MFP Solutions Top Ten Copier & MFP Blogs for May 2013

MPF Solutions Top Ten Copier and MFP Blogs for April 2013  still tops the list every month for the last three months. That one blog now has close to 10,000 page views! 

Here's an note for all of you that are about to get a new sales position, make sure you get everything in writing, as a matter of fact when you're asked to sig a non compete, make sure you have your own contract in hand for your prospective employer to sign. Heck if they state you have to sign a non compete then I say you have the to tell them they have to sign a "what I expect from xyz company". 

		10 Awesome Tips for a Great MFP/Copier Demo   954 3D MFP Printer/Copier/Scanner "Ready for Prime Tim...   336 10 Things Might Not Know About Digital Duplicators...   286 8 Tips from Selling Copy Machines in the 80's   261 New Ricoh MPC8002 & MPC6502 Sneak Peek   258   Scan2Cloud Solution the Alternative to eCopy   218 7 Tips to Help Win Net New Competitive Copier & MP...   216 Growth Opportunities for Wide Format & The PEiR Gr...   198 How Can You be the Best at MPS, MFP, MNS?   178 Photizo Transform 2013 Wednesday Roundup -=Good Selling=-                                                       -=Good Selling=-

MFP Solutions Top Ten Copier & MFP Blogs for April 2013

Last month I posted "MPF Solutions Top Ten Copier and MFP Blogs for March 2013 and I made a mental note of one particular Blog I wrote titled 10 Awesome Tips for a Great MFP/Copier Demo.

I wrote this Blog in August of 2012, last month there were 856 reads, this month increased to 956 reads for the month.  Total reads since August now stands at a little over 9,000 reads!!! All I can say is thank you. I did post a follow up Demo Blog titled The "Art" of the Copier & MFP Demo which I thought was better, but who am I to argue with over 9,000 reads. Thank you!!!

		10 Awesome Tips for a Great MFP/Copier  Demo Aug 12, 2012, 3 comments   956 Does Brother Corporation Have it's Sights Set for ... Apr 21, 2013   308 WTF is a Copier Lease Forgiveness? Mar 31, 2013, 2 comments   296 End of MFP Copier Lease Equals Balloon Payment? Apr 5, 2013   272 15 Ways to Make your MFP & MPS Proposals Standout!... Mar 31, 2013   240 Copier Stream of Payments Calculator Apr 14, 2013   230 Memjet, Preton Saver Offering New MFP & MPS Soluti... Apr 21, 2013   227 Ricoh MPC4502 Series MFP Review Apr 15, 2012, 1 comment   215 Copiers and MFP's "Charge for Scans or Not to Char... Apr 14, 2013   211 How to Close More MFP & MPS Sales             Apr 13, 2013 -=Good Selling=-

Copiers and MFP's "Charge for Scans or Not to Charge for Scans"

Charging for Scans is an ongoing discussion on the Print4Pay Hotel members. I believe the industry as a whole needs to start charging for scans especially with page volumes migrated downward. Ask yourself "why are we giving it away for FREE"!

It seems most dealers do not have a scan charge policy and those that do only implement it after they've realized that the scan volume is higher than the copy and print volume. Replacing parts in the document feeder is not costly, however the labor is, especially if you are out there once a month for document feeder issues and or replacing preventative maintenance parts for the document feeder. Check your page volumes, are they up or down?

So, what should be the cost for scanning or the "click charges", should it be based on a cps (cost per scan) with a minimum and overage every month, or should there be a annual cost with overages? I see it in the street everyday, more customers are wanting to scan to reduce their printed or copied page volumes. They are emailing, and LAN faxing more scanned documents. Problem is most of us are not capturing the revenue stream.

Would it be outrageous to charge a customer .015 per scan for a minimum of 1,000 scans per month ($15.00) with the overage at .008. Most of us have had the mindset that scanning should be less expensive the cost per page charge, and why is that? Just because someone said so. Scanning contracts could and should include parts, labor, training, reconnecting scan2email and scan2folder issues. Heck, we're getting those calls now under the cost per page contracts and doing them anyway.

I think the main issue is that most dealers and or Direct Branches have no clue how many scans are being made, and the ones who do are afraid that charging for every scan may chase business away. Ask yourself, where can you get a 50ppm color scanner with scan2email, scan2folder, 100 page document feeder and the capability of scanning 11x17. A quick search on the Internet produced no scanners with these capabilities!

We are solving a business problem for our customers, the problem is the cost of printing a page. The average document gets copied 19 times! *That's the problem, being copied 19 times! *source: Coopers & Lybrand

So, why can't we charge .01 or .015 per page to have the document scanned? Some will say well they can just get a desktop scanned and scan all they want, true they can however, most of these devices are TWAIN devices, most are not as fast as MFP's, and most can't be integrated for scan2email, scan2folder and third party software scanning solutions, also how many of these devices would they need? At 5,000 scans a month a customer would spend $50 - $75 per month, I'm sure the savings far out weighs copying the document 19 times and then migrating the document where they need to go.

Charging for Scans needs to happen in our industry now, or we run the risk of putting our selves out of business as paper becomes a less accepted means of communication.

-=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=-

Daily Document Management Industry Notes from Around the World! 2/22/2012

PORTSMOUTH, NH, Feb 22, 2012 -- Treeno Software, Inc. today introduced its fourth-generation Enterprise Document Management (EDM) system. Since 2002, Treeno Software has established its expertise in this $45 billion business application ...read more here
Aerospace firm Sonaca began working with the open source Exo collaboration platform because it needed a customizable portal for document management, but now is among the first organizations to also adopt it for social collaboration....read more here

M-Files Inc., the developer of M-Files easy document management software and the cloud-based document management service M-Files Cloud Vault, today announced the company has signed....
read more here

MissionIR would like to highlight GlobalWise Investments, Inc. (OTCBB: GWIV). The company, via its wholly owned subsidiary Intellinetics, Inc., is a Columbus, Ohio, based Enterprise Content Management (ECM) pioneer with industry-leading software that delivers cloud ECM based solutions on-demand. The company’s flagship platform,...read more here

Mimeo Marketplace, already one of the fastest growing print management and distribution e-enablement solutions in the United States, is now available in the United Kingdom. Buyers and distributors of digitally printed documents can use the solution to ...read more here

The new Liferay Portal 6.1 EE features extensive updates to existing web content and document management systems plus new capabilities that are designed to provide more power to end users. Extensive user interface updates will make document management ...read more here

-=Good Selling=-

Document Capture Workstations "Is the Time Right"?

A few days ago I was flipping through the MFP Report and there was an interesting article on an HP device listed as a "Document Capture Workstation".  The MFP Report states that the HP Scanjet Enterprise 8500 fn1 was previewed at Innovation Impact in Shanghai a few months ago.

I'm all over this technology!  Many years ago I mentioned that Hi Speed Network Scanners Stations are needed in the office, but you'd have to spice them up with some additional features like:

• Scan2email
• Scan2folder
• Scan2ftp
• Scan2sharepoint
• Ability to run third party software such as ecopy, digidoc flow, NSI, etc....
• Network Fax
• Cloud Fax
• Scan2Print
• Scan2fax