Panasonic States A3 Copier Distribution to Cease in Canada

Posted by a P4PHotel member:

Panasonic Canada put out a letter to all of their dealers this week that effective March 2011, A3 copier distribution will cease. No new A3 copiers will be introduced between now and March 2011. Parts, supplies and Technical support will be available until March 2018.Panasonic will focus on A4 MFPs, Fax machines, Scanners and Panaboard presentation products.


=-Good Selling=-

Marketing Copiers and MFPs "101"

In an effort to keep adding value and solutions for our Print4Pay Hotel members. The Print4Pay Hotel is exciting to announce a NEW P4PU Webinar "Marketing arm of your Copier Company that your sales reps always wanted!"

I've had this site in a beta test for awhile now and I'm happy with how it's evolved and the amount of calls and sales I've received. I'm not gonna let the cat out of the bag right now, however give this a read through and log on to the Print4Pay to get detailed time and date for this POWERFUL Webinar!

Having been in the printer and copier sales business for years, many of the processes used by the industry do not leverage the technology available to make sales reps and copier companies as profitable as possible. Manufacturers push MPS because they want to lock in the clicks, but you have to do all of the heavy lifting. Once tracking devices, who determines whether there is a good fit. This is especially true on the printer side of the fence where there is little total gross profit per transaction making it an area of our customers which winds up costing them a lot more than necessary if we can't get them to "get rid of all those old printers."


In our webinar, I will go over several components of my sales process which I am branching out to copier dealers which has made my numbers stay level and slightly rise while the industry has taken a hit with the economic downturn. Here are some of the things I will show you.


I will show you how I use Print Asset tracking software to AUTOMATICALLY notify me when there are opportunities in the printer fleets which I am responsible for. It will also create the comparisons for me so that I can talk to customers with side by side comparisons which I don't have to produce. (Well, I have to enter in all the data, but you won't).

I will show you how I use this software to Automatically generate printer and copier supplies quotes.

I will show you how I use the web and search engine optimization to create new leads for copiers.

I will show you how I create side by side quote comparisons in less than 3 minutes which include: product photos, pdfs, basic speed, cost of toner, lease pricing, and TCO.

I will show you how you can have a simplified version of this on your site which will allow a customer to do some of this legwork and make you look like more of an expert.

I will show you how to get competitive information on over 800 printers and copiers in ONE LOCATION!

I will show you how this can work for you regardless of the brand you sell. I sell printers and copiers, I do not work for Xerox, for Lexmark, or Ricoh...

We only work with one reseller/dealer per major metro area. Chances are that if you have any (or all) of the problems I did listed above, you could benefit. Your cost will be less than $500 per month (and even lower depending on needed feature sets...) What are we? We are the Marketing arm of your company your sales reps always wanted! Why? Because I am a sales rep who built this system and continues to improve it!

Please sign up for our webinar if this looks intriguing and we'll spend an hour going over all of these features in a live setting so you can SEE how this works!

You'll need to be a member of the Print4Pay Hotel, so please click the link and register today for this awesome sales advantage webinar!

-=Good Selling=-

Oki Launches KILLER proColor pro510DW web printer!!

Every now and then I'll get captivated by a "new" product or some "new" design from our industry.


Today, one of my "go to" print production guru's turned me on to Oki's proColor pro510DW color web press. At first glance and seeing an MRSP of $36,200, well I pretty much passed it up and continued with some additional items that needed to be done with the Print4Pay Hotel site.

Just a few minutes ago, I took the time to read the press release and then downloaded the brochure . Egads, this system has a roll feeder, personally this is the first time I've ever seen a roll feeder on a color LED printer of this size, plus this is an awesome concept. Color custom labels are one of the hottest items for marketing.

The system is capable of cut sheet or roll media up to 12.9" widths, plus it will print on industry-standard converted or non-converted face stocks, paper, synthetic and adhesive-backed substrates. With sequential or variable data personalization. Whoa! Awesome, just wish I had a few of these to sell now! You want a "Print Shop on Box", take a trip to Oki and see for yourself.

Over the years, I've seen my fair share of laser printer, laser copiers that print in color, however I had the opportunity sell the OKI color engines and I believe for the price, you can't get a better quality print on the low end of print production from any other device. The quality and the thickness of stock that the system accepts will blow you away!

Yup, enough for me Oki's not paying me for this, however Kudos to Oki for creative thinking and creating a niche market where they can flourish. Seems most of the Japanese manufacturers and Xerox have moved away from graphics color with their laser printers. Kudos to OKI!!

-=Good Selling=-

P4P Hotel "News & Updates" Week of January 26th 2010

Here's some of the HOT content from the last few days that's been posted on the Print4Pay Hotel's forums in recent weeks. It has been busy with over 30,000 page views, 81 new members and a little over a 1,000 downloads.

Webinar Threads:

February 10th---- NEW Print Audit "MIF" Review Webinar!


Most Viewed Threads:

PC issues with MP W5100/7140 c...
Ricoh Pro C720
Toner Page Cover Examples
Xerox Plans to Cut 2,500 Jobs
Help, IKON CPP500 Relationship with Konica Minolta

Interesting Threads:

Selling Copiers "Machines in Field" Review
KonicaMinolta loses NJ Dealer!
New University Copier Contract (Xerox)
Soda, Pop, Coke or Other
The Next One
Bizhubs and Alchemy

Posted RFP's:

3 MFP's RFQ (Due 2/12/10)
6 MPF's "BIDS ARE DUE BY FEBRUARY 15, 2010"
Copiers for Iraq
Bid for 20 MFP's
Qty 1 New Production Copy Machine "Expires 1/21/10"
RFP for 431 units

Pricing on the Street:

Ricoh Pro 907EX
Canon imagePRESS 1110S
Xerox DocuColor 242
Ricoh Pro C900

The Print4Pay Hotel is the world's only business/social site dedicated to people who work in the office equipment industry. Go ahead log on.....become a member of the Print4Pay Hotel!

become informed, share and maintain your knowledge.

-=Good Selling=-

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Copier Demo!

A few months ago I was driving to South Jersey for an appointment, hence I started to think about all of the copier demo's I did in the old days and some of the funniest things that happened with either the demo and or an appointment.

With that I thought, let me put this out to the Print4Pay Hotel Members and see what they came up with! Well, our Print4Pay Members came up with some awesome content. Hence a collection of Great Copier Humor!

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Copier Demo!

A customer was demo'ing a canon color copier with fiery in their office. I stopped by on the second day to check to see how everything was going. The office manager asked me if there was any way that images or pictures would just randomly print off the hard drive of the system. Apparently, some very explicit images had been printed on the copier right before I got there. Rightfully so she was absolutely furious. I explained that the pictures had to have been printed by someone in the office. We checked the print log on the system and sure enough she was able to identify the culprit. I ended up closing the deal and the same office manager admitted to me that she loved the image quality on the system, even the explicit pictures looked great!

from kdbyrum in Myrtle Beach

Rep: What's your copier volume?

Client: Well, uh, everyone in the office uses it.

from JW in LA

I customer once called me to ask for the "White Toner" for their copier.

