Photizo Transform 2013 Wednesday Roundup

 

Early to Bed and Early to Rise? Not me, I hung around the sports bar Tuesday night and spoke to many P4P members, it was a good time put a face on the member.

I spent most of Wednesday morning after breakfast in the Transform Exhibit area.

Oki with NOC in a box was a really cool spin for dealers that would like to get into MNS, however they lack the resources for a full blown plan.

Muratec, also offering an even better version of MNS at a super price. Their program was extremely interesting

The Transition of the Copier Industry Part V

What Can Copier/Printers Dealers Do?

You could do nothing and keep stealing pages from other vendors and have other vendors steal your pages.  There's no growth in pages!

Many traditional copier companies are now embracing and moving forward with Managed Network Services.  At one time I asked why the heck would we do that, the other day I got my answer, when it comes to on-site service and support no one does it better than copiers dealers, not IT companies, not phone system dealers nada they all stink. We are the best for on-site support within our channel.

Dealers need to diversify their offerings:

If you're just a traditional copier dealer then I might suggest adding systems where you can also can some maintenance agreement revenue along with break and fix.  Take a look at offering folding machines, folders/inserters, mailing equipment, paper cutters, scoring machines, business card cutters, and pressure sealers. I like the addition of pressure sealers because you can get more bang for your buck, you can sell the media, the pressure sealer and then reap the clicks from higher volume MFP's, light production units and even duplicators.  All of these devices will need service from time to time, most are very mechanical and with trained techs you should be able to garner a some nice margins with service.

Dang, I forgot this one, and it's huge, get on board with 3D printing, it's right up our alley, very little competition, high margins on supplies, high margins on maintenance agreements, the best is that they have to come to you for supplies. Typical users are Colleges, Universities, manufacturing, and Architects, when was the last time someone from a College or niversity call you for a product?  3D printers are on fire right now.

How about just becoming an expert with 3rd party MFP solutions?

I'm hearing and seeing  many dealers looking to add new services, but what about the MFP's that are in the office already. What about all of that neat software that can be embedded within the device that can drive BPO (Business Process Optimization). Many years ago dealers deployed specialized reps to visit accounts and sell the extras such as maintenance agreements, auto document feeders, and finisher/staplers. Why can't this be done with OEM or 3rd party solutions. New accounts are so dang hard to get, but it's your existing accounts where you can sell the extras and make some excellent margins. 

Pick 5 different solutions for 5 different vertical markets, train 5 sales people to sell these 3rd party solutions which could be programs like Print Audit 6, Doculex, Intellenetics, UDOCX. However, you also have depending on what manufacturer you represent all type of business process improvement solutions that can be embedded within the MFP. Before you jump on the MNS/Backup band wagon become and expert with your own solutions from your manufacturer.

One more idea, how about starting an hardware agnostic solution sales team that will go out and sell, install and train on 3rd party solutions. I don't have an accurate number but if I were a betting guy, I would bet that 90% of all mfp devices are not running and embedded software. There's treasure trove of opportunity!

Eat What You Cook:

If you decide to make the jump to offering BPO (Business Process Optimization) then I strongly suggest that you look at your own business processes first.  I'm sure there is pain in your organization with a process.  Look to solve those processes first, one I would fix at the place where I work is the sales process.  Here I would stream line the amount of paper needed and look into developing all of my forms on an ipad or a business type tablet, from here I would want the forms to go to my sale manager for review, he would sign off on them with a digital signature and then send them to order entry. Your company could then become an expert in that particular business process and pitch the solution process to other companies that have the same pain. I could go on and on, but look at your own company first, make the improvements and then sell the heck out of it.

Think about this for a second. you're selling BPO, curing a customers pain and then when they are ready to order you hand them sheets of paper to sign, DUH!


-=Good Selling=-

Ricoh MP6002, 7502, 9002 series "Scanner Reveal"

It seems about every 18 months Ricoh will refresh a series of multifunctional copier systems.  The latest refresh of the MP6001/7001/8001/9001 completes the entire line change to the new "istyle" series. 

The new Ricoh MP6002 (60 page per minute device), the MP7502 (75 page per minute device) and the MP9002 (90 page per minute device) will be the new models moving forward. The new MP 7502 will be the replacement for the MP6001 and MP7001. There will be six different models in all, MP6002/MP7502/MP9002 will not come from the factory with scan and print.  The MP6002SP/MP7502SP/MP9002SP will all come from the factory with color scan, network scan and black network print.

Scanning:

The speeds are awesome!  When scanning at 300 dpi with the single pass dual scan document feeder you'll be able to scan black at 88 ipm for single sided and 176 ipm for double sided originals.  Color scanning at 300dpi will run at 88 ipm for single sided and 120 ipm for double sided originals.  Thus if you are using document management programs like Doculex or Intellenetics you'll be able to breeze through those documents in seconds!

Scan2folder, Scan2email, Scan2ftp, Scan2url are all standard features and you'll be able to scan from 100dpi to 600dpi. Let's say you have ECM (Enterprise Content Management) software then you'll be able to take advantage of the Ricoh's  1200DPI TWAIN scan driver. 

