This Week in Ricoh "TWIR Notes"

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

Apparently Ricoh’s Regional Vice President, in charge of wholesale in the Midwest, Chuck Parr, has left the company.

Promos that Ricoh is apparently offering through its branches in the 3rd quarter of 2008
- Zero % finance leases
- Reps can waive up to 6 months of remaining payments of existing customers’ lease.
- C900 program of $0.05 for color clicks and $0.0055 for b/w clicks

Ricoh announced that it will recycle copiers in Japan, England and Ireland.

Details:
- Each machine is stripped down to chassis
- Replace all lifetime parts
- Fit all mods and firmware updates
- Respray external panels
- Are priced 25% less than equivalent new models
- Have either “RC” or “R” in the model name to denote that they were used copiers that were recycled

-=Good Selling=-

Copier Sales "Ask Art"

I had an email the other day from "caggles" (Print4Pay Hotel Member) in Illinois.

Subject: cold calling secret and question

Art,

First of all, i love the site and your posts are extremely helpful. Ive been a member for a while now and I have two questions about your latest blogs. I would love to know if there is something I can do differently other than hand out brochures, because it gets old and I could use some better results. Also you said that it is always important to remember to make 100 cold calls per week. Ive been doing this for almost 6 years (wow, that's scary) and it gets harder and harder to keep up on that. Do you consider 100 to be a combination of in person and phone cold calls or just one or the other? Thanks for your help and I would love to hear what you did differently that worked so well.

Thanks,

"caggles"

Hi "caggles":

You know that's what I used to do, is to hand out brochures and to tell you the truth, most of the time I would follow up days and weeks thereafter, actually more like weeks and whatever interest I may have generated was lost!

I'm just handing out my business cards now and asking for either the head of IT or the decision maker for IT related services. My pitch, and I stay extremely positive and cheerful. My name is Art and I'm just here to introduce my self and if you could please forward my card to the head of IT. By the way we are also going to follow up with a mailer on our services and who could we direct that to.

No appointments, no brochures for copiers, printers, fax, no doc management, just a card. If they ask what we do, then I tell them that we are a software and hardware company that focuses on new technology that will either improve their business or consult on how to save paper that is being produced (no mention of the word copier or printer here).

Well, to say the least is has worked, the key is then to follow up within three business days to set appointments for the warm leads (which I got three) and the other was to call every account again to verify the correct name and contact title of the person to mail literature to. I'll be calling those people back in a week or so, at that time all I'm trying to set an appointment for is to introduce our company. Yes, I get the naysayers, "we do not need anything", and I tell them "I'm not selling anything, all I need is 15 minutes to show you the services we provide". So far so good, in the last 12 months I've probably handed out hundreds of brochures an no calls.

Tip: Try to remove any logos from your card that are recognizable as you selling copiers, printers and etc. Also with some type of acronym if your company has office products, or business solutions. Make them ask you what you sell, and they will be more receptive. 100 cold calls, yes, especially in these times, you gotta get back to basics and beat the bushes.

Hope this helps.

-=Good Selling=-

This Week in Xerox "TWIX Notes"

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

Xerox announced that its desktop DocuMate scanners (which are actually made by JFL Peripheral Solutions/Visioneer), now have a driver to work with Linux operating systems based computer. The driver is called SANE (stands for Scanner Access Now Easy).

Competing against Xerox where a customer wants to use tabs in a production print environment? Xerox’s Freeflow system apparently has the following disadvantages:
- all text on tabs must be manually created
- no way to insert or remove a tab without completely resetting all subsequent tabs
- no way to preview all tabs
- now way to print just tabs
- no linewrap or image support
- font can not be changed after creation

Xerox announced new partnership with OpenText, makers of Captaris RightFax, to offer the document management software solutions. OpenText currently supports 20,000 active fax servers.

Xerox makes big news when it announced it acquired Affiliated Computer Services Inc. (ACS). Details:
- Total purchase price of $6.4 billion (Xerox’s largest acquisition ever)
- Purchase price made up of Xerox buying each ACS share for $18.60 in cash and 4.935 Xerox shares, for an approximate total of $63.11 per ACS share, or 34% more than ACS’s stock was trading for
- Xerox also is now responsible for $2 billion in ACS debt
- According to InfoTrends; “Xerox will not likely be able to make any other large investments in the near to mid-term. Xerox may have to limit its investments in R&D. In many respects,
Xerox can’t afford to fail.”
- Xerox’s total annual service revenue will now be $10 billion per year
(compared to last year’s $3.5 billion, of which only $300 million was on process outsourcing)
- Xerox’s total revenue overall will be $22 billion per year worldwide
- It hopes for cost savings of $400 million 3 years after the purchase.
- Will be run as a separate division, with former ACS CEO, Mr. Lynn Blodgett, reporting to Xerox’s CEO, Ms. Ursula Burns. It will be called “ACS, a Xerox company”
- Lynn Blodgett & brother Jim formed Unibase Technology of Sandy, UT in 1985
- Unibase sold out to ACS in 1996
- ACS was founded 21 years ago (1998) by Darwin Deason to serve banking industry.
- ACS is based in Dallas, Texas and was ranked 401 on the Fortune 500 list
- ACS ranked 22nd on Fortune’s top performing stocks
- ACS has 74,000 employees with 500 locations in 100 countries.
(28,324 in the U.S. and 31,035 offshore)
- In contrast, Xerox has 54,000 employees worldwide. (does not include employees of Fuji of Japan which makes most Xerox branded equipment)
- ACS has 14 data centers total located in Dallas (TX), Bangalore (India) and Monterrey (Mexico)
- ACS provides technology used to run the E-ZPass electronic toll system in the U.S.
- In December of 2008, ACS was found by a Dallas judge to be illegally operating automated traffic ticketing machines without a proper license
- In March 2007, ACS was accused of vandalizing traffic speed cameras in Washington DC after it lost the contract to a competitor
- In 2006, ACS faced bribery charges in Canada, after police officers accepted lavish gifts from the company, including travel, sports tickets and female escort services – in return to a recommendation that ACS be given a no bid, $90 million photo ticketing contract.
- ACS also manages administrative operations for multiple arms of the U.S. government
- 40% of ACS’s revenue comes from government contracts
- 90% of ACS’s new contracts last year were business process outsourcing from other firms
- Xerox estimates that the business process outsourcing market is $150 billion per year.
- ACS is the largest provider of managed services to governments in the U.S.
with more than 1700 customers.
- 25% of ACS’s revenue comes from healthcare industry (primarily Medicaid contracts for 15 states) which it expects to grow as the government pushes electronic medical records (EMR) systems
- Deadline from federal government for EMR is 2015.
- 92% of ACS’s revenue is from U.S.
- ACS is also the U.S.’s large student loan processor
- ACS’s total revenue last year was $6.5 billion, a 5.9% increase over previous year
- In contrast, Xerox posted declines for last 4 quarters
- ACS’s profit last year was $350 million
- ACS has made nearly 100 acquisitions over last 20 years.
- ACS’s stock was originally trading at $47.25 per share, while Xerox’s was $8.23 per share
- Before acquisition, Xerox had $1.22 billion in cash and $6.7 billion in debt
- ACS has 80% of revenue in business process outsourcing and 20% on information technology outsourcing
- Sales of IT services in U.S. grew 8.2% in 2008 to $806 billion according to Gartner.
- Xerox felt pressure after Hewlett Packard had bought Electronic Data Systems (EDS for $13.2 billion) and Dell Computer had purchased Perot Systems (for $3.9 billion).
- When asked why Xerox bought ACS, Ursula Burns said; “Customers are saying – We need help with the entire document infrastructure. We’ve got the technology piece of the back office and the technology piece of automation. We need help with the information piece. By combining Xerox’s strengths in document technology with ACS’s expertise in managing and automating work processes, we’re creating a new class of solution provider. A game-changer for Xerox, acquiring ACS helps us expand our business and benefit from stronger revenue and earnings growth.
The way we were going was going to take 10 years (to transform from a product company into a service provider). The path we were on wouldn’t have given us the scale fast enough.”
- Lynn Blodgett said; “ACS continues focusing on our core capabilities, including transactional business processing, customer care, information technology and human resources. These capabilities touch millions of lives every day through governments and commercial enterprises around the world. We are committed to providing significant value for both our clients and stockholders. We also know that for ACS to expand globally and differentiate our offerings through technology, we need a partner with tremendous brand strength and leading innovation. Xerox offers that and more to bring our business to the next level while strengthening theirs.”
- Xerox claims that it previously shared only 20% of its customers with ACS.
- Xerox claims that ACS is primarily a U.S. based company, and most of growth for ACS will come from Europe, Asia and South America.
- The two main competitors to ACS in this market left are Accenture Ltd. and Computer Sciences Corp.
(are they up for grabs as well?) Others in this market space are IBM Global Services, HP Enterprise Services, Deloitte, Unisys, Sourcecorp & Hewitt Associates.
- Computer Sciences Corp. is the manager of networks for NASA and the U.S. Navy, and is based in Falls Church, VA. 35% of its revenue is from government contracts.
- Accenture has a market value of $27.8 billion with 180,000 employees
- Hewitt Associates, based in Lincolnshire, IL, is worth $3.38 billion
- Other smaller firms are Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp, CGI Group Inc.
and Sapient Corp.
- Other firms looking at acquiring services companies are Cisco Corp and Oracle Corp.
- Oracle is currently closing a $7.4 billion deal for Sun Microsystems Inc.
- Standard & Poor’s will cut Xerox’s corporate credit rating to BBB-.
- ACS tried to sell itself 2 years ago to private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management
- 5 months ago ACS took over computer operations of Novell Inc. of Provo, UT.