I told them that their copier only had black toner, but they wanted white toner to print on black construction paper.

from JasonR in Tennessee

In downtown Princeton, NJ (right across the street from Princeton University). Had just demo'd a small Adler Royal 209 (boy was that unit a piece of garbage). Well, rolled the copier gurney into the back of the car. Pulled out and into traffic, stopped at the light, and being young and foolish, I gunned the gas pedal with the green light. The car went forward the copier gurney and copier wne backwards and landed on the street, seems like I forgot to close the hatch!!

from AP in NJ

Had a demo years ago on a fax machine. Had a big wheel from corporate wanting to do a ride along with a rep for the day. Customer wanted to see quality and asked one of their customers to send a test fax. As all the admin complained about the speed, the corp guy explained that a very detailed fax would take more time because of memory issues. As everyone crowded around the fax to inspect, a very vivid porn image was reproduced with striking detail. We made the sale!

from BillW in NJ

Several years back we had a demo in a pastor's home office for a couple of days when he called in because the machine was misfeeding. We had been selling him on the reliability of this model, so he wasn't very pleased with the performance. When our technician went out he opened the side of the copier and found that one of the Pastor's kids poured cornflakes into the copier. We got it cleaned up and he bought the demo.

from Btrammell in Salem, OR

I had an appointment with a drug rehab medical center. I asked her how many users she had....oops. She said marijuana or cocaine? I still don't know if she was kidding or not. They didn't buy anything from me. They renewed their lease and paid on the used machine for 2 more years that I know of. And thought it was a very good decision. Perhaps they were users. Did that ruin the story?

Berniedsc in Cincinnati, Ohio

I received a telephone help call from one of our clients who had a malfunction code on their new copier. To clear these malfunction codes it’s usually a case of opening the front door for a few seconds and then closing it again. I asked the client to do this and then come back to the telephone. He returned a few moments later and asked “now what”? I asked what happened when he opened and shut the front door, did it clear the code?, “no’ was the reply, “it just got colder in here” He’d opened and closed his main office front door!
It takes allsorts…….

from Taminol in London, England

These were just some of the threads from Print4Pay Hotel members, if you'd like to read more or become a member click our link! www.p4photel.com/eve

-=Good Selling=-

Print4Pay Hotel closes Office Equipment Poll!

This was a poll I had running on the Print4Pay Cafe blog for a few months. It was more tongue and cheek. I forgot to add a line for Canon buys Oce? (arrggghh)

What's the next big development that will shake up and rattle the office equipment industry?

Here's how the voting shook out:

RISO will enter the MFP game and make a splash 14%

Ricoh changes name to Ikon Americas Corporation 11%

Canon really does buy the Toshiba MFP business for distribution 25%

HP buys XEROX 19%

Sharp's A4 products outsell Sharp's A3 products 26%

None of the above 5%

Let's see Riso has entered the MFP market with their ComColor Devices, Canon did not buy Toshiba but they did make the move on OCE. Sharp, we've heard the A4 MFP's have been selling well.

Look for a new poll next week on the Print4Pay Cafe!

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

- Gartner, based on survey, states that by the year 2012, 20% of businesses won’t own any of their own IT assets. This includes servers, PCs and software. Businesses will turn to leasing, employee ownership and cloud computing. The reason is that companies are moving to use operational budgets instead of capital budgets to upgrade their IT infrastructure.

- DocuWare of Germany, maker of popular document management, announced it will spend $1.45 million to develop web-based solutions.

- Ricoh launched a new production color system, called the PRO C720 system offering:
- Slowed down, cheaper version of the slow selling C900
- Offers a top speed of 72ppm versus 90ppm of the C900
- Maximum duty cycle of only 320K/month
- Runs at same speed, regardless of paper weight, like the C900, up to 110lb. cover
- Uses same EFI Fiery as C900
- finishing options are limited to saddle stitch booklet maker and standard finisher

- Ricoh apparently will be reselling large format color inkjet printers from Epson.

- Large medical firm sued for violations of health data security law, known as HIPAA act:
- Health Net of Connecticut Inc. was sued by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal
- Sued for violations of HIPAA privacy and security rules
- Large breach of identifiable medical records and Social Security numbers
- It was reported that hard drive disappeared in May, 2009
- The hard drive contained health information on 1.5 million members, including 446,000 in Connecticut
- The data was not encrypted

- On Demand Books, LLC, announced it is now offering a new version of its Espresso Book Machine, which can produce a 300 page paperback book in less than 4 minutes. The new model uses the engine from a Xerox 4112 b/w production system.

- Open Text Corp., maker of document management/search/retrieval software, announced that it is boosting its - business process automation by adding next-generation document recognition:
- called Capture Center version 4.0
- formerly known as Captaris DOKuStar
- includes numerous recognition modules
- machine and hand print recognition
- optical character and intelligent character recognition
- magnetic ink recognition

- Toshiba announced a new option for its color MFPs, the eBRIDGE Color Profiler Tool featuring:
- Works with ES1000 spectrophotometer ($1299)
- Software that enables the creation of ICC device output profiles
- Target Reader creates characterization data files used to build custom color profiles
- Data Viewer allows end user to view character data in several ways
- Profile Builder initiates construction of the ICC profile
- Profile Viewer assists in verifying the integrity of the ICC profile
- ICC stands for International Color Consortium, a standard in color management
- Base MSRP of $499 for software
- Provides color management, without owning an EFI Fiery

- In an interview with Hewlett Packard’s Director of Commercial & Enterprise Printing, Mr. Samir Shah, stated:
- “There is a tremendous opportunity for color, especially since the technology is becoming affordable”
- “Our second priority is to take AIO and MFD portfolio to the next level. Going forward, you will witness a lot of innovation and initiatives from HP in this regard. The market for MFDs is just the tip of the iceberg. We want not only to grow marketshare, but also grow the market base.”
- “The third priority is around the toner business and evangelizing the value propositions of original toner. The science behind toner technology is not understood by many. Our intent is to take it closer to the customer.”
- “Fourth is to ensure that our channels are up to date in terms of technology. We also want to arm them will all the possible ammunition to enable them to grow their business”
- “We are working on launching a TCO (total cost of ownership) calculator”

- Hewlett Packard & Microsoft announced a three year, $250 million partnership. Details:
- Cuts across sales, engineering and marketing
- Bundled products aimed at small business
- Will be delivering a next-generation data warehouse, which bundles tens of servers and can hold hundreds of terabytes of data

- According to Von Hansen, a VP with Hewlett Packard, the company will be reselling a total of 34 different Canon copiers in the year 2010.

- HP’s CEO, Mark Hurd, received a total of $24.2 million in pay during 2009.

- Xeikon, a division of Punch of Belgium, announced it has appointed John Blumsack, as Vice President of Sales, to increase its sales of production color systems.

- A former copier dealer pleaded guilty to using bogus copier leases to scam area businesses and nonprofits. Scott Arthur Waddell of Raleigh, NC, pleaded guilty in federal court to fraud. He will be sentenced later and faces up to 20 years in prison. Waddell ran two companies, Modern Office Solutions and PST Consultants. Investigators said he created a web of forged documents, including copier leases and credit applications, to scan area businesses and nonprofits.

- Google threatened to shut down its China operations after a cyberattack on its infrastructure. According to Google:
- the attack was coordinated and focused on 20 large companies
- aim of attack was to et the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists
- attack also focused on U.S., China and Europe based Gmail accounts that supported human rights in China

- OfficeMax announced it will offer in-house paper shredding:
- $0.59 per pound for first 5lbs.
- $0.49 per pound for next 5lbs.
- $0.39 per pound for 11 pounds or more

- Equitrac announced it will receive an investment of $16 million from Brookside Mezzanine Partners.

