Years ago, with out the aid of copier maintenance software it was interesting to see what machines were pulling a profit and which were not. When I was a newbie in the industry I can remember the service manager coming to me with a service card that outlined the cost that incurred with "x" machine and he had to make the call either try and get the system out of the field (thanx for the lead, just what I wanted to deal with a customer whose machine was breaking all the time) or to lose money on the system and raise the maintenance contract next year.
Today, maintenance software to monitor and track profits is now the norm for all dealers and manufacturers. Thus with low profit systems or those systems producing a loss can be identified ASAP and measures can be put in place to make the system profitable. The easiest way to make them profitable is to raise the cost of the maintenance agreement. Most maintenance agreements sold now are all inclusive, meaning all parts, PM kits, consumables (toner, developer) and labor are included. Thus the cost per copy (I call it the cost per page) now rules the industry for most contracts.
So, what the heck does a penny get you? Not much anymore, can you add a penny per page to a cost per page program, well you can if you 'd like to lose customers!
Here's some quick calculations on the power of the penny or in this case .001 (one thousands of a penny). We'll deal with assumptions here for easy math.
XYZ Dealership has 500 systems that are on a cost per page contract. Each system generates 5,000 pages per month on average for a total of 2.5 million pages per month. The XYZ dealership needs to generate additional profit because the owner needs a new boat. By adding .001 to each renewing contract each month, the added profit is $2,500 per month. Over the course of a year that's $30,000. That's enough for the boat payments! Really, if your current contract cost was .01 (penny) would you (the customer) be upset if the monthly increase was .001(one thousands of a penny) = $5 per month (Don't think so). What about an increase of .002 for each page, well now we're talking $5,000 per month and gee the owner can get an even bigger BOAT!
Now, here's some really crazy numbers for you. The XYZ Dealership has 3,000 systems that are under a cost per page contract and each machine averages 10,000 pages per month. The average monthly page volume is 30 million pages! Adding just .001(one thousands of a penny) per page will give a profit of $30,000 dollars per month and a cool $360,000 dollars for the year. Now we're talking about a really really big boat!
Can the 3,000 systems averaging 10,000 pages a month be achieved, you betcha, it may take awhile but the opportunities are there especially with the emergence of managed print services in the last few years.
Most profits from dealers go right back into the company, higher wages, additional people, new technology, cost of living. I just thought it was neat run the numbers and see where they came out and have some fun!!
-=Good Selling=-
No comments:
Post a Comment