What do other think about this acquisition? Here are comments from the Gerson Lehman Group, financial advisors in Business Week magazine:
“will end up further de-focusing the company’s core business as well as the weakening of ACS’s competitiveness in the marketplace”
- “Xerox’s big bet on services with the ACS acquisition is not likely to be successful”
- “Xerox has failed miserable in financial services sector by acquiring several large financial services firms in the early 1980s (Van Kemp Merrit…….and others costing many billions around 1983)”
- “mixing ACS with Xerox’s main line business is like mixing oil & water”
- “will result in ACS losing market competitiveness and market share as well as decline
in its gross margin”

Less than 48 hours after the Xerox/ACS announced, some shareholders filed a lawsuit to stop it in the Delaware Court of Chancery.
- Contends that officers and directors of ACS breached their duty of loyalty
- Claim that executives of ACS were conflicted because of approximately $16 million to be paid to them
- Former founder Darwin Deason supposedly receive an extra $300 million in Xerox stock

-=Good Selling=-

Copier Sales "Cold Calling"

To tell you the truth, I dreaded going to the office today, it was another telemarketing day and we had to start at calling at 9AM! Drats, I thought all the way to the office, who the heck is gonna want to talk to me on Monday morning!! What a ride it took me almost 90 minutes to go 27 miles. Guess I can't stop for coffee anymore.

I made it just in the nick of time or at least I thought I did, I rolled in at 8:50AM, only to find out that I had to be there prior to 8:30AM Dam!

So, off I went 18 calls the first hour, 19 calls the second hour, 18 calls the third hour, yeah lunch break! After lunch I made another nineteen calls. Count em NINE appointments! WHOAAA!

Mind you I had to push to some of them, however I've got an additional nine accounts to visit and nine additional opportunities for this month. I gotta keep this short, too much work tonight and have to be back for additional product info in the AM. For all of you rooks out there. Ya gotta make those calls, after 29 years in the business, I too forget that you've gotta make at least 100 cold calls a week.

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Indsutry Notes 10/1/09

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

Apple Computer is reportedly working on a product to compete with net book computers. The rumored new Apple Tablet, would possibly offer:
- price tag of $599
- resemble larger version of Apple iPod Touch
- surf the Web
- play movies
- Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, predicts Apple could sell 2 million of the new product

In the new Microsoft operating system, Windows 7, is placed a fully licensed copy of XP operating system running in a virtual machine, allowing any program that absolutely has to run in XP, to do so at near native speed.

Former Microsoft executive, Michelle Hodges, has joined document management software company ReadSoft, as its Director of Channel Sales.

Fedex Office (fka Kinko’s), the print for pay chain, announced its last quarter revenues were down 12%. It also launched a web-to-print solution, allowing end users to place their print orders on-line, called the Fedex Office Design & Print Center.

Pantone, a division of X-Rite Corp, announced a new application for the Apple iPhone. Called, myPANTONE, end users can take a picture using the iPhone, and the software will match it up with the closest Pantone color. The company also confirmed that former Ricoh executive, Ron Potesky, is now Pantone’s Senior Vice President & General Manager. Prior to Ricoh, Ron worked 7 years for Canon.

Treeno Software, maker of enterprise content management (ECM) software, announced a new module that allows it to integrate with Salesforce.com, a customer relationship management system.

Dell Computer fights back against Hewlett Packard. Not to be outdone by arch rival HP buying Electronic Data Systems (EDS, founded by Ross Perot), Dell spent $3.9 billion to buy Perot Systems, which also was founded by Ross Perot. This will allow Dell to gain ground in the services businesses, including managed print services.

Kodak announced that is Creo IC-304 Plus print server has been approved and licensed by Pantone Corp. for use with Konica Minolta bizhub PRO C65hc production color system.

Kodak completed its acquisition of Bowe Bell & Howell (BBH) scanners:
- 50 employees were retained
- BBH had just released new scanners that use LED lighting
- One of BBH’s largest customers is Fedex, which has 2,000 of its scanners
- Kodak now has a product range from 20ppm to 400ppm
- MSRPs range from $495 to $99,995

Kodak announced it will offer software from MMR Information Systems Inc. as a bundling option with its scanner. MMR’s MyMedicalRecords software allows doctors to manage their electronic patient records.

Riso announced a new option for its high speed color inkjet printers. Details:
- Riso AR9100 option handles from 4”x6” to 10”x13” envelopes
- Handles card stocks up to 8.5” x 5.5”, and up to 110lb. index in weight
- Since there is no heated fuser section, it can handle window envelopes,
as the wax paper windows will not melt
- Base MSRP of $6295.00
- Works with the Olympus made Riso HC5500 and ComColor series

According to research firm, Qoucirca, only 20% of enterprises are using some type of managed print services.

A leading healthcare industry supply contracting company awarded a 3 year managed print services contract to WorkflowOne of Dayton, Ohio. Novation has more than 2500 members, including VHA, Inc., University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) and connected to the 14,000 members of Provista, LLC. The contract is expected to produce $1.5 billion over the course of the contract. The contract also includes forms, labels and marketing collateral.

Former Hewlett Packard executive claims his former employer spied on him. Karl Kamb Jr., formerly HP VP of Business Development & Strategy, claims that HP hired private investigators to impersonate him in order to obtain confidential home & cell phone records. He also claims that when he was at HP, the company ordered him to uncover details of rival Dell Computer printer products.