- Law firms are concerned about the cost to store and retrieve case data.
- Collecting the data, processing, and staging it for review, and then reviewing it for privilege
can be costly.
- One large data producer calculated that these steps can cost between $5000 and $7000
per gigabyte of data.
- A typical midsize case could comprise 500 gigabytes of data
- 26% of law firms state that preproduction privilege review consumed between 20% and 50% of their litigation budgets annually.

- Fujitsu of Japan announced that it is entering negotiations with Sagem of France in regards to 3G mobile telecommunication services.

- Ashley Hawkins of Benwood, West Virginia, was arrested by police after she attempted to make a purchase at a local gas station using a fake $20 bill she made using a color copier.

- Samsung of Korea has decided to settle out of court with Kodak, which had sued the company regarding Kodak’s digital camera patents.

- Canon announced that in the year 2010, it will celebrate 20 years of recycling toner cartridges, in Japan, China, France and Virginia.

- Canon announced the following appointments:
- Kunihiko Tedo is now Senior CP and GM of Finance & Accounting
- Yuichi Ishizuka is now Executive VP of Consumer Imaging Group
- Eliott Peck is now Senior VP of Consumer Imaging Group
- Junichi Yo****ake is now Senior VP of Imaging Systems Group

- Office Depot announced results of a survey:
- 30% report having lost an important document due to a messy desk
- The most likely items to cause workspace clutter were:
- 32% = food
- 31% = coffee cups
- 12% = spare shoes
- Most common problems caused by disorganization were:
- 47% = lost time
- 16% = meeting tardiness
- 14% = missed deadlines

- According to IDC, business analytics software-as-a-service (SaaS) market will grow more than three times as fast as the total business analytics software market with a compound annual growth rate of 22.4% through 2013.

- Panasonic announced it is aiming for a total of $100 billion in sales per year by March of 2013. The company plans to announce detailed business plans for the next three years in May, after reviewing business overlaps and potential synergies between it and Sanyo, which it just acquired. (unknown if it will discuss its plans for its digital copier division)

- The National Conference on Weights and Measures plans to take up the issue of inkjet cartridge labeling at its meeting in January in Nashville, TN. Printer makers are expected to fight potential plans to force them to put labels on the boxes stating how much actual ink is contained in the cartridge.

- Toshiba announced it will now offer its dealers refurbished Hewlett Packard and Lexmark printer parts, to lower their costs to support managed print services programs. The parts are supplied by Depot America.


- The Managed Print Services Association gave out its MPS Leadership Award Winners for 2009:
- Nationwide Insurance for “Corporate MPS Implementation”
- LaserNetworks won for “MPS Vendor of the Year” (owner is Chris Sloate)
- PrintFleet won for “Infrastructure Component Provider”
- Supplies Network won for “MPS Infrastructure Logistical Provider”

- Law Technology magazine gave out 6 awards to Autonomy Corp. for its document management software for law firms.

- According to some industry analysts, Samsung and Sony are going to invest $3 billion to start a joint venture.

- Okidata announced it will relabel the Konica Minolta magicolor 1690MF desktop color laser AIO, and call it the Okidata MC160.

- Agilysys Inc. won a bid to supply document management software to Royal Caribbean International Cruise Lines in Miami, FL.

- According to Forrester Research, tech spending (including MFPs) in the U.S. will grow 6.6% in 2010, after being down 8.2% in 2009. “The technology downturn of 2008 and 2009 is unofficially over” said Andrew Bartels of Forrester.

-=Good Selling=-

Xerox "The Year in Review"

This was posted the other day by a Print4Pay Hotel member.

"Xerox Reports 4Q and 2009 Earnings"

2009 Full-Year Results
Xerox reported corporate revenues of $15.2 billion for 2009, down 14% from $17.6 billion in 2008.

Equipment sales declined by 24% to $3.6 billion from $4.7 billion in 2008.
Post-sale revenue declined by 10% to $11.6 billion from $12.9 billion last year. Guess the ColorQube was not the savior Xerox was hoping for!

Net income for 2009 more than doubled from 2008, to $485 million from $230 million, largely due to cost and expense management.

4th Quarter Results
Total revenue for the 4th quarter was down 3% from 4Q '08 to $4.2 billion which is a sign of improvement from previous YoY quarterly declines.

Post-sale revenue was flat year-over-year.

Equipment sales were down 11%, but increased 40% from the 3rd quarter, well above normal seasonality.

Earnings for the quarter increased to $180 million from $1 million last year.

Comments by Ursula Burns - Xerox Corporation - CEO

Xerox has not seen not seen a "significant or consistent shift towards increased spending on document technology in the US and Europe, especially in large enterprises."

Xerox expects revenue to be "under pressure until there is a more sustainable recovery". This will likely drive further cost reductions.

However, they do see strength in services signings, MPS, and their channel businesses. Color is "trending better" in high-end printing (with the 7002 and 8002) and in the office (with the ColorQube).

B&W high-end production printing is "under pressure across the board".
Pricing has been lower by 5-10% in 2009, but the company believes prices have been "stable" throughout the recession.

Xerox plans on reducing its work force by 4% which is about 2500 employees. Cuts are expected in manufacturing/supply chain, technical services and back-office functions in areas where they have improved efficiencies.

The ACS acquisition will be completed next month at a shareholders meeting. The ACS integration is being managed by 4 teams, which are delivery and infrastructure, corporate governance, sales and innovation. The innovation team, is testing Xerox technology for use in automating ACS manual work processes.

Expectations are that revenues will grow in 2010 (for Xerox in constant currency) towards the end of the year with a modest economic recovery.

Need more? Go here and become a member of the largest and fasted growing group of copier professionals!

-=Good Selling=-

Re-Birth of the HP Edgeline??

Picked this up the other day from a member on the Print4Pay Hotel. Seems Memjet is still hard at work and they may have a partner!

Remember the hype about the HP Edgeline? Well, the Edgeline flopped, rumors stated that the entire Edgeline team was laid off and future support and R & D was moved to Singapore.

Here's what a P4P member posted on the forums:

Memjet, which is working to develop a color inkjet MFP, is rumored to be working with Hewlett Packard. (would this technology replace the Edgeline?) Potential launch of new high speed product in 2011.

Memjet "Who's Afraid of Memjet?"

HP Edgeline "What Went Wrong"

-=Good Selling=-

-=Good Selling=-

This Week in Xerox "TWIX Notes"

Xerox announced that its ACS division will lay off 220 workers in its Eden Prairie, Minnesota office.

- According to Xerox’s VP of Marketing, David Bates; “I don’t believe anybody in 2010, as in 2009, is going to be spending money unless they’re spending money to save money. The good news is we’re helping people save a lot of money”

- Xerox has filed a patent in regards to a TV advertising. The technology would make it possible to add behavioral targeted advertising to TV programming by letting the TV or set-top box edit the content the viewer gets to see. The marker sent out by the broadcaster would trigger the ad insertion of local TV.

- Xerox announced it has sold a Xerox Nuvera 288 production b/w system and an iGen3 production color system to Hamilton Printing Co. of Castleton, NY.

- Xerox announced it has sold a Xerox Nuvera 288 production b/w system to CFH Total Document Management of Somerset, England.

