Brother: Hybrid Work Gives MSPs More Lanes For Print Offerings

‘This [hybrid] working environment has really given us an opportunity to address some changing needs with print and documents as well,’ says David Fisher, senior sales manager for the VAR channel for Brother USA.

Brother’s David Fisher

The hybrid work model being the new normal gives MSPs another sales avenue in print offerings so that remote employees have all the devices they need, said David Fisher, senior sales manager for the VAR channel for Brother USA.

Brother is a Bridgewater, N.J.-based vendor specializing in print offerings.

Fisher spoke to a room full of MSPs at CRN parent company The Channel Company’s XChange 2022 conference in Denver this week.

Despite the maturity of the print market, he said document management offerings are still needed as companies look to better secure, manage and control output as they are converting from paper to digital, even in a hybrid workforce.

[Related: 2022 ANNUAL REPORT CARD WINNERS: SOLUTION PROVIDERS GIVE TOP GRADES TO KEY VENDORS]

“That’s the expectation—most of these folks are going to maintain some level of hybrid work,” he said. “You want to have that same experience of the office and their home workspace.”

And with companies shifting to remote work in 2020, it’s almost time to replace those devices that were rolled out early on in the pandemic.

The print market is shifting, he said, with a decline in A3 devices, or large copiers, to A4 devices.

In the hybrid work environment, businesses are focused on taking care of employees who work remotely and making sure they have the devices they need, he said.

There’s an opportunity to fill those needs and manage devices in the print environment, which opens up another revenue stream for partners.

“This [hybrid] working environment has really given us an opportunity to address some changing needs with print and documents as well,” he said.

One way to do that is through a subscription to a print service. The Brother subscription model is all-inclusive and offers hardware, supplies, services and support.

The program is flexible and customizable and customers receive one monthly invoice for all of the services and offerings, according to Fisher.

“The program is really set up to provide convenience and low up-front costs,” he said. “We’ve seen that shift from wanting to take these devices out of the capital expense and moving them into the operating expense. That’s what the subscription service will allow.”

Bill Hayes, president of ACNS Technologies, a Holly Hill, Fla.-based MSP, agreed with Fisher in that customers need to be able to equip their remote employees with office-grade devices.

When an employee works from home, the employee “is obviously concerned about productivity dropping,” he said.

“They have an excuse of, ‘My printer is jamming,’ then they have an out of why they’re not being productive,” he said. “In my experience with my clients sending their employees home, we give them the best tool so there’s no, ‘I can’t do it because I don’t have the tools to complete my job.’”