Wednesday, 24 October 2007
08.30 - 09.00
Conference Registration / Refreshments
09.00 - 09.15
Welcome and Opening Remarks
09.15 - 09.45
Moderator:
Jon Reardon, Group Director, InfoTrends
Keynote: State of the Market Address
Solutions have become a hot topic in today’s Office Equipment Environment, and they will continue to explode as we see the connection between solutions-based sales and hardware take off. InfoTrends predicts that solutions-based hardware sales will take over traditional hardware only based sales by the end of 2008, at which point more than 50% of hardware will be sold with a solution. With that in mind, many players have formally announced or solidified their solutions strategies and are well underway to make solutions selling a significant part of their businesses. The State of the Market keynote will address the solutions forecast through 2011 and discuss some of the solutions strategies and trends that InfoTrends sees in this exploding area of the business.
Speaker:
Randy Dazo, Director, InfoTrends
9.45 - 10.30
Refreshment Break / Exhibit Browsing
10.30 – 11.15
Keynote: The Art of Partnering and Collaboration
With solutions being a vital part of the office equipment market, effective partnering and collaboration among software and hardware vendors is a powerful competitive advantage in this fast-moving market. As the document technology ecosystem continues to expand, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine the best strategies for working with partners. Partnering and collaboration success continues to be driven by achieving a balance of your company’s goals, your partners’ goals and, most importantly, the goals of the end user community. But as the ecosystem changes, and the methods of collaboration within the ecosystem evolve, the art of partnering has also changed. New platforms for faster development and growth, new tools for better cooperation, and the continued balancing act of “coopertition” necessitate new approaches. See how these new approaches are changing the document industry and can become an important part of your solutions strategy!
Speaker:
Ed Schmid, CEO, eCopy
11.15 – 12.00
Session 1: Moving from Products to Solutions in a Commodity Hardware World: Part I
For the mature office equipment industry, solutions represent the greatest growth potential available. InfoTrends defines solutions as a combination of services and software often accompanied by hardware. To differentiate themselves, today’s businesses must take software solutions and professional services more seriously and understand how these new concepts will help them provide differentiation and staying power with their customers. This session will discuss how to develop a solutions software strategy for the SMB market.
Speaker:
Mark Boyt, European Product Manager, Xerox
12.00 - 13.30
Lunch / Roundtable Discussion / Exhibit Browsing
13.30 – 14.15
Session 2: Professional Services – The Next Differentiator
Customer intimacy has always been an important differentiator for making or breaking a customer relationship. Sales and services have traditionally been tied to customer relationships, ensuring that the service levels with each of these organisations met customer expectations. With hardware and even software becoming ubiquitous, professional services has become the real new differentiator to delivering something unique that will win sales and maintain a customer for life. This session will discuss some of the best practices for building a professional services organisation and provide “how to” tips for engaging customers with this new organisation.
Speaker:
Markus Naegeli, Director of European Services and Support, Canon Europe
14.15 – 15.00
Session 3: Partnering or Creating Organically Developed Solutions
Some OEMs have developed sophisticated applications that rival ISV-developed applications, but can companies survive on developing software alone? In some cases, partnering can help you deliver solutions for customers quickly and also help if customers already work with certain ISVs that you plan on partnering with. On the other hand, developing unique solutions enables companies to differentiate themselves among the competition. This session will consist of a panel of ISVs and OEMs that have formed partnerships, as well as some that have been successful in creating their own solutions applications.
Speakers:
Martin Buglass, Alliances Manager, EMEA, Omtool
Jonathan Millbank, Director Channel Development and Marketing EMEA, eCopy
15.00 – 15.45
Refreshment Break / Exhibit Browsing
15.45 - 16.30
Session 4: Embedded Technologies – Who is In-Bed with Whom?
With almost all MFP OEMs delivering their solutions development platforms, it is interesting to track and study the two main platform camps (Java-based and client/server Web-based). Each solution has its own benefits and challenges, although both offer a rich and standard platform that enables companies to develop to these new and powerful MFP devices. This session will highlight a panel of OEM vendors discussing their solutions strengths from a development side while also talking about their programs to attract ISVs to develop on their systems and the marketing to help promote their solutions partnerships.
Speaker:
Dirk Wetzel, Senior Manager for the European Solutions Sales Department, Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe GmbH
Mark Boyt, European Product Manager, Xerox
16:30 – 17.15
Session 5: Selling Solutions through the Dealer Channel
The dealer channel represents a large dedicated distribution network that is in a unique position to exploit the opportunities around the office document solutions market. Hear from a panel of successful dealers on how they have approached this market and developed a profitable business model.
