PCR Tech and IT retail, distribution and vendor news
As businesses and public sector organisations look to go ‘paperless’, this fresh demand for digital transformation can help IT resellers generate substantial new business.
That’s according to Klaus Schulz, senior product marketing manager at Fujitsu subsidiary PFU.
Schulz was talking to PCR at a launch event for the firm’s new fi-7460, fi-7480 and fi-7030 document scanners.
He said: "We could define a lot of vertical markets, like education, healthcare with the NHS and hospitals for example. Nurses and doctors can use document scanners to capture patient data.
"The verticalization of this type of product makes sense because it’s very specific. For companies 20 or 30 years old, they might want to start transforming and archiving old data in particular. They might want to rescue old documents and get themselves into the future.
"It’s about consulting – not selling hardware."
Fujitsu’s PFU subsidiary currently supplies IT resellers via Tech Data and Northamber in the UK.
Schulz said that the document scanning products can offer resellers margin opportunities up to 30 per cent.
"With internet sales we know that street prices can be significantly lower," he added. "The difficulty there is as soon as some kind of consultancy is required. That could be the case for a reseller servicing a small sized company – there’s a higher margin opportunity there.
"We’re 100 per cent channel focused, we have no direct business. We use a two tier distribution channel, servicing long tail resellers, VARs, system integrators and ISVs.
"We sell with the channel but like to work closely with resellers."
Schulz added that resellers can receive free test units from Fujitsu, and can offer to digitize a customer’s business for them.
"There has been a long tradition of service provider scanning companies, so if you look at your own paper archives, then you can make anything that comes in from now on digitized, or this can be outsourced to another provider."
Fujitsu’s new space-saving fi-7460 (60ppm, £2,995) and fi-7480 (80ppm, £3,995) can capture documents sized A8 up to A1, as well as folded documents and different sized ones like credit cards, CDs and post. Documents 200 metres long can even be scanned.
For public and commercial organisations Fujitsu says the fi-7030 is the ‘ideal entry point’ into professional document capture. This one is priced at £679.
The document scanner market sold 550,000 units in 2015.