HP announced it won a 7 year managed print services contract from S.A. Vale, a large mining company with headquarters in Brazil.

HP’s CFO, Cathie Lesjak, told financial analysts that she expects the company to grow 3-5% in 2010, but printer and MFP sales only up 2%.

An interview with Hewlett Packard executive Tom Codd, Director of Enterprise Marketing, revealed more info on its new Canon relationship:
- “As the alliance with Canon evolves, HP will assess the possible extension into the channel space. This could include, but not be limited to, some select OPS partners that will be designated as agents”
- “Canon will provide servicing and support for their full range of MFDs. HP will remain the initial point of contact for the customer in support, break/fix and supplies replenishment situations”
- “Canon service personnel will be dispatched for the actual support work”
- “HP continues to sell the CM8060 and CM8050 MFPs with Edgeline Technology”

A major chain of print for pay franchises gives Konica Minolta a coveted award. Allegra Network (Allegra Print & Imaging, American Speedy Printing, Insty-Prints, Zippy Print, Speedy Printing, etc.) gave out its “Supplier of the Year” award to KMBS. Tim Wood, VP of Technology for Allegra said KMBS won the award because:
- “Receiving this award shows a dedication not only from the corporate staff at Konica Minolta but more importantly the technicians in the field”
- “Konica Minolta has put together a very strong program for our system and it is good to see this hard work is being recognized”

A man who invented way to make an inkjet printer assemble living human cells into skin, is awarded $900,000 in a court case. Researcher, Robert Kiebe, won a trial that forces his current employer, University of Texas Health Science Center, after a jury found that UTHSC caused him mental anguish after it tried to push him out of the University and profit from his invention.

According to Paystream Advisors:
- only 45% of Fortune 1000 companies have invested in document imaging systems for invoices.
- 44% don’t use OCR for invoices at all.
- Only 16% use OCR for more than 40% of their invoices

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) announced new reporting rules that may impact the industry:
- FASB changed its requirements concerning companies that report the revenue of hybrid products, or “vertically integrated stack of hardware, software and service to customers” over
the life span of the product.
- Under previous rules, companies had to amortize hardware, software and services over eight quarters or a two-year period, which meant recognizing only 1/8 at a time (12.5%).
- Under new rules, hardware can be recognized immediately while software and service still amortized over life of product.
- Most firms will have to wait until fiscal years that start after 6/15/2010 to use the revisions.

According the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the high-tech industry shed 115,000 jobs between January and June of this year. From June of 2008, through June 2009, the total loss is 224,100 jobs.

Lenovo Group, which purchased IBM’s PC unit in 2005, announced a $16 million quarterly loss due to slow economy.

Okidata announced it is partnering with Dalian University of Technology in China to establish a joint research center on future print technology. One of the projects it will work on is an automatic printer connect to WiFi.

Kofax, maker of scanning/document management software, announced it has purchased ISV 170 Systems of Boston, MA., which develops workflow software for invoice processing. Purchase price was $32.9 million, and the acquired company had 150 customers (i.e. ADT, Con Agra Foods, etc.), primarily those using Oracle or SAP.

Kofax also announced a promo where it bundles its entry level “Kofax Express” software with selected Fujitsu scanners.

Panasonic stated it will suffer a loss of $574 million for its fiscal first quarter due to drop in demand.

According to PrintAudit, the following is to be considered when selling managed print services:
- 42% of global wood harvest is dedicated to paper production
- 5.4 million tons of paper are consumed annually by U.S. companies
- Up to $1000 per year is spent per employee for printing/copying
- 10,000 pages per year on average is printed by employees
- It would cost $150,000 to fill your car’s gas tank with inkjet ink

-=Good Selling=-

Selling Copiers "A Week in the Life of Copier Sales" Thursday

Thursday

Today was cold call blitz day! Traveled to the office (which I hate to do) and then sat in on our conference call to get us charged for the day. Today, I was paired with a manufacturer’s representative and our job was to go out and cold call accounts! My territory is about 30 miles from the home office and we arrived at a pre-planned designation by about 10:00AM.

Over the years when I cold called, I was all about handing out brochures, literature just about anything that would burn. This time was different, after speaking with a good friend of mine in Southern Cal; I decided to change it up. Well, it worked!

We hit about 50 places in the span of 5 hours, only got one rude person and let me tell you that's a bonus in New Jersey. We spoke with at least five decision makers and got at least three warm leads where I could call and set an appointment!

So, what did I do that's different? Send me and email and I'll tell you, however you'll also have to be a member or become a member of the Print4Pay Hotel.


-=Good Selling=-

This Week in Ricoh "TWIR Notes"

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

IKON, a division of Ricoh, announced it has sold a Ricoh Aficio PRO C900 production color laser system to an AlphaGraphics location in Fort Worth, Texas.

Ricoh has filed a lawsuit against Okidata. Apparently, the two have been negotiating since 2006 in regards to use of patents that Ricoh claims are used in Okidata MFPs and printers. Ricoh claims that 8 of its patents are involved, and the lawsuit seeks to stop sales of Okidata MFPs and printers in the U.S., unless Okidata pays the license fees.

Ricoh announced it has certified, and will offer an embedded software solution from Notable Solutions Inc. (NSI)
- Offering the new NSI AutoStore 5.0
- Allows documents scanned into Ricoh Aficio MFPs to be automatically routed
- OCR on the fly

Ricoh’s CEO, Shiro Kondo, announced the company’s support of the Copenhagen Communique on Climate Change (i.e. global warming prevention)

Ricoh’s InfoPrint division (formerly a division of IBM) announced it now offers a full line of variable data, and transpromo solutions to bundle with its printers and MFPs, including products from following software firms:

- Enfocus
- GMC
- IoFlex
- Objectif Lune
- Press-Sense
- Rochester Software Associates (RSA)
- Ultimate

Ricoh now shipping the BK5010e Production Booklet Maker option for its production print devices featuring:

- Actually made by Plockmatic Corp.
- Can be on-line or off-line
- Can make booklets for up to 30 sheets (20lb. bond)
- Optional BF5010e Book Fold Unit provides a square fold to booklet
- Staples are 5000 per cartridge for $102.00
- Handles up to 12”x18” paper
- Optional TR5010e Trimmer has air jets to assist with trim waste

-=Good Selling=-

Ricoh Introduces New Production Printers

This was posted on the Print4Pay Hotel Message Boards today. I added a few items for everyone. Enjoy!

The Ricoh Pro 907/1107/1307 series was officially released last week. This is the new, print only version of the Katana series and it's targeted at Data Centers. It's co-developed with both Ricoh and Hitachi technology.

With it's release, the Pro 1357 becomes Ricoh's flagship monochrome printer. Effective immediately, the Pro 907 and the Pro 1107 replace the DDP 92. The DDP 70e is now discontinued.

In comparison to the DDP models, these new products offer stacker options. These stacker options lend themselves very well to the Data Center marketplace.

Although the print only version of the Pro 907/1107/1357 is very similar to the copy version, there are some notable differences. Here's a brief summary of the major differences:

*New DC (Data Center) Print Controller for the print only series (features dual CPUs to drive the engines at rated speeds)
*MICR Printing will be supported by the end of the year on the Pro 1357 (MICR Printing on the Pro 907/1107 will be available 30-60 days later)
*The Ring Binder and Perfect Binder options are not available for the print only series
*The Fiery and MicroPress options are not available for the printer series

What's New!