- Xerox’s Bill Ernisse, a healthcare general manager, will discuss his relationship with Broadlane, Ascension, Kindred & Tenet Hospital, at the TechBiz Connection event in Orange County, CA on 1/20/2010.

-=Good Selling=-

P4P Hotel "News & Updates"

Here's some of the sizzling content that's been posted on the Print4Pay Hotel's forums in recent weeks. It has been busy with over 30,000 page views, 81 new members and a little over a 1,000 downloads.

Interesting Threads:

February 10th---- NEW Print Audit "MIF" Review Webinar!
The History of Cloud Computing

Most Viewed Threads:

Hold for Resources
Let's talk about ComColor
Top Patents Issued in 2009
Managed Print Services Shaking up the Office Equipment
Scan in One City, Print in Another by City

Interesting Threads:

Selling Copiers "Machines in Field" Review
DECEMBER PROMOS* and HOME THEATER GIVEAWAY!!*
Samsung "Going After the Big Dogs"
Top Ten Predictions for the Copier Industry in 2010
Regarding Canon Fax830i
How to Justify a Large-Format Scanner, Part 1
How an $18K printer turned into a $1.5M lawsuit Nashville Business Journal

Posted RFP's:

Qty 1 New Production Copy Machine "Expires 1/21/10"
RFP for 431 units
Print Optimization Project
Copiers for the City's Reprographics Office
Purchase Of Printers
CANON COPIER MAINTENANCE AND SUSTAINMENT

Pricing on the Street:

Ricoh MPC 4000 Proposal
KM Bizhub C360 & C280
Ricoh MP C3300SPF
City of Ashland "Ricoh Agreement"
KIP 3100
KM bizhub C360 Muni Proposal
sHARP MX503N_Sharp MX453n pROPOSAL
Sharp 5MX503N_SharpMX453N Quote
Xerox 5655PT_Xerox 5638PT

The Print4Pay Hotel is the world's only business/social site dedicated to people who work in the office equipment industry. Go ahead log on.....become a member of the Print4Pay Hotel!

become informed, share and maintain your knowledge.

-=Good Selling=-

Selling Copiers "Machines in Field" Review

Dig this, while you're out there selling your systems or servicing your systems, guess what your competition is doing? Well, if they've seen the "MIF" (Machines in Field) Webinar from Print Audit, then they're attempting to steal or have stolen your pages and migrate them to their devices!

Think about this, you've got an account that has 25 MFP systems and a boat load of printers, the MFP's are serviced by one vendor and the printers are service by another vendor. Guess what! The printer vendor who also sells MFP's and Print Management showed the "MIF" Review to the your client.

Now they couldn't get MFP's in their because your systems have been entrenched for years, however your competition demo'd Print Audit's "MIF" and sold them Print Audit 6 with Rules Based Printing. Six months later you find out that your volumes are down 50%!!! Where did they go? The other vendor set Rules Based Printing through Print Audit 6 and set a rule that most of the prints now go to their devices!!! My God they've stolen your revenue!

A little far fetched? Maybe, but if I was a vendors rep and I wanted those pages, that's what I would do. Combine this with the fact that MPS is here to stay and you're taking quite a gamble. These MPS providers will look to capture YOUR pages!

What to do? Take the time to view Print Audit's Webinar on Machines in Field Review. Protect your base before someone else steals your revenue!

When:

February 10, 2010, there will be two webinars one for Central and East Coast and one for Mountain and Pacfic. Exact time will be posted, plus a link to register.

“The Print Audit MIF Review has received a lot of acclaim from Office Equipment Dealers. The hour long, comprehensive overview starts with case studies that show you how much dealers are increasing their revenues. It then details the incredible value that your customers receive by implementing print management into their environments. Finally, you will be taught how to take the MIF Review to your customers right away through a customer presentation that will be given to each participant.

Every day Print Audit dealers increase their hardware sales “click” volumes by introducing their customers to print management. Print Audit dealer’s customers save millions of dollars while at the same time saving hundreds of thousands of trees, and all of the other environmental impacts created by making paper.”

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/472296019

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes

According to Jim Thumma, CP of Optical Image Technology, here are the top ten challenges to implementing electronic content management programs:

- Budgeting inadequately, as most do not include necessary funds for:
- planning, consulting, designing, testing, implementing, training, evaluating and improvement
- professional services fees for customization
- staff resources
- temporary staffing for back file conversion
- ongoing training expenses
- Failing to see things through from start to finish
- Dropping the ball, by not following plan
- Staffing inadequately, by not putting extra resources in place during implementation
- Interrupting with 1001 questions
- Cutting corners that compromise system performance
- Poor communication

The City of Troy, New York, announced it is implementing document management technology to reduce paper usage, and improve record keeping in its police department. It hopes to save several thousands of dollars, and eliminate the printing of 315,000 pieces of paper annually.

- Insufficient training
- Inadequate testing
- Insufficient backup and disaster recovery planning

MWAi announced it is launching a new program to allow independent dealers to offer a nationwide managed print services program. The MWAi National Managed Print Services (nMPS) program will allow a dealer to access a network of 3,000+ technicians across the country, to service and supply printers, with ability to see call activity real-time, manage pricing, as well as open and close service calls on a common industry ERP.

According a survey of law firms conducted by Mattern & Associates:- Average charge to clients for outgoing fax was $1.17 per page
- Average cost for a color copy of $0.81 per page
- Average cost for a color print of $0.78 per page
- Average cost for a b/w print of $0.18 per page
- Average cost for phone consultation was $0.12 per minute
- Firms that capture data from local printers versus network printers increased from 38% to 50%
- Total output from printers and copiers increased by 7% year over year
- Fax volume decreasing, but replaced by increased scanning volume
- 26% now charging for scans
- Color output is now considered standard, and no longer only for marketing

PayNet Inc. reported that small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) with accounts behind 180 days or more, and unlikely ever to be paid, rose 0.91% in November from 0.87% in October. This is the 22nd consecutive monthly increase in loans so far in arrears they ultimately may have to be written off by lenders.

A company that specializes in selling used copiers claims its business is booming. Copiers Refurbished Inc., run by Randy Mecheles, leases used copiers on a 24 month to 48 month term with $1.00 buyout at end of term. The company sells over the Internet, and charges $425 to ship anywhere in the U.S. However, do they tell customers that they must find a local dealer to service it for them once it arrives?

Memjet, the company that has been promising a high speed color inkjet copier, announced it has hired a new executive. Len Lauer, former COO of Qualcomm, will be the new Memjet President and CEO, working out the San Diego office. (Memjet has 2,600patents related to technology developed by Mr. Kia Silverbrook of Australia)

Apple Computer is estimated to have sold 3.3 million Mac computers during last quarter. This breaks an all time sales record of 3.05 million Mac’s during the previous quarter, or a 31% increase year over year. In contrast, worldwide computer sales are only up 2.3% in units.


Sony Corp.’s Vice Chairman, Ryoji Chubachi, was quoted in Business Week magazine as saying that the country of Japan may face a second recession. “There’s a risk of a double-dip recession. For companies, the most difficult position to be in is when prices keep dropping and demand doesn’t increase.”


Apple also plans on launching its new tablet computer in March, according to the Wall Street Journal, and it will have a 11” touch screen full color LCD

Xerox, which is trying to increase sales of its wax copier, the ColorQube, recently revealed that it used HyperWorks software from Altair ProductDesign Inc. of Troy, Michigan, to design the print engine in the ColorQube.

