My Top MFP Links!

Good ole Summertime! It seems to be wee slow everywhere, so I thought I would share some og my hottest MFP links with you. The places I go to get the info I need when I can not find it anywhere else other than the http://www.p4photel.com/

Print4Pay Hotel, nothing else like it in the world! Connect with other MFP Reps, SEs, CEs to share information, sales solutions, tech solutions and above all stay knowledgeable about with all of the products from all of the manufacturers. http://www.p4photel.com/

Guru.com allows you to connect with other professionals to customise a software or workflow solution! http://www.guru.com/

AutoCad discussion forum for printing and plotting, here you get to see what end users are really doing with your product and how they feel about it. Great for us Wide Format Gurus. http://discussion.autodesk.com/forum.jspa?forumID=30

Amortization Calculator always comes in handy when a customer asks you what the interest rate is. http://ray.met.fsu.edu/~bret/amortize.html

How Stuff Works! Need to know how it works? Take a trip here and you can rule the world with knowledge! http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-page2.htm

Fax Server ROI Calculator punch in the information and presto you have an instant ROI for fax servers. If you didn't know it, fax servers and FOIP is the hottest solution going! http://www.captaris.com/swfresources/RightFax/ROI_Calc.html

HP Page Yields go here to become a master for HP page yields and get the low down from HP when it comes to ink jet cartridges! http://h10060.www1.hp.com/pageyield/us/en/index.html

If you have any you would like to add please feel free to post here and I will edit and update for all of us!

Ricoh Americas Corporation "Unfair to Dealers" Part II

I spoke to one of my friends at RBS (yes, I have a friend at RBS, believe it or not), and we starting talking about named accounts, and down the street accounts in general. I then asked him if he was privy to any of the RMAP or DMAP info from Ricoh Americas Corporation or even info from Aficio League, he stated he is not and I believe him. I then asked how do you get your named accounts? Are they handed down to you from management or is it stuff you find in the field or is it a combo of both? He stated that named accounts are given to him, however in his eight or nine years there he has been with RBS he never seen a named account come down that stated the customer already had Ricoh products. However, what he did state is that there are now 5 RBS reps working the same geographic area, and when someone digs up a lead from a named account, the rep from the named account has to prove that he has been in contact with that named account. If he has, then he keeps it and if not he loses it.

In my county there are also 4-5 RBS covering what I cover for my dealer, with this type of "feet on the street" they are stumbling over my accounts on a frequent basis. I guess I need to "educate" my customers ahead of time, kinda like what the Association of Oil Heating does, and why it is better to business with the Authorized Dealer instead of the Authorized Direct Branch. Plus with RBS why are they giving incentives for new business when they are taking existing Ricoh Business, here there should be no extra incentives, incentives should be for taking down Xerox, Kyocera, OCE, Canon, Sharp, Toshiba and the rest of them! I have many thoughts on why Ricoh Americas Corporation is letting RBS do this.

Here's a few for you:

1. Top Ricoh Management (this includes Sam, Tom & Larry) have no clue what is happening in the street, they are so far removed from the day to day occurrences and no one has the gumption to tell them what is going on.


2. Top Ricoh Management (this includes Sam, Tom & Larry) have no clue what is happening in the street, they are so far removed from the day to day occurrences and no one has the gumption to tell them what is going on.


3. Top Ricoh Management (this includes Sam, Tom & Larry) have no clue what is happening in the street, they are so far removed from the day to day occurrences and no one has the gumption to tell them what is going on.


4. This is probably the most far-fetched rational I have of the whole situation. The plan was put in place months ago to have the Ricoh boxes to be sold by Ricoh Direct only. Slowly over time dealers who were sick and tired would change brands (drop Ricoh), and then down the road Ricoh would then call the smaller and mid sized dealers on the carpet and tell them they are not meeting their quotas and they would then be dropped, however you could become a Lanier or a Savin Dealer. Thus at the end of a few years you would only have a few Mega Ricoh Dealers and RBS. RBS would then be able to raise prices after they have eliminated the other Ricoh Dealers in their area.

Yeah, I know the last one is pretty far fetched and is out there, however the million-dollar question is "why" are they letting this happen to their own dealers. Ask your self why and the answer is almost always the almighty buck.

Just my two cents!

Rumor HP & IKON!

Have you been watching IKONs stock lately, keeps ticking up and up, rumor on the street is that HP http://www.hp.com/ is may acquire IKON http://www.ikon.com/ very soon!

Can you imagine after the bombshell Xerox http://www.xerox.com/ dropped a few months ago with Global http://www.gis.com/ , I for one thought that Ricoh or Canon would pull the trigger with either Ikon or Danka, but HP?

Can you image the ramifications of such a buyout to Canon http://www.imagerunner.com/ & Ricoh http://www.ricoh-usa.com/ ! Seems to me that buying distribution points is the only way to increase market share. Ricoh was one of the first to do it in recent years, then Oce, and then Xerox http://www.xerox.com/.

You can even see it in the low end distribution where manufacturers branches are dumping boxes to gain market share and increase consumables revenues down the road.

Round and round we go, where we stop, nobody knows!