8 Talking Points for Selecting an Imaging/Copier Vendor

I've been in down the street office equipment sales for 33 years, over that time I've seen and heard it all when I meet with prospects who are considering a new vendor or manufacturer.

Many times... and by the way I just had a prospect email me today that price only is the driving factor as to who they will buy from.  I sent then back an email declining to offer a proposal. I work for a well respected dealer with an excellent support team and I won't compete with many of the fly by night dealerships that are out their.  Having one of my customers wait two to three days for on-service, a week for parts or not getting a return call is not an option!

Please consider the below points as more of an educational process to choose the right vendor for your needs.

Know your present and analyze your future needs: Since almost all MFP/Copiers are leased, you need to have a handle on your present and future needs. Will I need Network faxing or walk-up faxing, scan documents to email, scan to folder, walk up authentication, TWAIN scanning, Apple Air Print, envelopes, scan2cloud, scan2folders to a network drive, paper sizes needed to print, scan, fax or copy, color scan, color copy, color print.

Know what your existing costs are: How can you make a decision on a new product or service if you don't know your existing costs. Consider the cost of the current lease if any, cost of current print devices, costs for supplies, cost for service, cost for maintenance agreement, how many sheets of paper you have used for printing or copying in a week, month or year.

To Ricoh "What I Want for Christmas in 2013"

In Nova Scotia, during the twelve days of Christmas small groups of belsnicklers, or masked mummers, appear in neighborhoods, ringing bells, making noise, seeking candy or other treats. The hosts may try to guess who the mummers are and if they guess right the mummer removes his or her disguise and stops making rude noises and actions. Children may be quizzed by the mummers on their behavior if they say they have been good they are rewarded with candy. Thanx to Santas Net.

This will be the third year I've written a blog about "What I Want for Christmas".  If you'd like to read the others follow the links To Ricoh "What I Want for Christmas in 2011" and To Ricoh "What I Want for Christmas in 2012"

Here's my list for Ricoh this year:

• 60-90 page per minute A4 MFP's Color or Black
• 4 PPM Toner based Wide Format MFP with Color Scan for the USA market (You gave this to Australia and Europe buy not the Americas)
• Hi Speed Network Scan Station that will scan at 100 image per minute plus along with a 200 page document feeder and the ability to scan2email, scan2folder and scan2cloud (I really want this one the most)
• Wide Format Inkjet MFP that will Color Print/Color Scan and Color Copy
• A4 Color Envelope Press with Color Matching
• A3 Color Envelope Press with Color Matching (Dam, you gave this to Xante but not me!)
• A Full Size Color Screen for the MPC305 and MPC301 (If you can get me this, could you get me a real good pair of glasses so I can see the screen on these models)
• How about anything with the memjet print engine (before Xerox and Toshiba brings theirs to market)
• You promised me ICE (Integrated Cloud Environment) last year, can you bring this to me this year?
• MFPs that will have standard scan2OCR, scan2print and create search able pdf's (everyone else has these, why not me).

If you'd like to anything to the list, please do so in the comment section!

-=Good Selling=-

Muratec MFX-2590 Spec Review "Gotta Get Me One of These"

This will be somewhat of a cut and paste from a previous blog I did labeled "The Hottest Little MFP from Texas".  A few weeks ago I attended the BTA East Grand Slam event in White Plains, NY.  I recommend dealers and sales people find a way to get to these events in your area, they are awesome, plus you get to win stuff. Dang, I even won stuff!

Muratec America showed the MFX-2590, to tell you the truth it's been some time since I got hyped about an A4 MFP (by the way maybe we can change the MFP to MFC since it is a Multifunctional Copier), but the MFX-2590 had some of the features that I've been asking for, it's like Muratec America must have been reading my mind or probably just reading the MFP Solutions blog.

In the previous blog, I spoke about the over sized large color screen, scan2print, scantag, and the single pass dual scan document feeder.  Yup, I was impressed.  But there are many other features that I didn't blog about. So with out further ado, I'd like to go through some of these for everyone.

 

Printing Highlights:

• Standard Duplex Print (two sided printing), with the average cost of a sheet of paper now approaching a penny a sheet, two sided printing can cut your paper costs by up to 50%.
• Secure Print will hold the document in the MFX-2590's memory and allows you to go the device and enter a pin code to release your document, will keep prying eyes away from our P & L's
• Print documents that are stored on a USB drive, this is a great feature to have. Think about this, a salesperson comes into your office, and needs to print a presentation or a document, are you really going to let them on your network?  The USB drive allows for visitors to print from their USB drive without logging on to your network.
• Optional bar code printing, years ago in order to print bar codes you needed to invest in dedicated printing hardware.  Look around you'll see bar codes all over from hospitals, mail rooms, grocery stores and manufacturing plants. The need to print bar codes is an essential need in most companies.
• Copy and Print on Demand, the MFX-2590 allows you to copy or print documents to the MFX-2590's hard drive. Once on the drive you have a digital library of those much needed documents. No more scouring the PC or the filing cabinet to find those docs, leave them on the MFX-2590 for easy access.  This feature will also lower your print costs due to the fact that when a document is printed from the PC/Workstation it is usually printed to a local printer. These local (network) printers have a high cost per page, thus printing then from MFX-2590 will lower costs!

