I tell ya, if it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all.
On Friday I signed a nice deal for a wide format system. I called today for additional credit information only to find out the owner had passed away over the weekend, he was only 48 years old. Keep in mind that having your health and family is worth more than all the deals and all the money in world.
I was at Staples today to purchase some supplies, while I was there I checked out the latest prices on paper. Decent Hammermill paper is now about $40 per case plus tax. That puts the cost of paper at .008 per page. Probably the highest it's ever been.
In my blog yesterday, I made reference to a report that states the average office document is copied 19 times. So, how many sheets of paper is the average office document? Well, after a few searches on Google, I came up with nada. I'll take from experience and take a calculated guess that the average document would be about 20 pages. We'll be conservative and take another number that there are 50 of these documents produced every month. That gives us 19,000 sheets of paper per month (sure hope my math is correct) at a cost of .008 which equals a cost of $152 per month just for paper. Then add the click charge for maintenance and supplies (.012 average) and we have another $228 for the consumables and maintenance. In all based on this one scenario the monthly cost is $380.
So, if we were charging .01 or a penny a page for scans, and then these documents were transmitted electronically by either email, LAN fax or uploaded to an FTP site, the dealer would still generate a revenue of $190, and the client would still have a savings of almost $200 per month. There is value to the customer also, because that's 19,000 sheets of paper that's not loaded into the copier every month, the time that it takes, the lifting and moving the paper from one department to another, plus the time that it take to order the paper. Now figure in the eco advantages and if Scanning Maintenance Agreements were presented the right way, we could get .01 per scan.
There are a few dealers and direct branches that are charging .0015 per scan, based on 19,000 pages that puts the monthly bill at $28.50, you the heck wants to generate and invoice for $28.50, by the time the invoice is created, printed and mailed, it's basically a losing proposition for the dealer!
Thoughts? Agree or Disagree? Would love to her from others.
-=Good Selling=-
I am with you on the opportunity and there have been many cases where it was needed. My old alma mater, (I was with Ricoh for 12 years) and many other vendors have a problem that will prevent you from doing such....they only track scans in service mode. They keep saying it is coming but to date nada. We tried work arounds in the field (been a while though) and never came up with anything. If someone knows how it would be good to hear. Good Selling!
ReplyDeleteRandy
The 19 copies is over the life of the document. Not over a one month period. I agree their is a need to charge for scans. Our company has a few clients that have seg. 4 machines that are printing or copying 5k to 8k but are scanning 15k.
ReplyDeleteThanx for the clarification, and yes that would stand to reason in reference to how many times the document is copied. If 19 times during the life cycle and the customer created 200 documents per month at 50 pages each, arghhh, I'm done.
ReplyDeleteIf the industry doesn't start charging for scans they will continue to lose service revenue.
ReplyDeleteThere should be a minimum charge that combines scans at .0015 and prints at .0085 as an example.
As far as the cost/invoice math - that is fuzzy math. Better to find ways to invoice less expensively then to NOT invoice.
Both of these industry problems have answers... business is changing but the manager/leaders are not.