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Mark Asbridge: Vendors need to make good information genuinely easy to find and make it available to partners and customers directly rather than gatekeeping it through support tickets. That’s part of why documentation-integrated help, in the form of an AI assistant tied directly into technical documentation, matters. It lets a partner mid-installation get an answer immediately instead of digging through manuals or waiting on a callback. The same principle is now extending into partner support portals, so partners can search their own history of questions and tickets rather than starting from scratch each time. A cloud transition also raises a question a lot of customers haven’t fully worked through before they move, once documents leave a local server, where do they actually go, and who can access them along the way? Vendors have a responsibility to answer that clearly and specifically, not with a general reassurance. That means being explicit about whether data passes through the vendor’s own infrastructure or stays directly within the customer’s own cloud environment, who has access at each step, and how that changes depending on which deployment model the customer chooses. Customers moving to the cloud for the first time often don’t know the right questions to ask here, so it falls to the vendor and the partner to raise them proactively rather than waiting to be asked. But the more important point is that this kind of support only works if the underlying product is genuinely well designed in the first place. Support tooling should shorten the distance to an answer, not compensate for a platform that’s hard to use. Beyond the tooling, this also means real investment in partner enablement – certification programs, hands-on training, and a vendor team that’s actually reachable, not just documentation. A customer’s cloud transition is only as good as the partner guiding them through it. John Green: Vendors need to support their dealers in helping their customers. It is no good just giving us a product and saying, ‘There you go’. We are lucky because the manufacturers we work with are very proactive They provide proper training, good support, and we can go to them when we need help. At the end of the day, the customer is dealing with us, so we need to be trained and knowledgeable to look after them properly. The manufacturers and system suppliers are responsible for that. Daniel Gilbert: Vendors need to shift from being service providers to becoming strategic advisors on the customers’ cloud journey. A long-term vision needs to be created and executed with end-user adoption and future-proofing at the heart of it. More than just data transfer, vendors can provide guidance for assessing current infrastructure, cost optimisation, security compliance checks, internal policies and external regulations. Offering a clear roadmap can help organisations minimise downtime and risk along the journey. We need to focus on building a resilient and scalable cloud architecture that can easily adapt to
changing business needs, emerging technologies, and evolving security threats. Continuous training and upskilling programs will be needed for customers and their IT teams to grow internal expertise alongside cloud adoption. Peter Shackleton: Good vendor support is crucial because every customer will be starting from a different point. Partners need to understand a customer’s existing print environment and how cloud print will fit with the systems and ways of working they already have in place. Vendors can support that by giving partners the expertise they need to recommend and implement the right solution. Our Tech Trust Index shows why that matters. Almost all IT decision-makers, 99%, say trust plays a role in technology purchasing decisions, while 72% say trust matters more today than it did three years ago. The research also shows that customer support and cybersecurity support can help strengthen trust in a technology vendor. For Brother, the focus is on making the move to cloud print straightforward and supporting partners throughout that process. Brother Cloud Solutions, for example, gives partners a cloud-based print management offering that can work with customers’ existing IT environments, helping reduce reliance on onsite print servers and simplify print management. Combined with reliable support as requirements change, that gives partners the confidence to guide customers through the move and support them once the solution is up and running. Stuart Miller: Vendors should act as a trusted partner throughout the cloud transition, helping customers understand which approach best suits their existing infrastructure, business priorities and longer‑term needs. Crucially, customers don’t always need more tools, but support in making better use of the technology they already have. Vendors can provide the consultancy and expertise needed to assess existing environments, identify where integration is required and ensure new cloud solutions work effectively alongside existing systems and workflows. This support should continue beyond implementation, helping customers optimise their technology as their requirements evolve.
David Smith
Paul Kamlesh
www.futera.co.uk www.xerox.co.uk www.xeretec.co.uk www.carbon-group.co.uk www.kyoceradocumentsolutions.co.uk www.develop-uk.co.uk www.papercut.com www.wdslimited.com www.copyboxdocumentsystems.co.uk www.myq-solution.com www.commercebusinesssystems.co.uk www.key-digital.co.uk
www.brother.co.uk www.canon.co.uk
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