Growth Opportunities for Wide Format & The PEiR Group

This week I had an interesting email from Joel Salus. Joel is the Author "Reprographics 101" blog ad over the years we've been able to trade some information here and there.  Joel's blog can now be located at the IRgA web site.  The email was so informative about wide format that I asked Joel if I could use him as our Guest Blogger for this month.  Enjoy!

Hi Art,

The last time I dropped you an e-mail, your son had just graduated from Infantry Boot Camp. I hope your son is doing well!

Today, I visited your blog and read a couple of articles you posted about the Photizo Group conference you attended in Scottsdale. I received a "complimentary" invitation to attend the conference, but, unfortunately, I couldn't make it because I've had a very heavy workload the past couple of months .... and that hasn't let up yet.

I wanted to take just a minute to drop you a note about one thing you said in one of your recent blog posts.

Below, I've copied a sentence form that recent post:

"There seems to be growth opportunities for wide format systems, and we also mentioned the potential explosive growth for 3D printers".

Art, you may recall,

Top Ten Copier and MFP Proposals for March 2013

At least for me the first Quarter of 2013 has come to a close. Business was good, over 100% for the quarter and almost logged 200% for March, however April business seems like it might be marginal at best.  You know a lot of reps will say to themselves whoa is me, it's going to stink, I have nothing in the pipeline. While others realize it's time to pick up their game so they can work towards another solid month.  Which one are you?  I hope that from reading this blog that you are one of those that makes things happen!


Each month on the Print4Pay Hotel forums we'll upload "Pricing on the Street" quotes, these quotes are certified as accurate since the pricing information is emailed to us from other Print4Pay Hotel members in the field.

We'll also receive and upload quotes and proposals from other Print4Pay Hotel members and these quotes will be "the proposal or quote" that was emailed to the end user.

Each month I'll list those proposals/quotes and "Pricing on the Street" here with the associated links.  You need to be a Premium Member in order to download the documents.  So without further ado here's the top quotes from March 2013.  Enjoy!

• MFP/MPS Assessment
• Sharp MX-B402SC
• Ricoh MP 3352 Pricing on the Street - Feedback please
• "Pricing on the Street" Ricoh W3601
• "Pricing on the Street" Ricoh W5100en
• "Pricing on the Street" Ricoh MP3352SP (4 units)
• Sharp MX-264N "Pricing on the Street"
• Xerox WC 5755PT "Pricing on the Street"
• Ricoh MPC2551 "Pricing on the Street"
• Canon C6255 "Pricing on the Street"

-=Good Selling=-

Who's Afraid of Memjet "Part Duex"

This past weekend I was at the BTA Winter Break in Orlando.  While the education sessions are awesome I especially enjoy meeting with the 30 plus vendors being able to see what's new and different.

Back in June of 2009 I penned "Who's Afraid of Memjet".  Last year there were major announcements from Drupa from the likes of Toshiba, Fuji/Xerox, and Canon/Oce that all of them had purchased a license to incorporate the Memjets Waterfall print head technology. Toshiba to use it in MFP's, Canon/Oce developed a device called "Project Velocity" for an Oce branded wide format and then Fuji/Xerox will integrate the Memjet Water print head technology for wide format also. It was interesting that one of the comments on the blog was "this can't be good news for KIP".

While at the BTA Winter Break event I was able see the new Memjet C6010 printer.  What I saw was stunning, amazing and a marvel of color ink technology.  Sixty pages per minute, or 1 page per second of 100% coverage on letter size paper (this puppy can also print legal) with full bleed!! As soon as the print exited the printer the ink was dry, no jams, no bands in the color.  I saw prints that were done with coated inkjet paper (stunning) and also bond paper (typical matt type image).  I was more impressed though with the high capacity ink, black will hold 100ml, while the CMY will hold 50ml each.  Base on "normal office printing" the black ink will yield 4,600 pages, cyan is good for 7,500 pages, yellow cranks in at 5,050 pages and magenta trails with 4,830 pages.

I did ask the retail price on this system, however I forgot (arrgghh), but I was told that we'll see a memjet MFP in the 2nd quarter of this year.  Cost per page, and ink is the life blood of profit for Dealers and Memjet was keen to inform me that the ink tanks are designed for authorized refill.

My Thoughts

Checking In & Out at The Print4Pay Hotel

This was an article written by Scott Cullen (Scott also operates The Week in Imaging) back in 04, I've  updated some of the numbers such as total members, membership demographics, page views and a few other items to keep it current. (Art)

By: Scott Cullen

When one checks into the Print4Pay Hotel it’s the guests who receive tips, not the staff. The Print4Pay Hotel: The Imaging Professional's Resource Center is a Website (www.p4photel.org) and message board focused on providing extensive imaging product information to resellers as well as a forum for imaging industry personnel to share knowledge. Although most members work for different dealerships, virtually all sell and service the Ricoh, Lanier, Savin, Sharp, Canon, KonicaMinolta, Toshiba, Muratec, Okidata, Lexmark, Xerox  and Kyocera family print devices.

