Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Ricoh's DocumentMall "New Beta Eval"


Ricoh's DocumentMall is a Software as a Service (SasS) that allows users to share documents vis the Internet. Documents can be uploaded via MFP, PC or email. DocumentMall has been around for years and continous upgrades to the software has been enhanced over the years.

Seems, Ricoh is at it again with a new user interface that claims to have better functionality. Basically it's designed to simplify basic user tasks as for uploading and searching of documents. Ricoh has added some advanced feature such as Check in / Checkout and Barcode are hidden from the casual user.

DocumentMall can be purchased with time and storage space. For example you can get a one year subscription that's good for 15GB, or three years and 15GB. The cost about $1,000 for the one year and $3,000 for the 3 year subscription. Both of these packages have a limit of 5 users. There's also a DocumentMall advanced package for 25 users which includes 50GB of storage for one and three years with a price tag of $7,500 and $21,000.

Over the years, I've sold quite a few DocumentMall subscriptions to my accounts. Point is, when it came time for renewal, none, count em, none of the companies renewed the subscription. I've realized over the years that DocumentMall is not for everyone, besides have a high price, there is a decent learning curve to DocumentMall.

What I'd like to see from DocumentMall is another level of pricing for on-line storage. Let them create a folder structure for the documents, and cut out the document management applications and feaures. Keep it Simple!  I beleive you can use this starter package as a seed to get many new users and then offer upgrades to the full DocumentMall service.

From meetings with customers in the field, most are now accepting off-site on line storage as something they would like to have. However, at a cost of $80 per month for 15GB, it doesn't cut the mustard on being economical for the SMB user.

Off them them the 15GB for $30 per month and cut out the extras, once they find themselves using DocumentMall, and then having to retrieve documents, they'll see the advantages of having the full version.

Just my opinion, DocumentMall as it stands right now is only a viable soluition for a handful of accounts. Make it affordable and scalable and the users will come!.

-=Good Selling=-
















users

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

From a competitors point of view, the few customers I have run in to who bought into DocumentMall hate it. They are so dissatisfied with DocumentMall we sell them another document management system in the middle of their DocumentMall contract and they move their document management to the new system while they continue making payments on the no longer used DocumentMall contract.