Written by Fleur Doidge

09 Oct 2008

Oki Printing Solutions has rolled out an online toolkit to help its VARs target sales efforts more accurately and creatively, following discussions with its partners.

Ewa Johnson, marketing director at Oki, said the problem with selling printing solutions is that they often fail to excite customers.

What the vendor sought was a way to talk about printing so that customers and resellers could easily understand that all printers are not the same.

Oki also wanted a way to help partners communicate with potential customers to educate them that the right printer could really help an end-user organisation.

“How can we make it clear that this uninteresting grey box that sits in a corner of the office in most businesses is something that is pretty sexy and can add sizzle to your business?” asked Johnson.

The result is V-Business, an online partner toolkit, which has now been live for about three weeks.

V-Business guides partners to information for selling printing solutions, segmented by 12 markets, including education, health, horticulture and financial services.

Johnson said resellers or potential end users logging onto the V-Business tool via the Oki site are guided through a series of information sets centred around functionality, cost savings and the different options and features of each.

She said that Oki developed V-Business alongside partners via Printerland managing director James Kight.

“We are using this for our customer database as well as new business,” said Kight. “We have been waiting for something like this.”

Printerland has become the first Oki partner to adopt and customise the toolkit for use on its own web site.

Kight said V-Business has already become a key part of its sales engagement process and he believes sales are already rising.

“We are seeing particularly strong benefits from the integrated product selector application, which allows us to match customers’ specific requirements with the printer that matches those needs,” he said.

Case studies and promotions are also kept on V-Business and updated regularly. The aim is to update V-Business with three new case studies each quarter, while sections on new markets are also being planned.

Johnson said that early 2008 saw Oki launch an online tool called V-Studio for end users.

As soon as the company finished that project, it realised that a similar tool might be of value for its partners as well.

“We saw we should be facilitating our channel partners to talk intelligently in a very commercial and savvy market,” Johnson said.