The site also contains an impressive collection of documents, price quotes, competitive proposals, self help documents, RFP's, and brochures on various manufacturers office equipment. Art Post, CEO of the Print4Pay Hotel and Docusultant with Century Office Products in Edison, NJ, is the architect behind the Print4Pay Hotel. The site allows digital imaging specialists to share information and find answers quickly, says Post. It's also a place where imaging professionals can store their knowledge, search their knowledge, and share their inspirations, ideas and passion for the industry.

Launched twelve years ago on a MSN community, Post eventually switched to his

Take Advantage of Recent Copier Proposals & Knockout the Competitor

For those of you that read my blog often, I don't want to sound like a broken record with why I believe it's a good thing to review proposals see street pricing from other dealers, and direct branches.

Let me take a recent A4 sale that I secured.  The account was an incumbent, and excellent service and support was issued through out the last three years. However, this account (small account) always wants to check pricing (think of all the time they would save if they did not get additional quotes and focused on their core business) from other vendors.  After many phone calls and a visit to the account I was able to keep the business for another three years.  But this time, I asked for copies of the quotes that he had received from other vendors. Some people tend to be a little wishy washy about this and not give them to you and then others will hand them over without a second thought.  Believe it or not I still get a rush when a customer gives me the quotes from the other vendors. Hey, if you're really in this business to stay you need to see all of the quotes and proposals you can even if they are not from a direct competitor.  There's a lot to learn from each and every one of them.

For example, I noticed on my competitors proposal these points:

Selling Copiers & MFP's "Running With the Big Dogs"

What's the Golden Rule when selling office equipment? Know your competition or least what they are quoting.

Ever notice every time you walk the dog that he or she stops at every tree or fire hydrant, ever wonder what they're doing?

They are checkin out the competition. Who's who, whose doing what and where ya been! Amazing that they can find all of that out in a few whiffs of hydrant!

Well, we as sales people need to know the competition as well, what they're up to, what's their current maintenance pricing, leasing rates (did you know you can figure out the lease rate by backing out the payment), special promo's, or just how they are positioning themselves with the customer.  I just had a quote given to me a few days ago and there was some good value statements that I'll migrate to my quotes and proposals, so by being able to read the quotes and proposals from the competition you may be able to tweak your proposal and borrow from others!

Here's some threads I've uploaded to the P4PHotel Message Boards, click the links and you'll be brought to the page.

Canon IRC 2030 Proposal
Competitive KonicaMinolta proposal vs Toshiba
Canon imageRUNNER Advance 6065 proposal
Canon imageRunner Advance C7065
Konicaminolta bizhub25 proposal
"Pricing on the Street" Ricoh MPC4502

The Print4Pay Hotel includes boards for Ricoh Family Group, Kyocera, KonicaMinolta, Sharp, Toshiba, Canon, Muratec and Xerox.

-=Good Selling=-

The Transition of the Copier Industry "Part IV"

Part IV

During the 1928 Presidential Campaign the Republican National Committee ran an ad that stated based on the Harding & Coolidge administration that they had "put the chicken in every pot and car in every back yard".  With the introduction of many cloud based document management solutions like Doculex and Intellinetics the  right for Document Management Software for every business both large and small.  Forget about the paper and how about the electronic files, if you don't have a Document Management program how the heck are you finding the documents you created last week, last month or a few years ago?  I get it, they're stored on a drive, and then named under a nested folder which is under another nested folder an then another.

Think about how much time you spend looking for documents whether they are paper based or electronic, if you don't have a managed document service/software you're inefficient.

What can Copier Manufacturers Do:

First they need to forget about all of the cool acronyms and marketing gimmicks.  Today's copier  manufacturers need to start buying companies (software) and focusing on business solutions or developing a new media (that's called R & D) that that will give them a renewable revenue stream (the old renewable revenue stream was putting toner on paper).  I'm of the opinion that manufacturers should start buying companies like dropbox, officedrop, box and document management software companies that have Cloud Document Management Services.  Why let others control the document when you're in the document business?

Manufacturers could bundle their own free service and then offer a pay service. There are many SBM accounts that could benefit from a cloud service document management software. Traditionally what's held the SMB business back is cost, ease of use, and training.  Cloud services billed monthly whether by storage or clicks to create a renewable revenue stream, it's kinda like cloud back up and disaster recovery solutions, the more you store, the more you'll pay.  But cloud document management software can have an immediate ROI impact, which is unlike backup and disaster recovery solutions (who the heck wants to sell insurance, not me).