Scanning Highlights:

Muratec MFX-2590 MFP "The Hottest Little MFP from Texas"

On October 2nd & 3rd of this month I was able to travel to White Plains, NY to take part in the BTA East Region "Grand Slam Event".  FYI, I had an awesome time!

I was delighted to see my guys from Muratec at the BTA event.  If you're not familiar with Muratec..., then you haven't been in the copier/printer industry that long. Muratec is based out of Plano, Texas and when it comes to support from a copier/mfp manufacturer...no one does it better than Muratec!

Below I'll touch on some of the knockout/lockout features that the MFX-2590 that makes this system tops on my list of A4 MFPs.

I was able to speak with Greg, Lou and Jim about this really cool Muratec MFX-2590 A4 (does not print/copy 11x17) that will copy (black), network print (black), network color scan, walkup and network fax (black). At first it looked like any other A4 MFP that's on the market today, however the first feature that stood out was the huge color LCD display. I'm thinking it was about as big as the display on my kindle fire, the size of the screen was 8.5 inches and that's awesome for an A4 MFP!  The comparable Ricoh that I sell has a color LCD screen that is so small that you'll need binoculars to see (just a little joke)!  But most important,  it is the size of the screen that matters because a larger LCD color screen will promote ease of use and users will find the system a pleasure to work with.

Ok, so I'm impressed with the size of the screen right, I then start looking at the extended features like scan2email, scan2folder and what do I see?  Scan2print....it's all about the sizzle and the Muratec MFX-2590 is loaded! Scan2print is something that I thought every MFP system should have, think of it like this, you've got a color document in your hand, located on the 1st floor is the MFX-2590, you need to make a color copy but you don't have a color copier, all you got is a color laser printer and it's on the third floor.  The scan2print feature will allow you to scan the color document and send it to color print on your networked color printer (you scan program up to 5 networked print devices)!  Not only that, but you could send the document to print to another printer or MFP on your WAN (wide area network).  Features like scan2print, allows end users to tap into existing hardware resources without the need to get a color printer or MFP for each department or each floor.  When it comes to dealers and sales people the Muratec MFX-2590 allows us to be more creative with our solutions approach and gives us knockout features that aren't available on other similar devices!

Right, at this point I'm thinking I'd really like to be able to sell the Muratec MFX-2590, Greg and I start talking about scanning and again the MFX-2590 was sizzling with a one pass dual scan document feeder! I stated WTF, you're telling me this A4 MFP will scan both sides of document in one pass?  Yup....so when your working with two sided documents the MFX-2590 will scan 40 images per minute for color and a blazing 62 images per minute for black!  Woo Hoo!

So, we've got the awesome 8.5 color screen, the scan2print, the single pass duplex scan, the 80 page document feeder, scan2usb, scan2hardrive on the copier (enables a document library right on the copier), print from USB (awesome for vistors that have to print),  PC faxing (LAN fax), Walkupfax, Shift/Sort output (each set printed or copied set if offset from each other), ID card copy (means you save a lot of aggravation when you copy a health card or license), scan confirmation stamp (puts a little stamp on every scanned document) and this box is screaming with "sizzle" and value!

But we're not done! Now I'm sounding like Ron Popeil.  There was another touch screen button for "Scan Tag", ok well what is that I asked.  Scan Tag is a document imaging tool that enables users to input meta data at the MFP control panel and then automatically scan and index the document without having to return to their PC.  Scan Tag has been integrated to work with document management software applications like Doculex, Docuware, Idatix, SmartSearch, Sentryfile, Rebus, Intact and Computhink.

I've seen a lot of the new A4 devices from the likes of Ricoh, Canon, Xerox, Kyocera, and Sharp and in my opinion the MFX-2590 has awesome features for the end user and for resellers you have a combination lockout features that no other manufacturer can bring to the table.

Kudos to Muratec and the MFX-2590, btw the way I'll be posting on video of the MFX-2590 in action on the Print4Pay Hotel forums, pay us a visit, get registered, it's free!

-=Good Selling=-

PS  Muratec is not a sponsor or advertiser with the Print4Pay Hotel, however the Muratec MFX-2590 is "The Hottest Little MFP from Texas".