There's a new Multi-folding Unit (FD 5000, which will accomdate six different folding patterns, locking paper tray and stacking trays, MICR Toner, standard De-Curl Unit, DC (Data Center) Conntroller, and IPDS.

Want more it's all on the Print4Pay Hotel!

-=Good Selling=-

Copier Sales "Polling Copier Sales People"

We've go three new polls posted on the Print4Pay Hotel's message boards. Take a trip the polls and cast your vote for:

Poll #1: Soup to Nuts, low end, high end, MFP's, Printers, Scanners, Fax (has anyone sold a fax in the last year, not me) Wide Format! Who has the BEST product line?

Poll #2: It's GO time for finding business, you've got everything ready, business cards, pressed shirt, tie, shined shoes, breath mints and then........What do you do? When you see the NO SOLICITING SIGN?

Poll #3: Survey Says, when getting new business what works best for you? When getting new business what works best for you?

Poll #4: Closing Skills Poll!

In order to take the polls you need to be a member, it's free, take a trip here p4photel to the largest group of copier professionals in the world!

-=Good Selling=-

This Week in Canon "TWIC Notes"

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

Another Canon attempt to diversify from copiers and cameras has failed? Apparently, Canon attempted to enter the high end lithography business for use in LCD and computer chip production. The company installed a $90 million 193nm immersion tool in 2007, and is reported to be having technical problems with the machine. It is trying to enter a market dominated by Nikon of Japan, and ASML of the Netherlands.

More details emerge about the new Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE MFPs:
- apparently end users can change the wallpaper of the MFP’s touch screen LCD display
- can personalize their printing workflows
- new Advanced imageCHIP system means that copiers have two processors inside, one for image processing and one for information processing
- full color 8.4” SVGA TFT LCD touch screen control panel on some models and 10.4” on others
- support up to 300gsm on some models
- Advanced Box allows jobs to be stored on hard drive
- Software options that are part of the imageRUNNER ADVANCE Essentials package:
- “Desktop” is a client based device dashboard application to manage print operations
- “Tracker” is a cost recovery tool
- “Composer” allows customizing multi-step workflow functions into a single button
- integration with Microsoft SharePoint
- “Remote” allows for auto submission of meter reads and service call submission
- “Enterprise Management Console” to monitor activity of fleet
- 1200x1200dpi
- use “pQ” toner without need of fuser oil
- PostScript will be an option for the built-in generic controllers, and offer Fiery as alternative
- C9075 has base MSRP of $50,000
- C9065 has base MSRP of $40,000
- C7065 has base MSRP of $35,000
- C7055 has base MSRP of $28,000
- C5051 has base MSRP of $18,500
- C5045 has base MSRP of $17,000
- C5035 has base MSRP of $12,400
- C5030 has base MSRP of $11,400

Canon launched imageWARE Document Server offering:- Check In/Check Out
- Version Control
- Full Text Search
- Audit Trail
- User Index Search
- Developed using Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services

Canon launched uniFLOW 4.0 Output Manager featuring:- Universal print driver
- Interactive rule based print job routing
- Authorization workflow
- eCopy Secure Print Client
- web job submission/ticketing
- comprehensive queue management
- prepress make ready
- document security options

Canon announced it will spend $270 million to steamline design and product data systems throughout the company in 2010, by consolidating its two 3D CAD systems and standardize those for managing product data.

Note from Art: This is reposted from the P4P Hotel, sometimes it dead on and sometimes not. If you see something thats not correct shoot a comment to me, otherwise as always my mother always told "believe nothing of what you read and only half of what you see" LOL


-=Good Selling=-

Xerox to Acquire Affiliated Computer Services

NORWALK, Conn. and DALLAS, Sept. 28, 2009 -- Xerox Corporation (NYSE: XRX) and Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (NYSE: ACS) today announced a definitive agreement for Xerox to acquire ACS in a cash and stock transaction valued at $63.11 per share or $6.4 billion as of the closing price of Xerox stock on Sept. 25. This acquisition will transform Xerox into the leading global enterprise for document and business process management, and will accelerate its growth in an expanding market.
The world's largest diversified business process outsourcing (BPO) firm, ACS is a $6.5 billion company with revenue growth of 6 percent and new business signings of $1 billion in annual recurring revenue during its fiscal 2009.

"By combining Xerox's strengths in document technology with ACS's expertise in managing and automating work processes, we're creating a new class of solution provider," said Ursula M. Burns, Xerox chief executive officer. "A game-changer for Xerox, acquiring ACS helps us expand our business and benefit from stronger revenue and earnings growth.

"Xerox becomes a $22 billion global company, of which $17 billion is recurring revenue - a significant boost to our profitable annuity stream," she added. "The revenue we generate from services will triple from $3.5 billion in 2008 to an estimated $10 billion next year."

Under the terms of the agreement, go here for rest of press release


-=good selling=-

This Week in Xerox "TWIC"

Two former members of the famed Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) were honored guests recently at the University of Texas (UT) in Austin, TX. UT alumnus, Bob Taylor, spoke to students about his work at PARC and how his team developed computer networking in 1970. UT President Bill Powers announced that one of Bob’s former employees had created a $100,000 graduate scholarship in his honor. The former employee, Charles Simonyi, took his work at PARC, and left to help Microsoft develop MS Word & Excel.


When Xerox launched the ColorQube color wax copier, it engaged 30 employees to visit blogs to drive interest in the product. They also monitor negative comments about the device, and respond back on the web to counter the negative info.

In an effort to cut costs, Xerox announced it is switching its auto fleet from 6 cylinder to 4 cylinder company cars for its technicians. It also will be giving them all GPS, as it found that using GPS resulted in another service call per day, and up to 30% increase in work volume, due to the knowledge that they were being monitored.

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Indsutry Notes 9/25/09

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

- Hewlett Packard, responding to customer complaints, announced it will offer print drivers for its printers and MFPs so they will work with the new Apple Macintosh Snow Leopard operating system.

- Hewlett Packard claims it now has 5,000 Indigo production color systems in operation worldwide. It will also offer white liquid toner as an option in selected models.

- Hewlett Packard claims that its “Printing Payback Guarantee” promotion (where it guarantees the savings advertised after conducting a managed print services assessment) is a success, and resulted in 100 new contracts within 2 weeks of the promo launch.

- Hewlett Packard’s EDS division announced that it won an $8.1 million bid from the Department of Defense to upgrade their Health Information Management System.

- Hewlett Packard reported its last quarter’s financials for its printer/MFP division, known as IPG:
- consumer hardware units sales down 16%
- LaserJet unit sales down 42%
- Total hardware unit sales down 23%
- Color LaserJet units sales down 41%
- MFP sales down 38%
- Printer supply revenue down 13%
- Indigo page volumes up 16%

- Samsung of Korea captured 23.4% of the market for A4 sized machines in the second quarter of 2009, according to IDC. This makes Samsung the largest maker of devices that print on letter/legal size paper. Note from Art: Told ya so!, I've been harping on this for years and now Sammy has a strong foot in the door, whose business are they going to take? If the big guns dont't bring out A4 45,55,65 & 75ppm systems, Samsung will all but own this segment of the market.
Details:
- Regained the top position for first time since first quarter of 2006
- In Europe, had 35.1% marketshare for color laser MFPs and 26.9% for b/w MFPs
- Dominated Italy for b/w laser printers was 39.7%
- b/w laser MFPs = 47.7%
- color laser printers = 45.6%
- color laser MFPs = 52.3%
- IDC projects that laser engines will outperform inkjet worldwide
- Samsung plans to produce lineup of high speed, mid-to-large scale industrial printers
- Samsung’s printer/MFP division led by Y.H. Park, Senior VP

- The National Association of Quick Printers (NAQP) has selected Konica Minolta as winner of the 2009 Association Hall of Fame Award. In order to win this award:
- Demonstrated consistent customer service
- Professionalism and integrity
- Quality of products that benefit the industry (print for pay)
- Innovative products that meet current and evolving needs of customers
- Problem solving sales, service and support staff members who consistently exceed the needs and expectations of customers
- Consistently sought to advance the competitiveness of quick and small commercial printer
- “Konica Minolta Business Solutions USA has stepped up in a big way this past year to offer high quality, very competitive digital printing solutions” “Equally important, they have backed their products with first rate service.”

