OKI's Middle East business partners bag awards at annual conference in Florence

The annual event took place in Florence and also hosted an awards ceremony where a number of OKI's Middle East business partners were awarded for their achievements in selling OKI printing solutions in their respective markets:

• Qatar Computer Services WLL for best distributor in the Middle East (Qatar)

• Utmost Electronics for best fax distributor (UAE)

• Qatar Computer Services WLL for best colour NIP distributor (Qatar)

• SETCO for best mono NIP distributor (Syria)

• EGTCON for best SIDM distributor (Egypt)

"As the region's printing market becomes more and more competitive and businesses start moving towards in-house colour printing solutions, channel partners need the support of a vendor that can help them expand their reach in the market and meet these changing customer needs," said John Ross, general manager Middle East, OKI Printing Solutions. "With the new 'OKI Academy' programme, we will be able to work more closely with our partners in the Middle East and provide them with world-class support and growth opportunities that help them compete more aggressively in the market."

The OKI Academy provides channel partners support in terms of selling, marketing, research, technical support, training and certification and is segmented to four different categories, each catering to a range of specific OKI product offerings. Increasing the depth of information, skills and capabilities available to OKI channel partners will help drive market growth in the Middle East region, particularly in the under-penetrated SMB segment, according to Ross. "We believe that the way to do this is to give businesses access to better skills, better support and better service capabilities through investing in our partners."

The first day of the conference presented a keynote from Andrew Montgomery, managing director for OKI EMEA where he highlighted details on OKI's performance over the last year and identified some of the on-going market trends and challenges in the Middle East and South East Europe region. Senior executives also outlined product roadmaps and the company's strategies moving forwards for the coming year, with a special session on OKI's recent global repositioning announcement. The second day of the business partner conference kicked off with a session on the consumables market and anti-counterfeit measures, followed by the official launch of the new 'OKI Academy' channel programme.

OKI Printing Solutions announced earlier this month that it would be expanding its presence in the region through the establishment of its Middle East headquarters at the Dubai Airport Free Zone. The move is in line with OKI's increased investment in the region to drive sales and marketing support for its channel partners across the GCC, Levant and North African countries and launch a whole new range of printing solutions that will bring new choice to the Middle East printing market.