One company sues another over a printer. Wet Enterprises of Sun Valley, CA, best known for designing the water fountains in Las Vegas casinos, sued Bren Instruments of College Grove, TN claiming that the company misrepresented the capabilities of an $18,000 color label printer. Bren countersued for $1.5 million, claiming that the lawsuit caused damaged the company’s reputation.

Care New England Healthcare System awarded a document management solution bid to The SSI Group Inc. Details:
- healthcare firm was printing more than 47,000 reports per year
- total of 1,915,861 pieces of paper per year
- average cost per impression of 3.2 cents
- claims to be now saving up to $100,000 per year

Tekgraf, a distributor of wide format systems, abruptly closed its doors on 12/16/2009. The company provided HP, Epson, Canon and other color inkjet systems to dealers across the U.S. Last year, the company had moved to a much larger, more expensive facility in South Carolina.

4 men were arrested in Bensalem, Pennsylvania for making fake $20 bills using a color copier. Jesse Velez, Edward Casigne, Scott Bolden, and Avery Fitzpatrick were caught when they used the fake money to purchase over $1500 worth of electronics at a local Target. The men are now in Bucks County jail in lieu of $500,000 bail, and facing up to 45 years in prison.

Predictions from document management analyst, Francois Ragnet about future of documents:

- Documents will be stored in a Cloud, via players like Google, Microsoft, Adobe or Amazon.
- Paper consumption will continue to decrease significantly for green and financial incentives.
- Electronic book readers (eReaders) will become ubiquitous for specific usages. Paperback books will become the exception.
- Formats of electronic documents will become increasingly standardized.

Panasonic is being sued by a dealer that it cancelled. The case will be heard in Sacramento, where a dealer named JRS Products, was apparently cancelled by Panasonic, when the company found out it was selling remanufactured versions of toner cartridges that worked with Panasonic printers, MFPs and fax machines.

Plymouth County, Iowa, announced it will attempt to implement a paperless court system. Attorneys, judges, clerks of court and support staff will receive training in the first 90 days on scanning and searching procedures. If the test is successful, the state hopes to launch in other counties.


Hewlett Packard announced it has appointed John Solomon as Senior Vice President over its printer/MFP division for the Asia/Pacific and Japanese markets, reporting to Vyomesh Joshi.

Kyocera announced it will conduct a road show across the U.S. to promote its new managed print services program, and use Steve Rolla (Print Management Solutions Group of Florida) as its keynote speakers.

Lexmark announced it offer a new embedded solution for its MFPs with color LCD touch screens. It will offer AutoStore Document Capture from Notable Solutions Inc. (NSi)

The Australian State Public Health Department, awarded a $750,000 document management solution bid to Kofax Corp.

According to a document on Hewlett Packard’s website, the average cost to print a letter-size, two-sided color page on its OfficeJet Pro series of printers, is a whopping 64 cents per page.

According to Lyra Research, the wide format printer market declined 19.1% in the last year.

According to survey conducted by The Forrester Group, 22% of respondents prefer using Microsoft SharePoint for its electronic content management (ECM) capabilities, and 52% said it will replace their existing ECM system.

Direct Color Systems Inc. launched the Millenium 700, which can produce a full color plastic name badge in 25 seconds. Purchase price, and cost per card were not announced.

A copier dealer buys an IT company. Loffler Companies, a Konica Minolta, Canon & Kyocera dealer, announced it has acquired Techies IT. Founded by Robert Stephens, of Best Buy’s Geek Squad fame, Techies IT had 100 business customers, and $2 million in annual revenue of managed IT services. Loffler is owned by Jim Loffler of Minneapolis, MN, and has annual revenues of $50 million with 300 employees.

Ricoh announced that its Senior Product Marketing Manager for Wide Format, Linda Maxwell Allen, has left the company.

The City of McKinney, Texas, awarded a managed print services contract to Marimon, Inc., a local dealer.

A dealer wins a document management bid in Pennsylvania. Altek Business Systems, using Kodak scanners and DocuWare software, won a contract from Penn Stainless Products Inc., a stainless steel producer and distributor.

Supplies Network announced it has hired Doug Johnson as Senior Vice President. Mr. Johnson has spent last 3 years developing the CARBON SiX managed print services program.

A company named “Readius” claims it will launch an unfurling, scroll-like, screen-based electronic book reader.

-=Good Selling=-

Document Management Survey

According to a document management survey conducted by Computer Sciences Corporation about hospitals compliancy with the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) section of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA):

- Will face severe penalties in 2015 if hospitals are not meaningful users of Electronic Health Record EHR) systems
- Only 10% have comprehensive EHRs in 2009
- Expected that 55% will have EHRs by 2014
- Only 25% of those surveyed meet at least 70% of the readiness indicators
- Only 66% have assessed where their current system has gaps
- 70% have systems with capability for Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE)
- 8% have CPOE in place
- Less than 50% have plan to convert to new coding standard ICD-10
- Currently HER systems are certified by a body called Certification Commission for Health InformationTechnology (CCHIT)
- 93% are using a product that is CCHIT certified, but only 70% reported that their systems were capable of CPOE
- Only 54% were using latest version of software
- Only 27% use the National Council For Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP) version 10.5 for medications
- Only 21% had captured at least 50% of the physician documentation electronically
- Less than 33% tracked quality of care measures during patient’s stay
- Only 52% employ encryption technologies to render data unreadable or unusable in the case of unauthorized access
- Only 40% have clear awareness of the criminal penalties in the HITECH legislation

Additional notes:

Hospitals can start collecting additional funds upto 20% in October 2010 and Medical Offices in October 2011.

-=Cheers=-

Ricoh Set to Launch Color Plotter

Well, we Ricoh Family Group wide format guys and gals have been asking for a color plotter for years! Finally, it seems we are going to get what we've been asking for.

In few short days Ricoh will "officially launch" the Ricoh 7700 and Ricoh 9700. The Ricoh 7700 is a 24 inch wide color plotter that has five ink cartridges, three for color and two for black, while the 9700 is a 44 inch model with all of the same features of the 7700. MSRP for the 7700 is $2,995 and $4,995 for the 9700.

This information is available on Ricoh's web site? NO, not yet, however it is on Epsons web site. Here's the link 7700 & 9700

There's also a link to buy this system through the Espon site, however when you click the link you are directed to Ricoh's web site. It seems this model Epson will only be resold through Ricoh Family Group Dealers and Ricoh branches.

I'm a little curious, will these plotters have the Ricoh name on them? Will all of the branding be Ricoh or Epson?

We, it really doesn't matter, Ricoh's got a strong wide format presence and one of the items missing was a low end device, the thinking is that the new plotters will act as a seeding with the hope that in a few years users will migrate to the larger devices.

Over the last 12 months more and more low end AEC users have been pulling the trigger on low end plotters due to the fact that they are receiving files and plans via email or via disk.

I think it's gonna be a winner for Ricoh and a great seeding program.

-=Cheers=-

P4P Hotel Updates for 1/11/10

Here's some of the sizzling content that's been posted on the Print4Pay Hotel's forums in recent weeks. It has been busy with over 35,000 page views, 85 new members and a little under a 1,000 downloads.

Interesting Threads:

February 10th---- NEW Print Audit "MIF" Review Webinar!
Eric the "Office Worker" Gets a.....