- Oce’ won “Must See ‘Em” awards at the PRINT 09 trade show in Chicago for the Oce’ JetStream production color inkjet system and the Oce’ VarioPrint b/w production LED system.

- Oce’ announced it will relabel a Creo print servce, and call it the Oce’ PRISMAcolorworks” for the Oce’ ColorTream 10000 rollfed production color system. Pricing unannounced.

- Barclays Capital predicts that Xerox will “make significant share repurchases next year” to boost its stock value.

- Google Corp. announced it has purchased an Expresso Book Machine for its headquarters in Mountain View, CA. Details:
- Can manufacture a paperback-bound books inline
- Top speed of 5 minutes per 300 page book
- Made by OnDemand Books, and uses a Xerox MFP as its print engine
- Google will sell the OnDemand books for $8 each

- Okidata now shipping three new desktop A4 b/w MFPs, the MB260mfp, MB280mfp and MB290mfp. Details:
- Actual maker unknown
- 100MHz processor
- 600x600dpi
- MB260mfp & MB280mfp offer GDI printing only
- MF290mfp offers PCL & PostScript print drivers
- MB280mfp and MB290mfp both have a document feeder
- All can copy/scan/fax/print
- MSRPs of $249.99, $299.99 & $399.99

- Kodak announced it has sold three NexPress S3000 production color systems to Lifetouch National School Studios in Chicago, IL. They will be used to produce school yearbooks nationwide.

- MindFireInc., maker of variable data software, announced a new option called “MarketFire”, which will allow printshops to create, track, analyze and improve cross-media marketing campaigns. Pricing unannounced.
- microsite authoring tools
- flexible rules and trigger based events
- prospect centric data view
- analytical dashboard for reporting and tracking
- Mac and PC compatible

- CPS Printing of Carlsbad, CA announced it has invested in Pageflex Storefront web-to-print software to expand its offerings.

- Xante’ of Alabama announced it received a Pantone license for its Ilumina desktop color LED printer, which is actually made by Okidata.

- Agfa of Germany announced the otrix Modular color inkjet UV production system. Details:
- top speed of 6,300 feet per hour
- rollfed system
- can supposedly match 90% of all Pantone colors
- pricing not announced

- In order to attract attention to its large booth at the recent PRINT 09 show in Chicago, Agfa setup full color, cardboard cutouts of people, to make it look like its booth was busy.

- The Illinois Attorney General’s office has agreed to join the FBI into investigating how a school in Belleville, IL ended up being sued by 7 lease companies, when it thought it only had a lease for two copiers from one leasing company. Governor French Academy claims that it leased two copiers from Kevin Welch, and now the lease companies claim it has a total of 14 copiers on lease.

- XMPie won a “Encore Worth-a-look” award at the PRINT 09 show for its uStore 3.5 web to print software solution.

- Epson is suing a company in Portland, OR, named Green Project, which collects old Epson ink cartridges, takes them to China, cracks-off their tops, refills them with ink, and brings them back to the U.S. to sell for less than new Epson cartridges.

- Cartridge World, a business headquartered in Emeryville, CA, announced that its toner and ink cartridge refilling business is up 16.3% in the poor economy. It claims that its store across the U.S. have refilled 9 million cartridges last year.

- At a recent conference of IT executives, a presenter, Robert DeMarzo of Everything Channel, asked for those in the large audience if they planned to upgrade to Microsoft Windows 7 by end of 2010, only one third raised their hands.

- UPS announced that it will launch a new web portal to allow end users to place print orders that are fulfilled by one of its 4,000 UPS Store locations. This will be the largest on-line printing network in the U.S. when up and running. For more info, visit www.theupsstore.com/print

- Adobe reported its last quarter’s financials:
- Revenue of $697 million, down from $887 million last year
- Operating income of $167 million compared with $219 million last year
- Net income of $136 million compared with $191 million last year

- Adobe announced it will acquire Omniture for $1.8 billion. The company makes Web analytics and measurement tools, so it can analyze how Website visitors interact with a site’s content.

- Kyocera announced that it has developed the world’s fastest inkjet printhead. Details:
- Named “KJ4 Series”
- Ejects up to 60,000 dots per second per nozzle
- 2,656 nozzles per head
- Up to 150 million dots ejected per printhead
- 60kHz drive frequency
- Up to 1200x1200dpi
- Printhead width of 4.25”
- unknown what inkjet printer maker will use this printhead

- Punch Graphix of Belgium announced that it has sold five of its Xeikon 8000 production color systems to Strategic Content Imaging, Inc., of Itasca, IL. Details of the 8000:
- Uses LED instead of laser
- Has 8 drums and images both sides of paper at same time (CMYK times two)
- 1200x1200dpi
- 4 bits per pixel
- 244ppm top speed full color
- 8.5 million pages per month max duty cycle
- Handles up to 16point stock
- Rollfed, up to 20.1” wide paper
- Uses PA toner technology
- SCI will use the systems for its digital book printing

- Lexmark announced it will offer an embedded version of FollowMe Printing software from Ringdale Inc. for some of its laser MFPs.

- Toshiba launched the VP-P450 color printer. Details:
- desktop device that prints passports
- laminates after printing
- uses thermal printing technology
- uses the ePassport software
- encodes IC-chips with the passport holder’s biometric data
- pricing not announced

- Polek & Polek of Fairfield, NJ announced that they are now offering generic toner that works in the Toshiba eSTUDIO 523, 603, 723 and 853 b/w MFPs.

- Document Network Technology won a copier bid from Litchfield School District in the Hillsboro, Illinois area. Details:
- Includes 3.2 million b/w copiers per year
- Winning price was $34.476 per year
- 5 year cpc lease
- 30 day cancellation clause

- Kodak announced that it sold $400 million worth of secured notes to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) in exchange for two seats on Kodak’s board of directors. Kodak also agreed to issue KKR warrants to purchase up to 53 million shares. The company also plans on offer $300 million of notes due in 2017 to institutional buyers.

- 5 men in Toronto, Canada were arrested by police after they were found with more than $1 million worth of inkjet and laser cartridges that were stolen from a local Lexmark warehouse. The product was on 32 skids in two separate locations.

- Two local school children, ages 10 and 11, were caught making fake $20 bills on a color copier in Pratt, West Virginia, near Charleston. The U.S. Secret Service let the boys off with a stern warning.

- Nukote International, maker of refilled printer cartridges, is suing Office Depot for $217 million for breach of contract.

-=Good Selling=-

Top Ten Blog Countries for P4P Hotel

It blew me away when I saw this, in order are all of the countries where the Print4Pay Hotel has members as well as readers!!! Thank You!!


