01732 759725 48 to gain relevant qualifications and accreditations, helping us build genuine in-house specialisms rather than relying on outsourced expertise. Q: When selling MFPs, what are the most popular software solutions you provide and why? A: PaperCut Hive is my go-to solution, and we have a very strong relationship with both iTS and PaperCut. I approach customers with a securityfirst mindset. I do not lead with the box and, quite often, I do not initially talk about printers at all. By discussing security and taking the time to understand the customer’s wider requirements, we frequently identify a desire to remove physical print servers and reduce dependence on on‑premise infrastructure. PaperCut Hive enables customers to move print management into the cloud, potentially reduce their server infrastructure costs and strengthen their overall security posture. Q: If you could change one aspect of your job, what would it be and why? A: I would welcome more face to face time with customers and colleagues. Teams is an extremely useful tool and makes it easy to arrange meetings quickly, but it can also mean that a significant amount of the working week is spent behind a screen. Q: How do you spend your week – time on phone, face to face meetings with customers etc.? A: My week is split between hosting internal meetings, managing the sales and marketing team, meeting new and existing customers on site, and spending plenty of time behind a screen on Teams. Q: What would make your job easier? A: Simpler, more consistent partner pricing would make life considerably easier, and I suspect most resellers would agree. Many technology and hardware providers have complex pricing structures that change regularly, sometimes every quarter and sometimes depending on the level of business you have written. It slows down the quoting process and means constantly updating our own systems to keep everything accurate. with 3CX within our telecoms and unified communications business. Q: What are your customers most interested in currently? A: Security and AI are the two subjects generating the most interest, and increasingly they are being applied across all of our service offerings. Customers want to understand how AI can improve the way their businesses operate. Within cybersecurity, that might mean identifying, isolating and responding to threats at greater speed. Within telecoms, it includes intelligent call handling and agentic systems that can understand why someone is calling and route them to the right person or department. Security also runs through everything we provide, from secure print environments and hosted telephony platforms to protecting endpoints, user identities and data. Q: How have you changed/are you changing business operations to exploit new opportunities? A: We have evolved considerably from our origins as a Xerox concessionaire. We have been providing IT services for around 12 years, and cybersecurity has become a core part of our managed IT offering. This includes endpoint and identity protection, managed detection and response, and access to a 24/7 SOC. During COVID, we recognised that outsourcing our telecoms services was not providing the level of control, flexibility or customer experience we wanted. We therefore made the decision to bring unified communications in-house. I led the platform selection, training and internal knowledge development required for our teams to deliver and support the service directly. Today, our print support, managed IT, cybersecurity and unified communications services are all delivered by our own internal teams. We are now taking the same approach with AI, developing the knowledge and skills internally so that we can support customers as their requirements continue to evolve. Our Learn to Earn programme supports that strategy by encouraging employees Q: What do you see as the biggest challenges facing channel businesses today? A: There are three that spring to mind. The first, and probably the most pronounced, is the skills gap across the technology industry. Technology and software are developing at such a rapid pace that keeping teams trained, knowledgeable and able to support new solutions is an ongoing challenge. It is not only about recruiting the right people but continually developing the people you already have quickly enough to keep pace. Secondly, within print specifically, businesses need to demonstrate added value. As the market has become increasingly commoditised and price-driven, clearly positioning and differentiating that value has become more difficult. The third is cybersecurity, which remains one of the biggest challenges facing organisations of every size. Q: Which OEMs do you partner with and why? A: Within print, we are a Xerox concessionaire and provide the full portfolio, from office devices through to production print. Across our wider technology business, Microsoft is a lead partner, while Huntress and Fortinet strengthen our cybersecurity offering. We also work Hugh Sutherland, Sales Director, DNS Ltd View from the channel Hugh Sutherland Q&A
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