Sell monthly/annual subscription services that allow SMB accounts to connect there MFPs to share point, ms 365, their CRM, their DMS or their business line of software.  I understand their are some 3rd party companies offering these services, but what do you have to lose beside pages?  Control the document stupid!

Here's a thought, maybe buy some of the most popular CRM's or business lines of software companies and develop those connectors for your MFP's.

Here's another idea,  how about selling print licenses, here you would install 500 printers (all inclusive except for paper), have the customer buy 5 or 10 million pages upfront and then renew the license when the prints have expired.

Do what Ricoh did, come out with your own business tablet and create customized software solutions that will improve a business processes. Printed pages may go away, however the document is here forever.

I don't believe I'll see the end of putting toner or ink on paper in my time, I do believe that one day there will not be a need for paper.  If you've ever watched any StarTrek episodes, you may or may not have noticed that you never see a sheet of paper.  Who knows maybe the likes of Toshiba, Sharp, KonicaMinolta, Ricoh, Canon, Kyocera, Xerox or Samsung will market the first transporter.

Our transition to a services led approach will require us to lead with more diverse services, managed print stream, managed print, document management and storage solutions. Stay tuned for part 5 and "Whats the future for copier dealers".

-=Good Selling=-

The Transition of the Copier Industry "Part III"

Part III

The digital copier industry of today is changing again and companies like Xerox, Ricoh, KonicaMinolta and Canon are making the transition to service led companies. These companies sand their dealers will be the sole provider for documents whether they are created electronically or printed, we/they want to help customers with print stream management, forms, email, archiving of documents (electronic and paper), they also want to provide consulting to help businesses increase efficiencies, provide easier work flows and reduce your costs.

I'll take an example of Ricoh because I'm more familiar with their products since I sell their products. One of their brightest products is the ewriter, it's not for playing games, surfing the web or doing your fantasy football at the office (Ricky), the ewriter is a business tablet that is designed to address technology gaps in the digital work flow by replacing paper based solutions with digital alternatives (I borrowed this from Ricoh). Basically, the Ricoh ewriter will replace paper, maybe the best example I can give is my own. When making a sale, I need to produce a sales order, a maintenance agreement, and a lease. I need to print these documents and then have the customer sign them. Bring them back to the office and then print another 10 pages of information to complete the order process.  This type process is archaic, thus if I had an ewriter all of my forms would be on the tablet, I enter the information on the tablet, capture the customers signature and then transmit the documents to the office. Then I'm done, thus if I wrote 10 orders per month I could increase my efficiency 4-5 hours every month. In ten months I could write another weeks worth of business! So why aren't dealers embracing this technology!

The Ricoh ewriter is just an example of awesome technology that is changing our industry.  Other manufacturers have also developed real-time visual communication devices for the office that share video, audio an image sharing.  Thus if you had one of these in each office your offices you would be able to communicate in real time with video, and audio.

It's not only just about the hardware also, it's about the services.  Dealers and Direct branches can now offer an array of services including Managed Network Services, Managed Print Service, Managed Print Stream (managed print stream seems to be one of  the most overlooked solutions in our industry) and Managed Document Services.  Our industry is preparing for the eventual demise of what got us to where we are today. Putting toner or ink PAPER!

The holy grail is how can we get to new renewable revenue streams with print volumes that will be on the decline ?  Of course I have some ideas, however I'll address these in Part #4

-=Good Selling=-

Oce is to CBS as Ikon is to RBS. True or not True

After 300 plus reads in a week, seems like Vince McHugh hit the nail on the head!  For those who have not read Vince's blog here's a snippet with a link and then don't pass up on the responses from our Print4Pay Hotel Members!  They are classic!

You gotta love the insight from Vince McHugh about Canon and OCE. He's dead on with the Ricoh/Ikon thing and dead on with the coming merge of Canon/Oce. Read and enjoy especially you Ricoh folks that have been slamming me for years, seems you're not the only dog on the block looking for a new fire hydrant! Vince....great stuff!!
Oce:CBS::Ikon:RBS Simple Math

In case your math skills are a little rusty the equation reads Oce is to CBS as Ikon is to RBS. True or not True. Here is my argument for True:

The carnage at Ricoh Business Solutions continues as the Ikon takeover of RBS moves into it’s final stages. Ikon’s management is firmly ensconced in upper and middle management of RBS. And guess who they are bringing along for the ride? All their Ikon friends. The loyal RBS employees are being squeezed out!

(Please feel free to skip the rant in red below. I will not feel offended if you do).

