented a print less, save more strategy with their customers, strengthened by the use of managed print services which they provide through a unique alignment with their customers’ interests.             

Pix by Lasantha Kumara