Listed in order of Top to bottom:

United States
Canada
United Kingdom
Japan
Australia
India
Germany
Netherlands
Singapore
South Africa
France
Italy
Spain
Thailand
Korea, Republic of (KR)
Belgium
Poland
Sweden
Malaysia
New Zealand
Brazil
Philippines
China
Mexico
Greece
Portugal
Ireland
United Arab Emirates
Russian Federation
Romania
Turkey
Hong Kong
Switzerland
Indonesia
Asia/Pacific Region
Finland
Denmark
Norway
Macedonia
Israel
Argentina
Taiwan
Hungary
Pakistan
Bulgaria
Austria
Egypt
Colombia
Croatia
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Iran, Islamic Republic of
Serbia
Jordan
Saudi Arabia
Peru
Vietnam
Cyprus
Slovenia
Puerto Rico
Jamaica
Ukraine
Malta
Lithuania
Nigeria
Chile
Venezuela
Morocco
Algeria
Kuwait
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Latvia
Estonia
Qatar
Sri Lanka
Barbados
Yemen
Panama
Trinidad and Tobago
Kenya
Bangladesh
Palestinian Territory
Dominican Republic
Honduras
Lebanon
Bahrain
Costa Rica
Moldova, Republic of
Belarus
Luxembourg
Ecuador
Brunei Darussalam
Uganda
Guatemala
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
Mongolia
Albania
Sudan
Montenegro
El Salvador
Oman
Bermuda
Zambia
Maldives
Djibouti
Bolivia
Macau
Tunisia
Cayman Islands
Mauritius
Nepal
Bahamas
Haiti
Aruba
Angola
Iceland
Uruguay
Virgin Islands, British
Netherlands Antilles
Grenada
Iraq
Cote D'Ivoire
Namibia
Cambodia
Azerbaijan
Reunion
Virgin Islands, U.S.
Armenia
Comoros
Seychelles
French Guiana
Fiji
Botswana
Antigua and Barbuda
Lao People's Democratic Republic
Georgia
Saint Lucia
Mali
Paraguay
Aland Islands
Tonga
Greenland
Faroe Islands
Bhutan
Syrian Arab Republic
Ghana
San Marino
Gambia
Dominica
Kazakstan
Anguilla
Guam
Uzbekistan
French Polynesia
Tanzania, United Republic of
Suriname
Ethiopia
Zimbabwe

-=Good Selling=-

Xerox Monitors Social Media with ColorQube Launch

It's what I do, every night instead of watching the tube, I'll cruise through my google alerts and then do some searching with google.

It had been a few months since I did a google on the Print4Pay Hotel (I can remember a few years ago there would only be 3 pages of links and now there too many to count!), anyway I ran across this document from Xerox called " Xerox ColorQube Public and Analyst Relations Debrief Dashboard" dated from June 9th of 2009.

Here's some info from that document:

Prior to the launch Xerox had engaged 30 Xerox employee bloggers were pre-disclosed to help drive buzz about the launch, however they were also there to monitor negative tweets, blog posts and comments. Once a negative comment or blog post was found marketing people at Xerox would post fast responses to the negative information. I for one can attest that the Print4Pay Hotel's "MFP Solutions" blog on the ColorQube had the rapid responses, what I didn't know, but I had a suspicion is that the commenter's were actually Xerox marketing people. Now, I don't have a problem with them touting their stuff, however it seemed to me like they were pretending to be normal "joes" commenting on the subject matter. With Blogger you can click on a profile, I did just that with two of the commenter's and their wasn't any profile on either of them, turns out document I picked up was actually created by one of the commenter's on this blog. Yea never know who's reading your stuff!

Comments were made on a number of blogs such as Technologizer, WSJ Blog, Print4Pay Hotel's MFP Solutions Blog, Gizmodo and BoingBoing.

The most sited sites were:

WSJ Digits Blog, Oh Gizmo!, InHabitat, Tech Chee, BoingBoing, Green Biz and Print4Pay Hotel's "MFP Solutions Blog"

Stories/Post with the Most Comments:

Digg: InHabitat (May 14, 2009)
Gizmodo (May 9, 2009)
BoingBoing (May 7, 2009)
WSJ Digits Blog (May 6, 2009)
ZDNet Green Blog (May 11, 2009)
BetaNews.com (May 7, 2009)
The Death of the Copier (May 11, 2009)
Print4Pay Hotel’s “MFP Solutions Blog” (May 11, 2009)
InHabitat (May 14, 2009)

Total Coverage:

100 plus blogs and articles

52% Positive Reaction
20% Neutral
19% Balanced
9% Negative (Guess that was me and a few others not believing the hype)

Plus Xerox claims that they tracked over 300 tweets during the launch period.

All in all it seems Xerox went to a lot of effort to monitor what social media is saying, more and more it seems social media is becoming the "go to place". Social Media outlets give you the down and dirty, the good the bad and the ugly and more and more people want to read "what everyone is talking about"

Well, I had alot of fun with the document and if you would like a copy please email me at art@p4photel.com, btw you'll have to become a member of the Print4Pay Hotel, don't worry it's free and their is some awesome information for all!

-=Good Selling=-

This Week in Xerox 9/20/09

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

- Xerox announced it will offer MICR (magnetic image character recognition) toner versions of the Nuvera 200 and 288MX production b/w laser systems for high volume check printing applications.

- Xerox won several awards at the PRINT 09 show:
- “Worth-a-look” for a Xerox iGen4 production color system bundled with a Stora Enso Gallop to produce color packaging
- “Encore Must See Em” for iGen4/Fiery system
- “Worth-a-look” for DocuColor 7002/8002 systems
- “Encore Worth-a-look” for Xerox 700 color system
- “Must See ‘Em” for Xerox 1300 Continuous Feed b/w system
- Must See ‘Em” for Xerox Nuvera 288EA
- “Worth-a-look” for Xerox 490/980 Continuous Feed color systems

- Xerox launched the Continuous Feed 4-over-1 Solution featuring:
- Bundles a Xerox 490 Color Continuous Feed Printer and a Xerox 650 B/W Continuous Feed Printer
- High speed printing of 4 color on one side and b/w on other
- Aimed at the transpromo market for high speed, high volume customer invoice printing
- According to Xerox, already has its first system sold to a large financial services company
- Uses proprietary flash fusing (instead of a heather fuser roller, uses a micro-burst of light to heat and melt toner to paper)
- No fuser oil needed (unlike Xerox DocuColor 8002 or the iGen4)
- Pricing not announced

- Xerox has expanded the options it offers to instruct its print for pay customers on how to sell and market the output from its production color systems. Details:
- Called the “Xerox ProfitAccelerator” solution packages
- Either sold separately, or bundled in with a Xerox production print system
- New options include:
- “Ad Agency Market Guide” to help printshops target ad agencies and design service providers
- “Profiting Through Personalization Kit” demonstrates the features of optional XMPie variable data software with templates
- “PODi (print on demand initiatives) Digital Print Case Studies” is a 5 year collection of best practices using variable data, with examples from 15 different industries

- Xerox announced that its FreeFlow Process Manager system for its production print systems are now compatible with products from Solimar Systems, Inc., including the Rubika, SOLfusion and SOLindexer systems.

- Street pricing seen on the Xerox color wax copier, the ColorQube 9201:
- $20,485.00 selling price
- $0.0055 for b/w prints (and those with a little bit of color)
- $0.0428 for color prints (prints that have some color)
- Excess usage of wax sticks results in customer getting charged for wax sticks consumed

- Former Xerox executive, Chris Bondy, has left to join InfoTrends as Group Director, Cross-Media Workflow Solutions.