Most Viewed Threads:

P4P member and long time friend says Adios to the Industry!
I have a lead for 4 mfp's
Canon Ball Promo!
TABS on the block
Scan in One City, Print in Another by SalesServiceGuy

Interesting Threads:

Questions about Xerox's MPS Offerings to SMB Customers
DECEMBER PROMOS* and HOME THEATER GIVEAWAY!!*
Canon Buyout Marketing Dollars
Dealer and Direct Branch Counts
KonicaMinolta Bizhub 1200 "Pricing on the Street"
Thoughts about Healthcare Reform Bill?
"Green Jobs"

Posted RFP's:

Copier Maintenance
RFP for 431 units
Print Optimization Project
Copiers for the City's Reprographics Office
Purchase Of Printers
CANON COPIER MAINTENANCE AND SUSTAINMENT

Proposals & Quotes:

sHARP MX503N_Sharp MX453n pROPOSAL
Sharp 5MX503N_SharpMX453N Quote
Xerox 5655PT_Xerox 5638PT
Xerox 5150PT_Xerox 5135PT
Xerox School Quote from NJ
Canon Business Solutions Bid Award
Print Assesment Calculator
Xerox Quote for Gov of India
Major Ricoh Contract


The Print4Pay Hotel is the world's only business/social site dedicated to people who work in the office equipment industry. Go ahead log on.....become a member of the Print4Pay Hotel!

become informed, share and maintain your knowledge..


-=Good Selling=-

Eric the "Office Worker" Gets a Supra Wide Format!

Eric the "Office Worker" recently changed jobs due to the economic slowdown and is now working for BetaAlpha which is a large custom power supply manufacturer located in Patterson, NJ.

Eric's job description? Well he pretty much does it all around the office, he's to the "go to guy" for making copies of wide format prints, scanning and archiving of existing wide format drawings.

For the last few months Eric had been charged with the task of scanning all of the engineering drawings that had been printed from the BetaAlpha's new wide format color plotters. At first, Eric asked his Manager, "why the heck do we have to scan these when you have the document in a digital format". Eric's boss replied, "Hey we don't pay you to think, just scan these and archive them in the system". With a gruummph, Eric shrugged his shoulders and off he went to the Xerox wide format system to scan, scan and scan some more.

Well, here's a few things Eric didn't understand, the prints from the plotter were in color and once they were printed they had to be sent to the Engineering Manager for approval. His approval meant that he had to sign and date every drawing that was printed. Thus, everything that was printed and approved had to be scanned.

When scanning Eric was amazing with the system, he was able to scan, scan and archive, all was well in Eric's world. Scanning was so simple, Eric had all of the scan attributes set up for one button. With that one touch of the button the document would be turned into a pdf and sent off to the correct folder on the network.

A few weeks later, Eric was asked to re-print a batch of drawings that had been scanned a few weeks before. Oh, Eric thought no problemo, within 20 or 30 minutes Eric returned with all of the printed scans. Eric's manager flipped through the drawings and noticed that all of that all of the lines on the drawing were black, hmmmph he thought, this is not the way they were printed.

The Engineers at AlphaBeta printed in color because they had different colors that represented different voltages. Eric's manager also noted that the signature and date line were barely visible. Now for the last three months, Eric had scanned thousands of drawings, plus he had scanned them the only way he knew how. How the heck did he know that the Xerox would not scan in color and that's what the engineering department needed.

Eric's manager was now fuming, he knew it wasn't Eric's fault and off to purchasing with Eric in tow. Eric's Managed explained the situation and stated "we need color scanning, and while we're at it, make sure you get one that's able to make color copies too!"

Remember Eric right? Well Eric appeared in a few of our blogs in the past and is also an avid reader of the P4PHotel. Eric suggested to the purchasing agent that they get a SUPRA. The purchasing managed looked at Eric and then his manager and said "get this guy outta here".

No, wait, Eric exclaimed!!! Now, just as quick as Ralphie in a "Christmas Story" blurted out "I want an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle!", Eric shouted this to the purchasing manager "The EIS Supra combines Best-of-Breed technology from Graphtec, Canon and Paradigm Imaging to produce a state of art solution for FM’s, CAD/GIS and Reprographics. Manage, and electronically distribute wide format documents for technical and graphic arts solutions with our array of EIS wide format copiers, scanners, printers and document imaging workflow software. The EIS Supra large format scan, copy and print solution provides maximum flexibility to meet your needs at an affordable price." Whoa, Eric was gassed after that!

The purchasing manager looked at Eric's Boss, stated, "Ok, get me the information on the Supra, and I'll get your department one right away and get this guy his Red Ryder!"

End result, another color wide format sale for a dealer that sold Paradigm Imagings Supra Color Wide Format Mulitfunctional system that prints, scans and copies in color!!

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes from 1/8/10

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

- Sharp announced it has renewed its lease on a 500,000 square foot office/warehouse in southeast Memphis, TN. Pricing unknown.

Sharp announced it would open up a factory direct branch in Mexico City, Mexico.

- Hewlett Packard announced it won a managed print services contract from a healthcare firm in Connecticut. Details:
- Contract included Capella Technologies FormPort Server software that generates forms for
Healthcare industry
- Contract included 65 HP LaserJet devices
- Average volume per device of 5,000 to 6,000 per month
- Grove Hill Medical Center, has more 70 physicians, and replaced over 100 dot matrix printers.

- In 2000, Xerox & Kodak combined employed 38,750 workers in Rochester, NY area. Now the total is 15,430.

- Big fight over a facilities management contract in California between HP and Xerox:
- California Department of Health Care Services announced its intent to award the $1.4 billion Medi-Cal contract to Xerox, to its ACS division (which it just acquired for $6.4 billion)
- The contract is for 10 years, and was previously held by Hewlett Packard (which gained the contract when it acquired EDS two years ago)
- The contract handles $19 million in medical claims from 7 million beneficiaries
- The bid contract is 40,000 pages long
- “We’re very disappointed with the decision. We’re in the process of reviewing the document before we determine our next step”, said Bill Ritz, spokesperson for HP.
- HP current employs 2,000 in California to fulfill the contract.

- Xerox announced it would layoff 181 employees in its ACS call center in Houston, TX due to lack of work.

- Xerox’s ACS division announced it won a five year, $72 million contract from DCP Midstream, an energy company in Denver. The contract includes desktop support, network services, messaging, document management, IT security and managed print services.

- Copytronics Information Systems announced it won a 5 year contract that includes 320 copiers to Volusia County, Florida.

- The Kansas City, MO ethics committee was appointed to investigate elected Kansas City officials in regards to a copier contract:
- Reams of depositions from a Jackson County Circuit Court case are being forwarded to the committee
- City Attorney Galen Beaufort said the depositions being forwarded are from the lawsuit filed by copier dealer, Perfect Output LLC, against the city and the winning bidder, Ricoh Business Systems.
- The suit alleges that Ricoh wrongly interfered in the city’s decision making.
- The city auditor’s office issued a report concluding that the selection criteria was biased and that the actions of an unnamed City Council member may have tainted the process.

- IKON, a division of Ricoh, lost employee to solutions vendor. Scott Robinson was named Senior Account Manager of TERIS, in its San Diego office, which specializes in litigation support services for law firms.

