Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ) print services (Managed Print Services –MPS- and Basic Print Services –BPS-) market will cross the US$6 billion barrier by 2017, and 2014 will be a pivotal year to drive market expansion into broader customer segment as well as revenue growth, according to the latest research by IDC.
“IDC sees fundamental transformation taking place from both venders offerings and customer expectations in the MPS market,” says Jessie Lee, Research Manager for IPDS Research at IDC Asia/Pacific.
Vendors will use MPS to drive more transformative opportunities revolving around digital capture, workflows, cloud integration and mobile printing enablement. IDC expects greater integration with IT services and business process outsourcing engagements and a growing focus on vertical and line-of-business solutions.
Customers (large enterprises in maturing economies, in particular) are taking a holistic approach that factors MPS into the workspace strategy and ensures this is tied to the mobility, cloud, social business and big data analytics agenda. This expectation will become more prevalent as enterprise business plan productive and innovative workspace for employees.
The demands of future work environment are determined by the maturity of the country and its vertical industries. IDC finds Australia to be the most mature market (over 30% market share in APeJ). Financial Services and Manufacturing are the leading vertical markets (up to 47% in APeJ) while Education is gaining momentum.
IDC analysts believe that Enterprise (Very Large Business 1000+, Large Business 500~999, up to 48%) will be the initial segment to drive MPS. The Midmarket (Medium Business 100~499, 33%) is another important segment as the decision-making process is quicker and there are fewer objections to outsourcing services by multi-tasking IT departments.
In 2014, IDC expects businesses to further fine tune their customer-targeting strategies in accordance to specific customer requirements.
Large companies require ‘best-in-class’ experience with customization and seem to be more accepting of the transition to solutions leveraging IT trends such as Cloud, Mobility, Social and Big Data. Vendors will need to analyze target customers and invest direct sales and service resources to drive revenue mainstream.