- Xerox announced that it sold the third iGen3 production color system to Dialogue Solutoins, a printshop in Kent, England.

- Barclays Capital predicts that Xerox will “make significant share repurchases next year” to boost its stock value.

- Xerox has hired SalesQuest of Andover, MA to provide its copier sales people with “deep dive company profile reports” on Fortune 1000 prospects. The “CRUSH” alerts and reports provide info to build sales pipelines.

- Xerox now shipping version 6.5 of its DocuShare document management solution featuring:
- ability to store more than 50 million documents
- performs complex search queries in under three seconds
- supports sustained imaging of 12 documents per second or over 1 million per day
- Company claims it won bid to supply DocuShare to:
- Chelmsford Public Schools in Massuchusetts
- Niagara Catholic School District in Canada
- University of Peru
- Manteca Unified School District in California

Note from Art: This is reposted from the P4P Hotel, sometimes it dead on and sometimes not. If you see something thats not correct shoot a comment to me, otherwise as always my mother always told "believe nothing of what you read and only half of what you see" LOL

-=Good Selling=-

This Week in Ricoh "TWIR Notes" 9/21/09

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

- Ricoh donated a fully loaded Ricoh Aficio PRO C900S production color laser system to the Graphic Communications Department of California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly).

- Ricoh announced it is offering a new external print controller for the PRO C900 production color system, the EFI Fiery QX100.

- Ricoh announced it will offer a print-only version of one of its A3 color laser MFPs.

Details:
- Called the Ricoh Aficio SP C821D for base MSRP of $4669
- Top speed of 50ppm color or b/w (SP C820D with 40ppm for $3699 base MSRP)
- 4 tandem OPC drum design
- Optional finishers
- Generic print controller only
- 600x600dpi at top speed, 1200x1200dpi at half speed (laser must draw the image twice)
- 4 bits per pixel
- 1GHz processor
- PCL & PostScript print drivers

- Ricoh announced it won a bid to provide managed print services to Unilever Corp. Details:
- 5 year cost per copy lease
- Covers offices in 29 countries
- Includes printers and MFPs
- For Unilever’s employees that work from home, they will be provided Ricoh Gelsprinter inkjet units
- Unilever makes consumer products like Lipton Ice Tea, Dove soap, Vaseline, etc.

- Ricoh announced that it opened up a new laser print engine plant in Thailand:
- Located in Rayong, which is southeast of Bangkok
- Will start at 8,000 print engines per month
- Maximum capacity of 140,000 print engines per month
- Cost of 690 million baht
- 210 employees

-=Good Selling=-

"This Week in Canon" TWIC Notes! 9/20/09

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

- BIG NEWS! Canon announced it will allow Hewlett Packard to sell most of its copier product line with Canon name. Details:
- Expansion of 25 year relationship between Canon and Hewlett Packard
- This is a one-way agreement, as Canon will NOT have access to HP devices
- HP will sell Canon branded b/w & color copiers from segment 2 up through segment 6
- Initially, HP will market the Canon brand, but then will switch to offering the Canon copiers with the HP name on them as soon as it develops HP JetDirect based print controllers for them
- All current HP LaserJet and Color LaserJet devices are made by Canon
- HP will also resell Canon’s imageWARE and MEAP solutions
- Canon is looking gain back marketshare when it lost all IKON locations when IKON sold out to Ricoh, and when DANKA sold out to Konica Minolta in the U.S.
- This is fifth time that HP has attempted to enter the office copier space
- HP will use expanded product offering to grow its Managed Print Services program
- “creating an integrated platform and brokering a network of service partners that will enable resellers to sell contractual print offerings”
- “create new global business unit”, called Managed Enterprise Solutions, led by Bruce Dahlgren (former Lexmark executive) and headquartered in San Diego, CA
- HP, which recently acquired IT services provider Electronic Data Systems (EDS), will use 500 certified EDS account managers to sell managed print services with this new expanded device offering to companies in the U.S. (EDS currently accounts for 20% of HP’s MPS sales)
- Claims that the total MPS opportunity in the U.S. is $121 billion annually including $64 billion for hardware and $57 billion for software
- Estimates there are $90 billion worth of sales in 8 million SMB (small to medium sized businesses)
- Estimates there are $45 billion worth of sales in 18,000 Enterprise accounts
- Estimates there are $76 billion worth of sales in 4,300 named accounts and public sector, which will be handled exclusively by HP/EDS factory direct sales reps
- Is targeting an annual growth rate for MPS of 17%
- Partnered with several distributors to offer managed print services offerings to VARs, including Synnex, Supplies Network, NER Data and United Stationers.
- Claims that it can save companies an average of 15% with its MPS program, but up to 30% is possible
- Recently won a MPS bid from Swiss Post of Switzerland and reduced printer fleet form 17,000 devices to just 6,000 including MFPs. Other customers include:
- Constellation Energy
- United Stationers
- GES Exposition Services
- CH2M Hill
- Wildon Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
- Embarq Corp.
- Alliant Techsystems
- Texas Department of Agriculture
- Viacom
- 3M -
- While HP will do the billing for contracts that include Canon branded devices, HP will subcontract the service to either Canon branches or Canon dealers, based on customer request
- Customers will contact HP to place service calls, and HP will then dispatch to Canon branch or dealer
- HP claims to have 2000 customers under MPS contracts, including 450,000 devices and 18 billion pages per year.
- HP claims to win 60% of all MPS bids it participates in.

- Canon announced that it will call its managed print services program; “Canon Managed Document Services”:
- Target is to reach annual revenue of 100 billion yen by 2012
- Will invest 20 billion yen to launch program worldwide

- Canon announced that it has sold its 500th device with the “imagePRESS” in the United States by Canon Business Solutions. (remember that this also includes the imagePRESS C1, which is only a 15ppm color device)

- Canon announced that its devices will integrate with Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management ES systems to apply document security policies for scanned documents.

- Canon’s North American CEO, Joe Adachi, stated that when he next travels to Tokyo for a business meeting, he will try to convince the Japanese executives to move the worldwide headquarters from Tokyo to the new office that will be built in Melville, NY.

- Canon announced that it has created a video game to assist in training copier technicians. In the game, technicians must drag and drop the correct parts into the correct spot on a virtual copier.

- Canon announced that an option for its new imageRUNNER ADVANCE MFPs will allow end users to scan directly into Microsoft SharePoint.

- Canon announced more options for its imagePRESS production color systems:
- imageWARE PrePress Manager software to provide JDF capabilities
- Duplo DC-645 off-line slitter/cutter/creaser
- Standard Horizon BQ-270C perfect binder with HT-30 three sided trimmer (most in-line perfect binders only trim the face, not the top and bottom)
- Option to allow imagePRESS print server (relabeled EFI Fiery) to receive data from Agfa Apogee 6.0 DigitalPrint Link.
- uniFLOW Output Manager (OM) software
- cost accounting
- pin-code or ID badge authentication
- web-to-print
- job ticketing
- queue management
- prepress make ready
- operator management
- Universal print driver
- Preview first page of job before releasing to print
- Interactive rule based routing
- Authorization workflow
- Connection to eCopy
- pricing not announced

Note from Art: This is reposted from the P4P Hotel, sometimes it dead on and sometimes not. If you see something thats not correct shoot a comment to me, otherwise as always my mother always told "believe nothing of what you read and only half of what you see" LOL

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes 09/13/09

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

Konica Minolta has signed to be the Platinum sponsor for the upcoming ON DEMAND trade show in Russia on 10/28-11/3/2009.