I need to digress here and say I long for the days when the company who BOUGHT

Covering the Copier & MFP Industry One Click at a Time

I thought this would be a great interview for everyone.  Scott Cullen has followed the copier industry since 1986 and has interviewed the who's who of industry professionals through out the years. He's a stand up guy and I've always enjoyed reading his articles. I thought it was time that someone would turn the tables an interview Scott. With out further ado, my interview with Scott Cullen.

When was your first Office Equipment Industry article and what was it about?

In 1986, an article on BIS CAP (Now Info Trends) conference I covered in Boston on small business for Office Systems magazine.

How the heck did a rock n roller like yourself get connected with the Office Equipment Industry?

I had just lost my dream job the previous November where I was writing for a cable TV magazine in Connecticut. The magazine was sold to a competitor and they shut us down. I spent most of November and early December helping a friend in his landscaping business and in January worked as a freelance proofreader for a book publisher. Around that time I saw an ad in the paper from Office Systems magazine looking for an associate editor. I applied, got called for an interview and within in a week was offered the job. Turns out that was the only job I ever had in my life that I didn't get through some sort of networking. I did get a great reference from Peter Funt (Son of Candid Camera's Allen Funt) who was the publisher of the cable TV magazine.

You've been to a lot of dealers events over the years, what two events stands out more than the others?

First is a Canon dealer meeting in Scottdale, Arizona in the eighties. It was my second dealer meeting and even though I was still learning my way around the industry, it was a great time. That's the only dealer meeting where I go to go horseback riding.

The second had to be a NOMDA dealer meeting Las Vegas in the mid nineties. What made that great was the camaraderie I had with my colleagues in the press when there were many more publications covering the industry as well as many PR people for the various manufacturers who to this day remain my friends. What made this one memorable was we all went to dinner at Hugo's Cellar in the Four Queens and then to a show with 60s pop star Johnny Tillotson ("Poetry in Motion"). It was an amazing evening, and yes, a fair amount of alcohol was involved.

What was the worst dealer event you ever covered?

WTF, Memjet Partners with Fuji/Xerox, Canon/Oce & Toshiba

I was surprised to say the least!  While reading through the Drupa Press Releases (for those who don't know, DRUPA is the worlds largest print & imaging show. It's held once every four years in beautiful Dusseldorf, Germany.  I like to call it the Olympics of Print & Imaging) I read that Fuji/Xerox, Canon/Oce and Toshiba have partnered with Memjet to produce wide format systems that will incorporate Memjets Waterfall print head.

Fuji Xerox will integrate Memjets Waterfall printhead into a 42 inch roll feed wide format system for printing technical and production graphics.  Up to 1600x1600 dpi resolution. 1600x1600 will print at 150mm per second and lower resolution will print at 300mm per second.  What!  mm per second?  WTF is that?  A quick conversion will tell us that 25.4 mm equals one inch. Dang at 300mm per second you'll get full color output at 11.8 inches per second!  Thats' fast! The video on the left is the Fiji/Xerox unit at Drupa  Awesome!
Not to be outdone, Toshiba has also partnered with Memjet.  Here's a snippet from the Press Release:

Under the partnership, Toshiba TEC Corporation will initially work to integrate Memjet components into a Multi-Function Peripheral (MFP) product targeted for the office market. The MFP will feature a scanner, photocopier and color printer that produces high-quality color pages at 60 pages per minute, thanks to Memjet's revolutionary page-wide print head, controller chip, software and ink. A future MFP product co-developed by both companies is being exhibited at drupa, the world's largest print industry event in Dusseldorf, Germany, in the Memjet booth, Hall 5, E28.

So, while Fuji/Xerox and Canon/Oce are focusing their efforts on wide format, Toshiba will concentrate with incorporating the technology with MFP's.  I haven't heard of anyone writing about or seeing the "future" MFP at Drupa yet.  Wish I was there, maybe in four years, right?

Now Canon/Oce has developed a device called "Project Velocity" and it seems this will be an Oce wide format system that will also use the Memjet Waterfall print head.  In a recent press release it was stated that there would be a working wide format system on preview at Drupa for printing maps and posters at a speed of 500AO format sheets. I'm not even going to look that up. It's fast!  This system is reported to house six rolls of paper.

I've been following Memjet and Silverbrook Technologies for sometime.  Recently some of their print heads have shown up in print devices that were more the size of an A4 printer.  I've only seen one and all I can say is that the user was excited about the speed but..... let me put it this way there was an issue with the color.  However, with partnering with the like of Xerox, Canon and Toshiba and the possibility of having color matching rips, I'm thinking the sky is not the limit any more for Memjet.   

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Wars & The Plain Paper Copier Industry

Most evenings I'll do a little bit of cruising around the web searching for copier information.  I ran across a white paper written by William R. Bolton in 1995 titled "The Plain Paper Copier Industry". 

