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=-

Montgomery Township, Paper, iPADS & Paperless

I just had to chime on this google alert I picked up for Montgomery Township, PA. 

The article Montgomery Township Looking to Go Paperless tells how the Township is trying to cost justify iPADS, claiming Supervisors could use the iPADS to view government meeting documents.

Seems to me who ever is doing the math has got it all wrong!  Here's an excerpt from that story "Grier estimated that supervisors have used 2,833 pages of paper on average over three years between 2009 and 2011."  and then this "The estimated annual paper for five packets is 14,167 pages or 28 reams."

First and foremost if 2,833 pages of paper were used in three years, then how the heck can you then come up with 14,167 pages.  Typical copy paper as long as it's not laced with Gold is packed 500 sheets to a ream and 10 reams to case.  But, if the supervisors have only used 2,833 pages of paper for 3 years that would have a total of 8,499 pages.   Furthermore the next line states that the cost of a ream of paper is $5.44 per ream, thus a case of this paper is $54.40 per ream.  I ask where the hell are they buying their paper from and for $54.40 per ream it's gotta be laced with GOLD right?  

In nearby North Wales, Pa., there's a Staples store that is selling cases of multifunctional copy paper for $31.99 per case or $3.19 per ream.  It would seem to be that a Township the size of Montgomery does NOT buy paper by the ream but by the case, and if they are buying by the ream then I suggest the Administrator needs to find a new job!  Basically, it seems there's a flaw in the math with the total amount of pages used in three years along with the cost of a ream of paper priced at 160% over the price at Staples.  Griers estimate for paper should be more like 18 reams of paper for 9,000 pages and a cost to the Township of $57.42 and not the $154.13 which I might add that the math is wrong here also.  It could just be a case of bad reporting, right?

At $5.44 a ream, that is an estimated annual total of $154.13. With $480 estimated annual cost for administrative staff at one hour per meeting, and $960 in delivery costs at one hour per meeting, estimated annual costs total $1,594.13. The average tablet cost is $550, totaling $2,750 for five electronic tablets.
One of the statements in the article suggested there was a 21 month buyback.  If you reduced all of the paper based on the cost of $3.19 per ream and the $57.42 per case the buyback would be more like 49 months!  Well, that a horse of a different color, 4 year old iPADS, even three years may be a stretch.

They didn;t even discuss the fact about print drivers, since they have all of the documents on the iPAD what happens when they need to print?  What about scanning paper based and legacy documents, how are they going to do that?  Does their current copier support scanning, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.   No one even spoke about the fact that most likely the documents that would be scanned would not be search able .pdfs.

Again, the main thing here that caught my eye was the paper cost, and seems to me that someone got it wrong and someone just wants iPADS to be cool or for whatever reason.  iPADS are media centric tablet devices and they are great at that.

Go and research a Ricoh ewriter before you waste the tax payers money.


Art