Speaker:
Thomas Schneck, President, DocuWare AG
Tim McKeating, Joint Managing Director, TBSL
17.15 – 19.15
Networking Reception
Thursday, 25 October 2007
08.30 - 09.00
Refreshments / Exhibit Browsing
09.00 – 09.45
Keynote: Changing the Paradigm from TCO to TVO – Total Value of Ownership
While total cost of ownership has received much attention in recent years, total value to an organisation offers a superior method for assessing the benefits of IT projects. Using a total value approach, companies consider benefits not just from cost-cutting, but also from improved business processes based on new technology. In this keynote, InfoTrends will talk about a new way to address customers to help them see the real value of their new IT investments.
Speaker:
Hanns Kohler-Kruner, Director Global Education Services EMEA, AIIM-The ECM Association
09.45-10.30
Session 6: New Hardware Disruption in a Mature Market
In mature markets such as imaging and printing, the options are increasingly limited because hardware advancements have created a relatively even playing field. Performance has traditionally been the key metric in measuring the capabilities of office equipment. Often, imaging vendors employ a “more-for-less” approach, introducing products that are slightly faster than those currently on the market at any given price point. At the same time, however, there are other ways to reach a competitive edge. New imaging technologies like HP’s Edgeline are challenging traditional hardware platforms. This session takes an innovative approach to product differentiation by identifying the key hardware attributes for specific applications and laying out a plan for creating targeted value propositions based on customer needs.
Speaker:
Francesco Pignatti, Senior Research Analyst, InfoTrends
10.30-11.15
Refreshment Break / Exhibit Browsing
11.15-12.00
Session 7: TCO and Cost Optimisation – An Easy Tap into the Solutions Game
Today’s companies are becoming more savvy and aware of the issues associated with print and output spending. Cost optimisation and management solutions are probably the hottest topics as well as the easiest solutions to introduce because customers can see exactly how much money they are spending and more importantly how much they can save. This session will engage a group of vendors offering different types of cost optimisation and management solutions to uncover their position in the market.
Speakers:
Karl Cerny, Senior Vice President and General Manager Europe/Africa/Middle East, Katun Corporation
Vincent Lemaire, General Manager, Doxense
Peter Turnbull, Market Development Director, Macro 4, Inc.
12.00 – 13.00
Lunch / Exhibit Browsing
13.00-13.45
Session 8: Document Capture and Management – Simplifying Your Customer’s Workflow
Modern MFPs bridge the gap between the traditional paper world and the increasingly digital world of documents. The new document capture and management solutions offered by MFP devices can offer users a new way to improve productivity, increase ease of use, and help companies become compliant when it comes to document retention and retrieval. This session will host a panel of experts in digital capture, routing, and management of electronic documents. They will discuss topics surrounding document workflow and how companies are adopting these technologies to improve their business processes in several types of organisations.
Speakers:
John Harrison, Director of Sales, Europe, Captaris International
Bernd Auer, OEM Sales Manager EMEA, Nuance Communications Germany GmbH
Wouter Koelewijn, CEO, X-Solutions
13.45-14.30
Session 9: Services Marketing and Solving Customer Pain Points
How do you market the intangible? What can you charge your customers for additional items, solutions, professional services, or training? Part of the solutions sale will be discovering the value of these intangibles and associating a price that is amenable for your customers. This session will discuss the power of discovering customer pain points and why this is an important part of the solutions sales process.
Speakers:
Alicia Cuadra, Service Marketing Manager, Office Group, Xerox Europe
Adam Gillbe, European Solutions Marketing Manager, Canon Europe Ltd.
14.30-15.15
Session 10: Document Security – New Concerns and the Solutions that Solve Security Issues
Security in the office has always been a topic of concern within the IT space. Now that devices are becoming attached to the network and are more powerful and sophisticated, there are new concerns for security when it comes to the capture, workflow, storage, and output of documents. This session will discuss some of the new challenges surrounding document security, authentication, access to devices, and document storage as well as exploring what can be done to alleviate them.
Speaker:
Peter Plested, Divisional Manager Solutions Centre, Sharp Electronics Europe
Tom Haapanen, VP Product Planning and Technology, Equitrac
15.15-16.00
Session 11: Moving from Products to Solutions in a Commodity Hardware World: Part II
Differentiation is the key to establishing product success in mature industries. InfoTrends' research in the copier and printer MFP market posits that software solutions and professional services are the desired levers of differentiation in the office equipment industry. This session will discuss how to move from strategy development to tactical implementation.
Speaker:
Thomas Krautter, CTO, CCP Systems AG
16.00-16.30
Closing Remarks
*Agenda subject to change.
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