Basically the paper was an outline of the plain paper copier industry up until 1994 or 95.  I used this paper to research a blog "Top 19 Old Copier Manufacturers That Faded Away".

Just the other day  I had an Anon (Anonymous) response to the blog I wrote for the "final five", it seems I ticked someone off because I projected that Sharp would not be one of the final five left in the industry.  ANON pointed out that although the blog was a nice read, they thought that my projection of Sharp was not correct because Sharp had just started operations of a 2nd manufacturing plant in China that was capable of producing 250,000 MFP's per year.  I responded with the fact that I saw the press release that Sharp is gearing up for the anticipated of more demand, but I think it's more for the Chinese Market Place. Here's the press release.  I'm also taking a guess that since the Great Flood in Thailand and the fact that one of Sharps copier manufacturing plants is located in the area of the Great Flood.  The Sharp factory was not damaged however Sharp had problems with securing parts from other suppliers that were affected.
Which brings me to back to a certain paragraph in the white paper.  History repeats its self right.  The white paper predicted that only 7 to 8 copier manufacturers would be left in the global market place by 1997.  Let's see if we can get this right: 
Xerox, Ricoh, Sharp, Canon, Toshiba, Oce, Mita, Konica, Panasonic and Minolta.  This would be 11 copier manufacturers that were players in 1994.  I did not include Kodak due to the fact that their plain paper copier line was OEM'd by Canon.  I can't remember when but Konica & Minolta merged thus leaving 8 manufacturers somewhere in 2002. 

Nobody Ever Got Fired for Buying a Xerox

Harry Hecht is our Guest Blogger for April, and according to Harry he's been in the office equipment business since Chester Carlson invented Xerography, and a little known secret is that Harry was actually Chester's assistant! Really???  Harry's been around for as long as I remember, and he always brings inspiration, vision and a can do attitude!

I asked for a couple of sentences in reference old copier companies for a blog I'll be posting in a couple of days, true to form, Harry gave me just a tad bit more, so without further adieu, enjoys Harry's ditty about the good ole days in the copier business!

Do you remember the days when a complete copier line included one or maybe two models? Selling at full retail was not only a possibility but a regular occurrence? When Xerox owned 90% of the market and the saying that "nobody ever got fired for buying a Xerox" was an unfortunate reality for the independent dealer? I may be dating myself, but I remember those days well and had to still have a lot of respect for the competition, camaraderie and "wild west' aggressiveness of many of the entrepreneurial manufacturers that competed against each other during the 70s and 80s.

Here are some copier manufacturer names that may serve as a blast from the past for many of you. Names like IBM, Kodak, 3M, Saxon, Royal, Apeco, Savin, Van Dyke, Escofot, Olivetti, and Mita just to name a few. These companies hit the streets with Direct and Dealer Sales forces with the hope and confidence of stealing business away from THE BIG X. The products sold during that time were crude, barely passed a copy, and in some even came with tongs and fire extinguishers -just in case there was a jam and a fire broke out. Oh those were the days. No need to worry about supply pirates and 2 hour response time. Profit margins were Huge and and the Yen was valued over 500 Y to the dollar. Getting in front of customers and demonstrating your product using the sales order ( already filled out ) was sales training of the day. Your manager would say" don't leave the office without an order"!.Talking about pressure. If a customer accepted your demonstration, your competitor would be in the lobby waiting their turn to try and hammer out a deal on the spot and or leave the machine in the customers office until they fell in love with it or just used it and stroked you along- yikes!

Well, time to wake up to a new  and renewed set of technology companies now entering the copier and printer space. Samsung, Dell, Lexmark, Brother, Epson plus all of the Big Players- Konica Minolta, Canon, Xerox, Ricoh, Sharp, Kyocera. Where does it end?. We now deal with information overload, the world wide web, 1,000s of SKU product numbers, accessories, tight margins and 40% discounts. What the heck happened? Opportunity is still there for all of us, however success and prosperity is a game of inches verses miles. Without knowledge and a well thought out plan and execution, who knows who the next fallen Angels list will look like.

Need to contact Harry?  Here's his LINKEDIN page.

-=Good Selling=-

Copier & MFP Industry in Turmoil... the Final Five!

A few years ago I posted a blog that outlined the "MPF Wars the Final Five" copier/mfp providers. 

Since that post  on September 28th Xerox purchased Affiliated Computer Systems for $5.5 billion, which propelled Xerox in to the business solutions and information technology business.  Soon after on November 16th of 2009 Canon announced plans to purchase OCE.