- Recent statistics on the print for pay industry from American Printer magazine:
- Web printers run their presses an average of 5.2 days per week in 2009
- More than half of printshop owners expect paper prices to increase in 2010.
- 33% of printshop owners are concerned about success of Amazon Kindle electronic book’s effect on reducing need for book printing.
- 23% feel that the biggest issue is improving the front end link from customer to prepress department
- 51% believe that digital toner presses threaten web offset print volumes
- 61% state that their customers are printing less direct mail pieces due to higher postal costs
- 90% of end users who receive bills in mail open them. In contrast, if they receive bill via email, only 72% open the email.
- 32% plan on acquiring a new digital toner press in 2010.

- Fujitsu announced it would start a managed print services program in Japan, called “Workplace LCM Service”. Unknown if it will launch similar program in the U.S.

- 1,200 workers at Fujitsu’s offices in England went on strike to protest changes in their pension plans.

- A company that provides outsourced CRM and call center work, announced it is entering the copier services market. Service USA, headquarters in Leawood, Kansas, claims it will offer:
- maintain and repair copiers and printers
- automated customer and field service systems
- covers equipment in commercial locations like grocery and convenience store chains
- deploys technicians nationwide to provide install, maintenance and repair

- LG Electronics, Panasonic and Sony apparently showed prototype 3D, high definition flat screen televisions at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. DirecTV also announced it will launch a 3D satellite channel in 2010. The goal is to convince all owners of HDTV flat screens to upgrade to 3DTV units in next couple of years.

- Japan’s prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, apparently expressed interest in relaxing nuclear technology export restrictions. (This would undoubtedly help Toshiba Corp, which is betting big on expansion of worldwide nuclear plant construction)

- Better Buys For Business magazine gave out Editors Choice awards to the following Konica Minolta color MFP models:
- bizhub C280
- bizhub C360
- bizhub C452
- bizhub C552
- bizhub C652

-=Good Selling=-

Copier Sales "Friday Night Lights II"

Here I was in the office on Friday afternoon; we had just finished having a few vendors in for a lunch and learn. We finished up about 1:30PM and at 2PM I had a webinar schedule with an existing client for 2PM. After that I was off to a 4PM appointment for a new customer interested in a wide format system.


A little back ground on my 4PM appointment, I had called a few weeks ago about a wide format product. The DM had expressed interest and we set an appointment for later that week. I arrived at the appointment a few days later and the DM was not able to make it, so I figured I would make the best of it and ask as many questions as possible with the DM's assistant. After about 30 minutes I was done and was on my way to the next stop.

Now, with my appointment on Friday the DM gave me his cell phone number and expressed that I give him a call before I came out. Well, I made one call with no answer, 20 minutes later made another with no answer and then 20 minute later called the office to see if the DM was there and the DM was not there. The time was now 4PM and since I had to travel towards the client’s office to go home, I figured I'd give his cell number one more ring a ling. Well, the DM picked up and I stated if he had time we could still meet, I could be there in about 4 minutes, the DM agreed and off I went. I arrived sometime after 5PM by the way I had filled out an order form and a lease earlier that day, just in case, need to be prepared eh?

While there, we discussed the features, advantaged and benefits, and then we got down to the dirty which was the finance part of the system. Initially the client had balked at the 60 month lease and asked if he could put money down to lower the interest. I agreed, and we went over a few scenarios and then he dropped a bomb by asking "well if I went ahead with the order" can you hold the machine for me? His objection was that he may be building an addition. To say the least this wasn't going to help me, I explained we needed to get this placed this month, and suggested that we install the hardware and leave the network connection for a later date. He mulled it over and then asked about us financing the equipment. Ok I thought, here we go, I stated we could do that but would only be able to do a 30,60,90 and before he could answer I pulled out the "bakers dozen" lease, this is where you can offer a 13 month lease and the customer owns the equipment at the end for $1.00. You take the purchase price of the equipment divide by 12 and that's the payment to the customer.

Keep in mind that when doing a "baker dozen" lease the leasing company will take 5% of your invoice. I had explained that in order to this type of deal I would have to increase the cost by 5% top cover what the leasing company takes from us in order for him to have such a low lease rate. Well, he agreed and we signed all of the paperwork on the spot. By 6:30PM on a Friday night I was on my way home with and order and feelin good for the weekend.

So, what can we take from all of the this? Well, the objection was the interest that was paid on the initial lease. Most of the time, we sales people believe the customer wants the lowest payment which goes hand in hand with the longest term. In this case, not true! Remember there are many different leasing programs available from leasing companies that we tend to forget about, such as bakers dozen, step leases, 90 days with no payments and I'll be there are a few more out there. Go over these programs with your leasing companies or lease administrator and you may be able to close a few additional deals on Friday Nights!



-=Good Selling=-


-=Good Selling=-

Copier Dealers "How to Increase Your Success"

Tired of selling Digital Copiers, tired of the competition and pricing pressures that comes with it.

Look no further! I'm gonna tell you that if you're not selling color wide format multifunctional systems or wide format color scanners, then you're missing a whole lotta sales!


In the last two years after hooking up with Paradigm Imaging in Costa Mesa, CA., I've been able to place several wide format color scanners, several wide format color printers and a little over a handful of the color wide format multifunctional systems.

Look around, check your competition and I'll be dollars to doughnuts there's not that many dealers or companies that carry these products. It's not because they don't work well, nor because their is a ton of support, more like it's one of the best kept secrets in the industry. Take another look around and see how many dealers are selling copiers in your area, quite a few right, so why not take a page from Captain Kirk's famous Kobayashi Maru test and change the programing, or better yet change your tactics. When cold calling focus on the AEC market place, most owners will be engaging because you're not just another copier guy. Hey, if you can sell and support multifunctional copiers, you can sell and support wide format color products.

What I love about Paradigm Imaging is the level of support, they actually helped me with my first few installations! Even when I had to make a few calls about why is this doing it this way or way won't this work that way, there was someone on the phone to support me.

From what I've seen over the years from cold calling is that companies that have wide format plotters or scanners wish they had local support and not someone coming from 60 or 100 miles away. Just think today a wide format scanner, and tomorrow they buy 5 mfp's from you. You know the saying "last sale get the first sale", actually just made that one up. But, I've seen it, sold em a plotter and three months later I got a call about quoting on the mfp.

Besides having almost no competition in the market place the EIS Supra is a Color Multifunctional Wide Format system that will Scan, Print & Copy in color! Margins are good and the competition is minimal at best.

Be different, be bold, and offer something that everyone else is not offering! Psst, Direct Branches have nothing like this, get my drift!!!!!!

-=Good Selling=-

Print Audit Green with "Eric the Office Worker"

So, you just bought a shiny new Color "Green" MFP. You know the system, your salesperson touted the "Green" features such as default auto off, default power save mode, default duplex copying, the small carbon foot print and scan2distribute.

So, what good is all of this if you can't control printing? Did you know that the average employee prints 34 pages a day and 17% of those pages are never used?

Do you think that "Eric the Office Worker" knows the cost per page of every MFP and printer in the office? What stops "Eric the Office Worker" from printing a 50 page color report to an ink jet printer (that can have a per page cost as high as 60 cents a page), just because he did not want to walk to the Color MFP that prints at .08 cents per page. Well, the idea of "Eric the Office Worker" not taking the short walk just cost you an extra $26 from one employee. Think of the abuse when you have 50 employees and this happens more than once a day.