But!  What I like best is that the new Ricoh MP6002/7502/9002 is that you can add a browser unit (the browser unit is an option and the unit allows the MFP to connect to the Internet)!  Thus if you're a Microsoft Sharepoint or MS365 user you'll be able to scan directly Sharepoint & MS 365 with the UDOCX Cloud solution.  With UDOCX there's no need to install software on the server, no maintenance, it's a true access & go solution! 

There's a few other items I like also, even if you don't have the browser unit, you'll be able to use two really cool FREE cloud storage solutions.  One is dropbox where you can get a free 2GB service, dropbox sets up as a simple scan2folder on your PC or notebook, you'll then set a path from the MFP to your folder. That's it!  Anything you scan will then be sync'd with the folder on your pc/notebook and replicated in on the Dropbox Cloud.  The other service is OfficeDrop, they'll offer you a free 5GB solution, sets up similar to dropbox, however with OfficeDrop you'll be able to label your files.  With the labeling feature you'll then be able to search those files.

Output formats for scanning on the Ricoh can be single and multi page  page TIFF, PDF, JPEG, high compression pdf, encrypt pdf, and PDF/A. If you're not familiar with PDF/A is a file format and also an ISO standard for long term archival of scanned pages.

Ricoh has also added as a standard feature a nifty scan2usb and scan2sdcard.  Users will be able to scan to a usb drive or sd card, along with that users will also be able to print from these devices.  I was able to test this on a Ricoh MPC4502 and not only can you print the files but you can also view the files from the USB drive or SD card right on the awesome 8.5 inch color display.

I'll be you thought I was done right?  Nope, there's one other noteworthy feature and that's JBIG2 compression support. In a nutshell JBIG2 compression for scanned black images will enhance compression and allow companies to make better use of their document storage solutions.  FYI, for you those of you that are dealers, I highly recommend this leasing company, truly a pleasure to do business with LCA.

Stay tuned for next week when I'll go over all of the cool new print and fax features!

-=Good Selling=-

Can Your Dealership Profit through the Click Charge ECM?

Darn tootin!  I wrote about the Intellenetics Enterprise Content Management solution a few weeks ago during Photizo's Global Transform show in Orlando this year.  BTW, I recommend that all MFP dealers try and make this show next year in Scottsdale, and don't rely on the data and information your MFP manufacturer is feeding you is the right solution for making a profit.

A few days ago I was treated to a Mano-a-mano webinar with the folks at Intellenetics about their "Click Charge" ECM solution that is designed for the MFP and MPS dealer channel.  Here's a few interesting items I picked up. Hmmm.....

All right seems these notes will be from memory because I misplaced the note pad that had the notes! 

• Branding is available
• Dealer Billing per month and then Dealer bills end user with MU
• Direct Billing to customer and royalties paid back to dealer
• Public portion of ECM allows users to search on their documents

And that's about all I can remember with my notes, not a big deal because Intellenetics will conduct a private webinar on July 19th for Print4Pay Hotel Members.  After I viewed the webinar a few days ago I asked them to tweak a few things and that will tell your more about the billing, and branding options along with the revenue stream royalties and the up charge for billing. 

If I had my own dealership (which I don't), I would be rolling this out to all of my SMB accounts.  First I would call them and ask them for a short 15 minutes about a new product and service we are launching. I would schedule this for one day of the week, like a Thursday and set 4-5 appointments each day.  I would then have a power point presentation set-up.  I would then guide them through the FAB (remember FAB, Feature, Advantage and Benefit),  and of course at the end when they ask how much this will this cost I will have TWO plans available.  A Premium Plan where we charge a base monthly fee and scan click charge (could be quarterly), where we (dealer) controls the uploading to the Cloud, and the indexing, and we would then train the end user on how to retrieve the documents.  The second plan would be Basic Plan, where we charge a monthly (could be quarterly) base fee and scan click charge, we would train the customer on how to index, upload and retrieve the files.

Remember it's not about the big sale, it's about the click and the ongoing annuity stream.  Most SMB accounts are scanning to a wndows based file folder and then placing documents (that are not OCR'd or in  indexed) in nested folders. If you can find the pain, which there is with this type of format you can bring home the bacon and have the best of both worlds by capturing the scans and the print clicks.  Keep in mind that Dealers have been reluctant to charge for scans because they were afraid that they would lose print clicks to the competitors who did not charge for scans. But in this scenario  you are presenting value of the ECM system and the benefit of accessing those files from the cloud.

Recently, I've been scheduling appointments for our new services, and with every appointment each customer either asked for a quote or additional information about a pain that we discovered on the appointment.  The moral of the story is to keep introducing new products and services to your existing accounts, they are a gold mine of they have pain in their business process.  

Please go here for the exclusive P4P Hotel webinar for Intellenetics "Can Your Dealership Profit through Click Charge ECM.

=-Good Selling=-