In some recent less noticed news Canon Canada closed an office and handed over the  accounts to a local dealer in Nova Scotia, Ricoh Canada closed their Saskatchewan office and cut a deal with WBM Office Systems to take over accounts and took on many of the technical and sales staff and expertise previously employed by Ricoh Canada. RJ Young (USA) cut a deal with Ricoh for more than 6,000 MIF for the  Columbus, Tupelo, & Biloxi, MS and Huntsville AL locations of Ricoh/Ikon. 6000+ MIF.

In the last month Canon finally sealed the deal with OCE to finish acquiring the outstanding shares of OCE (a group of shareholders held out for additional cash), and back on  May 11th of 2011 Canon announced the creation of Canon Information And Imaging Solutions, Inc.. 

Ricoh Corporation announced that they are re-branding and uniting Ricoh and Ikon Office Solutions in the US under one brand.  Ricoh is moving towards being known as a business solutions provider.  KonicaMinolta acquired All Covered back in January of 2011 and has been on a buying spree for acquiring addition IT companies to put under the All Covered umbrella. Just last week Kyocera Mita America (didn't even know they were still using the Mita name anymore) announced that they are changing their name to Kyocera Document Solutions America, thus Kyocera Document Solutions America is re-branding also wants to be know as a business solutions provider also.

The last four years have been chaotic for the office equipment business, the downturn in the global economy, the floods of Thailand, the Great Japanese Earthquake/Tsunami and the continued rise of the Japanese yen has caused billions of dollars in loses for most of the Japanese Imaging manufacturers.

So, what's my take on all of this.....we're in for the ride of our lives! Many industry pundits are declaring the end of the paper is upon us, and these were the same pundits that declared many years ago that fax was dead and then copiers/mfp's were dead and behold the coming of Managed Print (the supposed holy grail of profit).  But the entire industry is making the change from being imaging manufacturing providers to business solution providers. 

"Those who manage the network will control the imaging devices" is another term I've heard lately.  Dealers will need to evolve also, whether it's Managed Services, Business Solutions and or IT Services, or a combination of all three (and all three can be incorporated under IT services).  It's much easier to change the copier company than the IT provider. 

Not in any order, my picks for who will stay and who will leave the copier imaging industry:

Daily Document Management Industry Notes from Around the World! 4/18/2012

Yup, I know it's been awhile since I posted these, but been busy in my day job sellin (still pays the bills). If you need daily info I post it all here http://copierquestions.websitetoolbox.com/

Equisys is pleased to announce the launch of Version 5 of Zetadocs for NAV, the latest version of the popular document management add-on for Microsoft Dynamics NAV.
See all stories on this topic »

OpenText™ today announced the availability of OpenText Document Server, Alchemy Edition, version 9 (OpenText Alchemy), the latest version of OpenText's popular document management solution which helps small-to-medium-sized ...
See all stories on this topic »

Today, document management and imaging company, Version One, today announces that Greg Ford has been appointed as the company's new managing director. Greg, who succeeds, Julian Buck, will be looking to deliver significant year-on-year growth.
See all stories on this topic »

Canon India Pvt. Limited, India's No 1. complete digital imaging company today announced the launch of new range of imageRUNNER 1700 series and Document Scanners to further strengthen its stand as the market leader in India in Document Management Space ...
See all stories on this topic »

KYOCERA Document Solutions America, Inc. (www.kyoceradocumentsolutions.com/us), headquartered in Fairfield, NJ, is a leading provider of computer-connectable document imaging and document management systems, including network-ready digital ...
See all stories on this topic »

This not only improves accountability by helping lenders comply with regulations, but allows for a more organized document management system. Documents, which can be digitally stored on secure file servers, can be retrieved at anytime from anywhere.
See all stories on this topic »

-=Good Selling=-

The Birth of Managed Print Services "According to Art"

So, I'm just about to pack it in for the weekend after having to doggie sit for my sons dog while he's off at drill for the weekend.  "Nutbuster", that's my name for my sons dog cause she's just big enough to jump on you and well, the name states the rest. 

Anyway I came across this article The Origin of Managed Print Services: Xerox or HP? by Jennifer Shutwell.

Anything with Managed Print, Xerox or HP in the title will tempt me enough to give it a read.  Jen puts some excellent points across about the economics of Managed Print.  The article is an excellent read and two statements stood out for me "With the continuous incline and growth of printing volume between 1991 until 2007" and "The origin of MPS was from neither Xerox nor HP, but created from people seeing a need for management".

I wanted to elaborate on Managed Print and where I think the origin was.  Now, I'm not saying that this was a Jersey idea, however back in the mid eighties there was a Canon dealer that went by the name of Duplifax.  I hated when I crossed paths with them because they had a unique offering for their maintenance agreements for copiers.  Once sold, the copier was put on a "managed care" plan.  That plan worked off the yield of the toner cartridge.  What Duplifax did was to package four or five toners together and build in the cost for service.  For example, four toners had a yield of 40K copies.  So instead of selling the toner for $80, they would sell the "managed care" pack for $800 and include service, parts and supplies for as long as the toner lasted. If you got the yield of 80,000 pages then it was a good thing for you and if you fell short on the yield it was then a better deal for Duplifax.

