Supporting the evolution of the Professional Print Industry through Konica Minolta’s new enhanced Partner Programme

Having great technology is vital and I believe Konica Minolta truly leads the market, but it needs to be underpinned by a support structure and an offering that helps our customers reap the full potential benefits that the technology has to offer.
 
Konica Minolta is currently running our Igniting Print Possibilities campaign, and as part of that we provide our Ignite Discovery programme, a pre-sales business development offering to help plan for the future - be that an end customer or a partner. This helps them to understand where they need to go, the opportunities that are open to them, and to know that if they go down that journey, they're going to be supported by Konica Minolta as their provider.
 
Our aspiration for Konica Minolta in the UK is to be one of the market leaders in both production print and the cut sheet toner market, as well as the industrial print market - which includes Label Printing B3 and B2 plus embellishment and printing and finishing technologies - so that we can deliver world class products, services, and support across the UK.
 
Something which I think will really come through with our revitalised Partner Programme is a genuine dedication by all our people and the company to helping our customers to be highly successful in using our technology. Whatever the customer challenges, there is something that Konica Minolta can do to help that customer or our partners and their customers to solve a problem. We genuinely want everybody to be successful and to get the most out of the opportunities that the market presents.
 
You can have the hardware, but if you haven't got the workflow and you haven't got the IT support, it's very difficult to make it all come together. That's where I think Konica Minolta differentiates itself from a lot of our competitors in that we've got a portfolio that really makes a difference to our customers, we give shape to ideas, and we help them become a reality by providing real world benefits.
 
Fostering opportunities
We have a lot of excellent partners selling our professional print products, but they are crying out for more resources, better support and help to go and drive those sales within their organisations and out to their customer base.
 
When I took over the helm of Konica Minolta’s professional print business in the UK, it was an ideal opportunity for us to revisit what we offer and to develop the new Production Print & Industrial Print element of the Partner Programme. Rather than it just being a programme of activity we decided to introduce an accreditation programme. If our partners want to specialise in selling professional printing and production print products, then we can take them on a journey. We can help to upskill their salespeople; we can help support their sales cycles by putting specialists in place to look after them. We can put together a strategic business plan to help them grow their business and realise the opportunities that production print and industrial print products have for their business and their customers.
 
The key thing for us, no matter which engagement we have, whether it's directly with a customer or via a partner, is that the journey has a beginning and an end, and it also has a continuous cycle. Therefore, from a pre-sales and business development perspective, that means really understanding what the customer wants. Where do they want to be as a business? How do they want to develop their offerings? What challenges have they got?
 
We then walk that journey with our partners/customers to understand what goals they need to achieve then providing the options, whilst continually reviewing what is needed. Working together we are identifying the needs and assessing them, then helping them justify the investment and highlighting how they can actually realise that opportunity, nurturing their business, and their offerings, with ongoing review.
 
If we can further support our partners and customers, then the industry which we're all passionate about, can continue to succeed. There is nothing better in my view than the printing industry. It's a highly trusted medium for communication and we need to protect it, treasure it, and develop it as much as we possibly can to help it continue to evolve and thrive.