I saw this come across last week, where Meridian School District had awarded a contract to Xerox for 120 copiers with a monthly payment of $43,758 per month. The reason it made the news is that Bosie based Fisher's Document Systems had bid $32,417for 120 copiers ($11,000 lower a month). The initial report I read stated that the school board had rated the bids not only on price but also factors like company history, equipment compatibility and customer service. Fisher's had finished second in the bidding.I thought, well just another case of Xerox being Xerox. However, Xerox was providing one full time and one part time employee to oversee maintenance of these copiers. The numbers don't lie, the Xerox bid was $11,000 a month higher than Fisher's. Let's see, there are 22 work days a month, so the daily cost was $500 per day. An employee and a half would represent 12 work hours, therefore the hourly rate for these employees was $41.66. That's a tidy some to have someone at your beckoned call! Plus the fact that service was probably figured in to the bid, because Fisher's was offering on-site service as needed and machine replacement in 24 hours!
What were they thinking!! Did anyone do the math here?? I've said this in the past and I have no idea if this is the case, however you've really got to wonder why someone would pay and EXTRA $11,000 per month for service on a fraking copy machine!!
This was the statement from Eric Exline (Distric Spokesman) "In the world of schools, having a machine shut down for 24 hours would be unacceptable," he said. "You have teachers lined up every morning printing materials for their students."
It's my experience that if a machine is going to be down for 24 hours, it's going to need a part. Now, where is the part coming from? Is Xerox providing a parts facility at the location (I didn't read this), what happens if the part is back ordered into Asia? For the most part, if a copier goes down, someone if gonna be there in a few hours, and most times the call can be rectified right away. I can't tell you the last time I had a machine down for more than 24 hours.
So, the real question is, out of the 120 copiers, maybe one goes down a month for a part, and some teachers may have to wait a few hours or go to another machine in the building. Now is this worth $11,000 a month of the tax payers money! Naw, I think not, the fraking copier is broke, due with out and do some creative teaching instead of making copies!! My four cents!
-=Good Selling=-
I am currently servicing three School Boards. I find by the third year, your parts & labour costs begin to accelerate quite a bit. Your Service Dept will be overly focussed on satisfying this very low margin account. The dealer is better off working with much higher margin commercial accounts.
ReplyDeleteGood post! When does government EVER care how much it spends? Plus this is just a case of the Xerox name getting undue credit. I lost a deal with a fire station last month because they bought a Xerox even though it was more money. They just "liked" Xerox...whatever that means??
ReplyDeleteHow about Anon, I'm thinkin it's someone from the school board or Xerox. When you look at deals like this with BOE's, always take a deeper look at thier pension funds. See if they are heavily invested with Xerox. I'm sure that's a deciding factor in some buying decesions, it may not be the right one, however if I was on the board and I knew we had "x" amount of dollars in the fund, and all things were close, we'll the pension fund would get my bet. I already checked it out on this one and it seems they do not have any monies ivested in Xerox.
ReplyDeleteAnon = SalesServiceGuy
ReplyDeleteXerox Corp:
ReplyDeleteI sold Xerox copiers for 17 years until mid year of 2008 for a agency until Xerox stepped in to kill our future business growth potential with it's new dealership program going up against the sales agency's.
Xerox now owns Mich Office Solutions here in Mich and is looking to get rid of the agency program it's had for over 20 years.
The Agency I worked for had more school established customers than most other venders together. At what cost? Now that is a good question?
Xerox offers top stop for it's production copiers. That simply is schools copy around 125,000 pages per month and the school gets to run unlimited copies for free for the rest of the month.
The older customers xerox has had established for 15 plus years never run their leases until full term so they can look around to actually see if xerox is the clear answer. But I read in the newspaper all the time their school district is struggling with lack of operational funds for the up and coming year.
The sales agent will come in at year four on a five year lease to show an excel spread sheet to the customer offering a customer for life promo that will save the school $800 a month on a new school wide lease compared to their current lease at year 4+
Is the customer really saving money? no they are not. Every year the service contract's has an increase plus the customer is committed to another five year term. It's nothing more than customer retention.
Xerox offers new or remanufactured copiers to a potential customer at their own descression. Most times the potetional customer assumes the equipment will be brand new.
The problem is Xerox is now remanufacturing their copiers in Mexico, what more can I say. Last year we had six copiers we sold that were delivered to the customers dirty and three had to be replaced because the service man was not going to take his time to work on copiers that were a mess inside.
*No quality control now
*Billing & support is out of India. Customers are on the phone all day pressing prompts & more prompts to try and talk to somebody only to get cut off or customer service has such bad broken english you cannot understand what they are saying to you. Ah yes they took care of my billing issues? Next month same problem nothing has been done.
I could go on all day on how the rest of you can go after xerox and debunk that so-called Xerox difference. Total lack of taking care of their customers at the agency level through corporate Xerox.
But wait, Xerox is as I have mentioned is wiping out the agency program to go with a new dealership program so corporate Xerox will not have to pay for servicing the copiers or deliver them any more.
Do your research Folk's. A good deal means nothing if everyhting else is a mess.
Any additional comments you can make on how to shoot down Xerox would be helpful.
ReplyDeleteSales Service Guy:
ReplyDeleteJoin our P4P Hotel Message Boards, its free and much info on Xerox there from a heck of alot of members www.p4photel.com/eve
Thanx for the comments!