To me, a seasoned copier professional the term of managed prints means to manage output from systems that print.  Analog copiers print, but they were printing an analog image from a photoconductor, fax machines made prints, and of course laser printers made prints also.  Somewhere in the mid 90's we saw our first digital copy machines that were able to print, copy and fax (scanning came later).  For those of us in the copier industry that knew what the cost per page was for fax machines, and laser printers (some of the first laser printers that remember came from a Canon print engine, I remember the engines well because the low end canon analog copiers used the same type of toner cartridge, those of us in the industry knew that these cartridges had a high cost per page when compared to traditional analog copiers) we were presented with a treasure trove of accounts that we could migrate to one system while lowering the customers cost for "printing".

In effect in the late 90's copier dealerships were already starting to migrate prints away from printers and managing the cost with maintenance agreements that covered everything but staples and paper!

So there we have it Jersey invented the "Managed Care" approach for copiers in the mid 80's and Jersey again led the industry by offering a "Managed Print Service" with their All inclusive Maintenance Agreements for Digital Copiers in the late 90's!

Did we make you laugh, groan or smile yet?  It's my perception that Managed Print evolved from the elite core of Copier Dealers from the 90's, even though most were not servicing or supplying laser printers then, the idea and concept transplanted to the printer industry.

-=Good Selling=-

Daily Document Management Industry Notes from Around the World! 3/14/2012

Document and imaging vendor Accusoft, has announced the release of Prizm Content Connect v5. Prizm is a secure solution for document viewing, collaboration and business management system integration. This new version of Prizm Content Connect extends ...
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KMWorld is a leading content, knowledge and document management publication. The annual list of "100 Companies that Matter in Knowledge Management" was first established in 2000 to recognize an elite group of companies dedicated to meeting specific ...
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TORONTO--Medworxx Inc. (“Medworxx”) (TSXV: MWX), a leader in clinical patient flow, compliance and education solutions, today announces their expansion of the enterprise wide Policy and Document Management System (PDMS) license at ...
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Knowledgeone Corporation's RecFind 6 has been implemented by Waratah-Wynyard Council in Tasmania, Australia as its Electronic Document Management and Information Management system. Waratah-Wynyard Council is situated in the heart of Tasmania's ...
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PITTSBURGH, March 13, 2012  -- Solvaire, a provider of document management services, announced today that they are entering into an agreement with LegalEye Inc., a premier provider of legal management solutions.
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“Canon constantly strives to improve document security for organizations of all sizes. Information is only as valuable as a company's ability to protect it” Since imageWARE Secure Audit Manager Express exports audit data directly to a Windows folder as ...
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Fabasoft received the prestigious award in the category "DMS/Data Management" for its business Cloud service Folio Cloud. The expert jury thereby crowned Folio Cloud as the best document management system (DMS) for small and medium sized companies in ...
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-=Good Selling=-

MFP & Copier Industry Weekend Notes 3/4/2012

I'm working on a new book titled 101 Ways to Close MFP Sales. it should be completed within three weeks and it will be posted on the Premium Forums and Amazon.  If you've got a favorite close, please send it to me and we'll give you kudos and a free copy of the book!

This week Ricoh Europe announced that they will launch a color wide format gelsprinter in 3rd quarter of this year, read the threads that have been posted so far, they are not.... Canon will finally refresh the 2008 monochrome products 2500 & 3200 series, the thread is below check it out and Sharp announces price increase for April 1st.

Yours truly will be interviewed by The Week in Imaging this week about reaching the 1,000th blog!

I've started a new forum for posting our "best sale of the month", I think it would be educational for all of us to hear you brag about the sale, how you nailed it, how you found the customer, did a solution deal the deal, how much GP of revenue you gained, and or clicks that you captured.  There's also a $25 gift card incentive for one P4P'er each from from one of our advertisers. Tell us About Your Best Sale this Month!

On another note we've posted "Effective emails for obtaining appointments", and they are great!  They are not from me, but from your peers, check em out in the P4P Document Library!
Please take advantage of the sales documents, quotes, proposals, rfp's, rfq's, uploads, p4p library, downloads and all of the additional forum features that are enabled with a Premium Membership!
Please support our Advertisers by clicking their links and giving them a call! LCA Leasing Corp, Stethos USA, Jetmobile,  Polek & Polek, UDOCX, Print Audit, & Cybercon Dealer Services, sfSCAN

Recent Blogs of NoteSelling MFP's & Copiers "Positioning yourself as an MFP/Copier Expert"
Canon & Oce "Was this a good deal or a not so good deal?"
Ricoh Adds Wide Format Color "OMG not the gel"
SMART MFP's 2the Cloud
I dare you...
Managed Documents "The Next Big Thing"?

