Last year’s annual survey identified what dealers considered their best options for future growth. Your thoughts on this topic will be one of the highlights of our 34th annual survey.
Each year The Cannata Report asks dealers to identify the greatest opportunities for growth. Those findings are presented in our Annual Survey. We intend to do the same thing this year in our 34th Annual Survey sponsored by TIAA.
Last year we asked dealers to identify up to four growth opportunities from the following selections: digital signage, document management/ECM, MPS, MNS, production print/wide format/industrial print, security/cybersecurity, and other.
In our 33rd Annual Survey, the five biggest growth opportunities were MPS, MNS, production print, document management/ECM, and security/cybersecurity. All of these represent a way for dealers to offset the decline in clicks with services and solutions. And three of these four opportunities””most notably, MNS, document management/ECM, and security/cybersecurity””offer viable alternatives or supplements to “click” revenue.
Compared to previous years, MPS finished significantly stronger in 2018 than in previous years as a dealer’s top growth opportunity when dealers were asked to identify their #1 growth opportunity. MNS declined across the board as a leading growth opportunity. Meanwhile, results were uneven for production print as the greatest growth opportunity with Canon, Konica Minolta, and Ricoh dealers decreasing in interest, while interest among Kyocera, Sharp, and Toshiba dealers increased. Particularly notable increases were seen among Sharp dealers (4% in 2018 versus 0% in 2017) and Kyocera (9% in 2018 versus 4% in 2017), the latter was likely the result of last year’s announcement of Kyocera’s first high-speed inkjet production machine. However, the percentages for all of these categories were higher as compared to previous years when we took into consideration each growth category no matter where the dealer ranked them.
Much to our surprise, we saw fewer dealers from every manufacturer identify production print as their greatest growth opportunity although a significant number still identified it as a growth category even if they didn’t rank it #1.
In last year’s Survey, fewer dealers also identified “other” as a top growth opportunity (1%, or 4 of 338). Among the dealers who cited “other,” regardless of positioning, they cited 3D printing, business process optimization, environmental services, inkjet technology, physical security, acquisitions, rentals, water service, mailing equipment, technology as a service, interactive whiteboards, software, cloud management, and IT projects. Truth be told, some of those items would fit comfortably under the MNS.
Those represent just some of the findings from our 33rd Annual Survey. Your voice counts and we’d love to know what you consider the top growth categories in this year’s annual survey.
Click here to access our 34th Annual Dealer Survey sponsored by TIAA Bank and let your voice be heard.
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