The plea from managed print services providers (MPS) to partner with the channel is nothing new. Each year traditional MPS players work to establish partnerships with the channel community only to be turned down or ignored.
ThinPrint Inc., a print management software vendor from Berlin, Germany is trying to change that narrative with the channel and present them with an $800 million revenue opportunity in North America that goes beyond the printed page.
Henning Volkmer, president and CEO, of ThinPrint told CDN the company is trying to re-architect the task of printing to make it user friendly for mobile users. He added that market dynamics such as new regulations in the financial and healthcare sectors has increased the need for printing “important documents.”
While Volkmer admits printing volumes have decreased, the importance of those documents that are being printed has increased.
“The printing that is being done today is not just printed emails but documents associated to healthcare or finance. Those documents matter. We try to make sure those documents that are printed for a reason are secured, safely printed and printed quickly. This is a big space and printing is not going away,” he said.
Volkmer is positioning ThinPrint in a different field of business that could extend MPS.
With ThinPrint, action items such as printer assignment, driver functions, bandwidth optimization, easier authentication and mobility are addressed.
The ThinPrint technology tries to extend the service option of MPS to handle print requests from smartphones, thin clients, virtual machines and the cloud.
ThinPrint has even provided printing for desktop-as-a-service and software-as-a-service offerings.
To attract more channel partners ThinPrint has re-vamped its partner program and dropped its entry fee. The ThinPrint partner program has two tiers Registered and Certified and features free training, free implementation support, product and sales support, marketing materials and technical help for high valued project roll-outs.
“We realized few people actually know how important printing is today. So there are no partner fees and certification requirements in the new program. Those are two big hurdles for this market that may not be too familiar with us,” Volkmer said.
The program comes with an initial three per cent rebate but the more a partner can do the benefits will increase. For example partner marketing resources start at 25 per cent of cost but can go up to 50 per cent. ThinPrint will provide added consulting services, support options and more direct contact for partners who can move up.
One of the key aspects of this program are the pricing advantages offered by ThinPrint. Volkmer said margins can start at around 30 per cent and move up to 50 per cent. “We realize that this can lead to a substantial impact on partner resources so we need to reward those partners who do put in the work and effort and gain the knowledge of ThinPrint,” Volkmer said.
The fee isn’t the only thing dropped in the program. ThinPrint also removed administrative overhead so that partners who are interested can be on-boarded at www.thinprint.com/en-us/partners/becomeapartner.
The company has approximately 250 channel partners today, but is looking for more specifically in North America. Volkmer has not stated any goals for the number of new partners but is looking for partners who can service small to mid-market customers.
“I’m looking for someone who is truly embedded and entrenched inside a customer. Those partners tend to have a specific value and can leverage this technology to their advantage in markets such as finance, healthcare and construction,” he said.
