LET’S BUILD FORWARD BETTER

With the worst of the pandemic in the past, Brother UK’s managing director, PHIL JONES, is looking forward with optimism, and conscious of how it has changed businesses for good

ith COVID restrictions repealed, W businesses across the land are focusing on growth once again, and Brother is no exception - but rather than ‘building back better’, as the Prime Minister is fond of saying, Phil Jones would rather ‘build forward better’.Let him explain. “None of our businesses are the same; the economy isn’t the same, the working culture isn’t the same, so the way the industry operates isn’t going to be the same. Let’s build forward, learning from our experiences through the pandemic, and be better businesses and employers now, with happier workforces.”

For Brother UK, this process began internally. As well as implementing a hybrid working policy, the company has invested in recent months on modernising its operations.

“We totally redecorated, introduced new working areas, lounges and hybrid meeting environments because the commute has to be worth it now,” says Phil. “The commute is now a pain for people, whereas it used to be normalised, so you need to make your office a destination where people think, ‘It was worth my effort coming here today. I love the new lounges, I have great energy and I see people I enjoy working with. I can make hybrid Team calls, the wifi is good, I have great coffee.’

“It’s about making sure the business is fit-for-purpose for today - that we have the right systems, that the culture is digital first, that we understand that the role of the office has changed and that the people who work for you have changed expectations about their relationship with you and what they want from you as an employer.

“Businesses that haven’t changed their working environments, or introduced hybrid working, are going to be in trouble as people will leave because of that.

“Our organisational value proposition has been refreshed deliberately to keep up-to-date with the market. These are all learnings from the pandemic. If you listen to your people, you pick all this up – they should be telling you what they expect of you as an employer. The key thing is to make some movement as fast as you can.”

For example, one of the most important changes Brother UK made after its employees started to return to the office was to upgrade its wifi routers. “We are a big corporate but our wifi wasn’t designed to have 100 people concurrently on video in the organisation as well as all the usual network usage and, as a result, our network was groaning,” he says. “These are the hidden things that can trip you up.”

The issue was addressed quickly – going back to Phil’s point that he doesn’t want coming into the office to be associated with pain for employees. “We got the wifi routers upgraded and updated quickly and the issue went away.”

Another change was in accommodating hybrid meetings, given that not everyone is in the office at the same time. “Previously, we would sit on laptops in separate places, which would create issues of noise feedback and noise pollution; that has been fixed with virtualised Teams environments,” he explains.

General noise pollution was another problem – busy offices can be noisy places, especially with multiple people on calls. This problem was solved by installing acoustic pods. “People can sit in them to have a Teams call and shut the door and keep the noise out,” Phil says.

RESELLER OPPORTUNITIES Phil adds that these adaptations all present opportunities for resellers. “Trying to find acoustic pods was a real pain – there was so much desk research needed because they weren’t easy to find. I literally found somewhere and placed a £15,000 order through someone I connected to on LinkedIn asking for a quote. I have never met a salesperson, or seen the company!

“All these things we have done about re-equipping the office – soft furniture etc – a lot of the OP industry wasn’t supplying many of these items. With soft furnishings we wanted a certain look, and some of the catalogues weren’t supplying the look we wanted, so we used places like made.com, where the furniture is a bit more lifestyle orientated. We spent lots of money - but not

much with the traditional OP industry which, in my view, is a missed opportunity for them.”

There are plenty of other opportunities for manufacturers and resellers, too, as we move to a postpandemic economic phase. Phil notes that the market for home printers is still active and will continue to be as homeworkers replace existing models or look to upgrade.

INNOVATION EVERYWHERE It has also led to innovation in how products are packaged, Phil says. “It’s not just about new products but also the commercial wraps around them. We launched EcoPro in the pandemic, which provides a subscription-based, sustainable print solution. Individual customers pay monthly and the printer that come to them is a refurbished one. The customer uses it for as long as is needed and they can send it back to us; we then refurbish it again and send it back out. It is full life-cycle print service as all the consumables are included. It is still a printer, but presented in a subscriptionbased model - taking our managed print services model and bringing it down to a single user, making it easy for them to buy with a sustainability play wrapped around it.”

As with employees, customers have changed, and resellers need to look at how they do business and go to market. “We have seen quite a big shift in how people buy, for example, with more home delivery, and you have to respond to all of that shifting customer expectation.