Rules based printing, what does this mean to "Eric the Office Worker", well the next time "Eric the Office Worker" prints a report he will get a pop up alert on his pc that directs him to print green to this device (meaning the device with the lowest per page cost). Plus the fact that all of management will know when and where "Eric the Office Worker" is printing. So, if "Eric the Office Worker" does not print responsibly he could have a new "Green" job cutting the grass around the office!

Did you know that Print Audit Green on the average reduces your printing by 15%? Taking a closer look, I have a client who produces 200,000 prints each month on their MFP's. A 15% reduction would lower those pages to 170,000. So, that's 30,000 (that's more than 3 trees a day you are saving from the mill) less sheets of paper at .008 for a savings of $240. Then 30,000 less meter clicks per month at .01, this will be a savings of 300.00. Overall savings is $540 per month, cost to implement Print Audit Green in their environment (about 50 users) would be $146.25 per month. Savings WOO YAA of $393.75 per month.

Here's some more cool facts about Print Audit:

Understand your environmental impact

•Monitor 100% of the printing in your environment to spot abuse and waste.
•Learn who is printing to where and when.

Reduce unnecessary printing and waste
•Cut waste through the knowledge that all printing is being monitored.
•Decrease abuse by forcing duplexing, and restricting color printing.

Create green-friendly and cost-conscious users
•Utilize printing limits or redirect users to use more efficient devices.
•Educate users of the costs and environmental impact of each print job they print.

Not once in the last 10 years did a customer every present a print or copy report to me on an appointment. Thus, showing that the average company has no idea of how many pages are copied, printed, and scanned. Nor do they have any idea of the cost associated with their volume and hardware. How the heck can you be in business and not know this? Print Audit should be in every office, even if it's only used at the end of the year to review how many pages were used and what the cost was per page.

Did you know that you can enable Print Audit Green Software for less than 10 cents per day per employee?

-=Good Selling=-

How was the Internet invented?

I picked this up on the P4PHotel Forums today, don't know how the Internet was started, thought it was something the military has used at one time. Any way thought I'd post this for every ones enjoyment!- How Internet was invented:

- 1958 – President Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) at the Department of Defense to fund scientific research, which includes the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) to fund computer projects.
- 1964 – IPTO head, J.C.R. Licklider, conceives of creating time-sharing to link researchers far away to ARPA computers.
- 1966 – David Evans joins University of Utah to start computer science department and gains millions of dollars in federal research grants
- 1966 – Robert Taylor of IPTO, wins approval for vision of ARPANET, a network that allow computers to communicate
- 1969 – Four universities are chosen to be nodes of the first network, including University of Utah, UCLA, Stanford and University of California - Santa Barbara
- 10/29/1969 – First message ever sent over ARPANET from UCLA to Stanford.
- 12/1/1969 – All 4 colleges are connected.
- 1990 – ARPANET is shut off.

-=Good Selling=-

P4P Hotel Updates!

Ding, Dong the witch is dead, the wicked witch of 09 is finally gone!! Looking forward to a great 2010!

Just wanted to pass along some of the content that's been posted on the Print4Pay Hotel's forums in recent weeks. It has been busy with over 35,000 page views, 85 new members and a little under a 1,000 downloads.


Here's some of the most popular downloads:


Interesting Threads:

Wide Format Training Quiz! #1
A4s and Single Function Laser in MPS

Most Viewed Threads:

Letter about Canon & Ikon/Ricoh by Art Post
Actual Canon termination Letter
TABS on the block by Jomama
Bizhub C652 & TaskAlfa 500ci by txeagle24
Scan in One City, Print in Another by SalesServiceGuy

Interesting Threads:

Questions about Xerox's MPS Offerings to SMB Customers
DECEMBER PROMOS* and HOME THEATER GIVEAWAY!!*
Canon Buyout Marketing Dollars
Dealer and Direct Branch Counts
KonicaMinolta Bizhub 1200 "Pricing on the Street"
Thoughts about Healthcare Reform Bill?
"Green Jobs"

Posted RFP's:

Copier Maintenance
RFP for 431 units
Print Optimization Project
Copiers for the City's Reprographics Office
Purchase Of Printers
CANON COPIER MAINTENANCE AND SUSTAINMENT

Proposals & Quotes:

Xerox 7435 $1.00 Option
Xerox WC 7435
Xerox Colorqube 9201 $1.00 Out
Xerox Colorqube 9201
Miami/Dade Public Schools
Canon Business Solutions Bid Award
Canon irc 3080
Canon irc5030
Major Ricoh Contract


The Print4Pay Hotel is the world's only business/social site dedicated to people who work in the office equipment industry. Go ahead log on.....become a member of the Print4Pay Hotel!


become informed, share and maintain your knowledge..


-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

- Inkstop, a 150 location chain of stores that refill ink and toner cartridges, announced it is going out of business due to bankruptcy.

- Brian Parisi Copiers Co. announced it has acquired the former Harden Furniture building in Clarence, New York

- Toshiba announced it is bidding on building a new nuclear plant in Kozloduy, Bulgaria.

- According to white paper released by Kofax document imaging software:
- Over 20 million tons of office paper is consumed each year in the U.S.
- Federal government consumes 110,000 tons of paper annually
- Cost to file a single paper document is $20
- Searching for a misfiled document costs $120
- Reproducing a lost document costs $220
- 90% of medical patient related info is still paper based
- 31% of every dollar spent on healthcare is spent on admin costs
- Only 8% of the country’s 5000 hospitals use automated electronic patient records
- Only 17% of the country’s 800,000 physicians use automated electronic patient records
- 75% of companies surveyed employ paper based processes to manage AP
- Average cost to process an invoice is $37
- Average time to process an invoice of 33 days
- Accounts payable staff spends 40% of their time researching response info
- Document capture software market grew by 7.7M in 2008
- By 2012, document capture software sales expected to net $.27 billion

- According to a study conducted by the New England Journal of Medicine:
- 90% of all patient information remains on paper
- Only 8% of 3,000 hospitals studied used even a basic electronic medical records (EMR) system
- Only 1.5% of non-federal U.S. facilities use a comprehensive EMR
- Only 17% of doctors are using even a basic EMR system
- 12% are going through an EMR system de-installation

- According to survey conducted by Oce’:
- Commonly quoted 7% average toner coverage per page is actually more like 16%
- Abandoned documents account for up to 25% of all print jobs
- On average, 30% of IT helpdesk support time is spent on printers/MFPs
- The average time it takes to print a 40 page document on a desktop printer is 5 minutes

- Toshiba announced it plans on spending $2.2 billion expand its plant that builds NAND memory chips in Yokkaichi City, Japan

- In cost cutting moves, Dell Computer announced it will:
- spend $120 million to transfer its manufacturing plant in Poland to Foxconn Technology
- lay off 700 workers at its Malaysian plant
- close its plant in North Carolina

- OfficeMax is suing former sales reps for breach of their non-compete contract when they left for rival W. B. Mason Co. Inc. in New England.

- Adobe Corp. is warning users of a virus that can allow hackers to take over end user’s PCs. The virus can be embedded in a PDF, and be inadvertently unleashed on the PC after downloading the PDF attachment in email. Adobe has yet to release a fix to prevent this problem.

- According to Raymond James & Associates, IT shipments will increase 4.3% in 2010. FBR Capital Markets is projecting IT spending to increase 1.6% in 2010.

- The Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to review a court case that was lost by Xerox regarding how much tax it must pay in the state.

-=Good Selling=-