Interesting & Most Viewed P4P Forum ThreadsOKI "MPS" series MFPs
Canon ImageRunner Advance 4025...
C651EX/C751EX Toner Shortage
W3601 Scan Software
Can a Kyocera 3640mfp copy mixed originals
Re: new C4502/5502
Profit Breakdown Question
New Samsung 11 x 17" Colour MFPs due Oct 01 USA
NEW! Uploaded MFP Docs in P4P Document LibraryOKI MC361 vs HP color MFP M475
OKI C330 vs HP color M451
Customer Expectations 770 Digital Color Press v1-03 For Launch
"Unlocked" Winning Proposal Generator for MPS & MFP's
Production Print Study Excel Guide
Effective emails for obtaining appointments

News & Press Releases
 Sharp Price Increase
Oce Varioprint DP Line (Oce & Canon integration)
Kyocera launches four new MFPs
Ricoh Adds Colour to Its Wide Format Portfolio (10 replies already)
NSi AutoStore 6.0 Earns Konica Minolta bEST Certification

P4P Poll QuestionsJanuary 2012 Sales Quota Poll
New Color Cost Per Page Poll for 60 ppm plus
New Color Cost Per Page Poll for 30-44 ppm COLOR
New Color Cost Per Page Poll for 45 - 59 ppm COLOR

New Leads, RFP's & RFQ's Uploaded!Illinois
Georgia
Colorado
South Africa
West Virginia
Southern California for KIP700

Uploaded Pricing Proposals & QuotesEnd User Report for Xerox 700 vs KonicaMinolta
xerox workcentre 5325 proposal
Toshiba estudio 2040c proposal
Copystar (Kyo) CS255C
Savin C9145 MFP Proposal/Quote
Ricoh C751 proposal

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Canon & Oce "Was this a good deal or a not so good deal?"

Back in January of last year (2011) I posted a poll on the blog titled Canon & Oce "Was this a good deal or a not so good deal?" It's been  a little over a year and I thought it's time to close the poll and start a new one.

Since I'm not that well connected with Canon and Oce I can only report on what is posted on the Print4Pay Hotel forums and what people have emailed me.  I've read threads on the forums that suggest OCE is practicing the art of "dumping" MFP systems (not production print systems) at ridiculous prices here in the US. In some cases Canon dealers with the same box have not been able to match pricing or won't match pricing (I can't blame them for that).  Oce unlike Ikon has it's own product line of Production Print systems, I was able to see one of these systems in action a few weeks ago at an in plant facility. The system was astounding, using large rolls of paper and processing speeds of 800 - 1,425 images per minute.  I guess when you use roll paper you don't process speed by pages but by images.

I think the acquisition for Canon was a great move, especially with recent Kodak bankruptcy filing. Plus the fact that Canon now has access to arguably the best wide format technology in the world.  However, how long can they keep operating two separate units?  I think in the near future we'll see the move in the US to migrate them into one unit, just my thoughts here and nothing I've heard or read.

Back to the poll.  We had a tremendous amount of votes, as of today there were 475.  Here's how our readers responded to Canon & Oce "Was this a good deal or a not so good deal?"

Good Deal		183	39%
Bad Deal		208	44%
Not Sure		84	18%
475 votes total

-=Good Selling=-

Please fell free to chime in and leave a comment!

Daily Document Management Industry Notes from Around the World! 2/29/2012

Digiscribe International, a New York metro-based document management services provider, more than doubles scanning output in two years. Digiscribe's document scanning facility, located outside of New York City, has more than doubled output in the last ...
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Managing documents has become a complex and never ending task. The time spent creating, reviewing, approving and updating documents is further exasperated by the time required to collaborate, review and approve documents. The endless chasing up of ...
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Reports are submitted in real-time, enabling effective document management, issue resolution and client reporting. Documents such as standard operating procedure manuals and bulletins can be published to field teams' smartphones and tablets, ...
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Flowfinity Wireless Inc., a proven provider of enterprise mobile apps for business process automation, today announced a security guard management software solution for streamlining processes such as dispatch, scheduling, incident and patrol reporting, and document management on smartphones and tablets.
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Heerlen, The Netherlands – February 28, 2012 – Cadac Organice, Microsoft Gold ISV Partner and developer of the Cadac Organice Solution Suite (SharePoint-based Engineering Document Management and Control), has issued an updated case study about CAD ...
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-=Good Selling=-