Results of a survey conducted by the InfoPrint (division of Ricoh) of IT Managers who are responsible for print/mailroom operations/CRDs:
- 2/3’s believe they are spending too much on postage
- More than half have not planned for or implemented Intelligent Mail barcoding for postal discounts
- Nearly half feel that their operations could be running more efficiently
- 90% feel pressure from management to lower costs
- 66% are trying to reduce print volumes
- 60% encouraging e-delivery of documents
- 38% considering workforce reductions
- 77% believe they could benefit from more automation

Hewlett Packard announced that it has authorized Pitney Bowes to be a dealer for its upcoming HP T300 Inkjet Web Press, a production color inkjet system. Details:
- PB plans on bundling with a mail finishing system
- PB will provide software transformations from AFP/IPDS, Metacode and/or LCDS protocols
- PB will provide service and support
- Will be called IntelliJet system, with approximate MSRP of $4 million
- 400 feet per minute in full color
- 30” wide printing
- 1200x600dpi
- Will start selling in January of 2010
- PB will build showroom for product in Shelton, Connecticut

Large printer, RR Donnelley & Sons Co. of Chicago, announced it will assist Hewlett Packard in designing future color inkjet presses.

Kodak taking a gamble with its booth at Print 09 Show in Chicago. For the first time, it will not display any of its production print systems (DigiMaster, NexPress, Prosper, Versamark, etc.). Instead, it will have a 24 foot long multi-media display to show videos of the equipment. In contrast, Xerox will apparently have at least 18 models on display running jobs.

Canon now shipping the imagePRESS CR Server A7000, which is a relabeled Creo print controller for its imagePRESS C7000VP system.

Ricoh announced, that through its InfoPrint division, it is offering versions of its 90/1107/1357 production b/w systems with MICR toner for check printing. In addition, it will offer MICR ink for the InfoPrint 5000 color inkjet system (relabeled product from Screen of Israel)

Ricoh announced that its factory direct branched will now sell VoIP phone systems from Fonality. No kidding, Ricoh had stated they were not going to rely on hardware!

EFI announced a new operating system for its Fiery print servers called System 9 featuring:
- embedded JDF technology, enabling integration with 3rd party workflow applications
- includes version 5.0 of Command WorkStation
- optional Fiery SeeQuence Suite (Impose, Compose)
- IPP enabled printer support
- Will ship in Q4, 2009

Xerox’s Chief Technology Officer, Sophie Vandebroek, announced that Xerox plans on launching a production color system using the wax technology used in the ColorQube.

Xerox launched the iGen4 220, which is advertised as printing full color at 220 impressions per minute. This is actually two iGen4s bolted together, so paper moving at 110ppm has both sides imaged at same time. Pricing not announced.

Oce’ announced the new JetStream 3300 production color inkjet system:
- top speed of 492 feet per minute
- prints up to 30” wide on rolls of paper
- comes standard with black ink, and option allows for CMYK
- pricing not announced

Oce’ announced the new VarioPrint 6320 Ultra production b/w system featuring:
- Cutsheet printer
- 308ppm top speed
- Maximum monthly duty cycle of 10 million per month
- Pricing not announced

Oce’ announced that during the PRINT 09 trade show in Chicago, it will have a CS665 (relabeled Konica Minolta bizhub PRO C6501) printing free copies of a perfect bound book, titled “Where’s My Birthday Cake”. The photo book was created by professional photographer, Jason Lee, featuring his daughters, Kristin & Kayla.

Peerless, maker of generic print controllers, provided its last quarter’s financials:
- Revenue of $2.1 million, down from $3.3 million last year
- Gross margin of 65.2% compared to 50.4% last year
- Net income of $2 million

eCopy won both the “Spring 2009 Pick Award” & “5 Star Award” from Buyers Labs, Inc. (BLI), and was the only document imaging software vendor to receive a “Pick” in this round of awards.

Brother introduced a new series of desktop A4 color inkjet AIO’s (starting at $129) and advertised them as offering a speed of 28ppm for color, but this speed is based on a page with only 5% coverage per color.

Toshiba division general manager, Kuniaki Kumamuru, stated that the company plans on significantly increasing investment in its LED lightbulb division in an interview with Reuters:
- is considering acquisitions to grow the division
- company produced Japan’s first incandescent light bulb in 1890
- goal is to have $3.8 million in LED lightbulb sales by 2015
- current selling price is $40 to $50 for a 100 watt LED lightbulb
- will open sales offices in France, US, Britain and Germany by end of year

Keyscan introduced a new keyboard that customer could buy for their PC’s that incorporates a single sheet color scanner into the back. Pricing unannounced.

IPEX, a production print group in Europe, announced that its “Champions in Print” award will be to the founders of Adobe and inventors of PostScript, Dr. John Warnock and Dr. Chuck Geschke.

IBML, a dealer in Wyoming, won a document management bid from Wyoming Medical Center. Details:
- 5 year contract worth $200,000
- As a result of new software and scanners, hospital reduced its scanning/indexing staff by 33%
- Bid included ImageTrac software and scanners
- Hospital believes it will save $450,000 total over life of contract
- Hospital has 205 beds in Casper, WY
- Campus covers 719,000 square feet
- 150 physicians
- Will scan 52,000 pages per day

Online Print Solutions, maker of web-to-print and VDP software, announced it now offers Multi-Touch Campaign software, which generates personalized URLs (PURL) for end users to respond to direct mail offerings.

XMPie, maker of variable data software, announced a new option called “Email Service”, which will send out and track email marketing messages to end users to supplement VDP direct mail offerings.

Recent findings published by The CMO Council on chief marketing officers in the U.S.:
- average tenure of a CMO is 23.2 months
- 50% CMOs are hired to fix broken marketing departments
- 56% of marketers perceive themselves as being customer centric,
but only 12% of customers surveyed agree
- 83% of CMOs face change resistant corporate cultures
- 76% of companies are not realizing the full revenue potential of their customers
- On average, 31% of marketing budget is spent on print jobs
- Only 25% of CMOs know what TransPromo is

GE Capital’s Leasing Director, Jim Kelly, gave out info in a recent interview:
- Has been in copier leasing for 20 years (started with acquisition of leasing
business from Chase Manhattan)
- Serves 8,000 dealers
- Has leases with 500,000 end users
- Is investing $3 million in “Touchless Initiative”
- “We’re trying to get that instant feel you have with a credit card”
- “Our vision is one minute turn time. That’s one minute from application through funding. That’s a lofty, loft goal, but that’s the vision we have for this.”

Have customers that want to make business cards with their color MFP? Michael Business Machines (MBM) introduced the BC12. This desktop device takes thick stock from your color MFP, and slices it up into 12 business cards in a single pass, at a speed of 60 cards per minute (13 sheets per minute top speed)

Details from the recent Sharp Align 09 national sales meeting for its dealers:
- Was at the Gaylord Resort in Washington, DC
- Plans on launching a managed print services program based on partnerships
with LMI, PrintAudit and Compass in October
- Has more than 400 authorized dealers in the US
- Has 10 factory direct branches
- Has stopped buying copier dealers (due to poor economy)
- Showed future products:
- Un-named 62ppm & 75ppm A3 b/w MFPs
- 150 sheet document feeder that scans both sides of original at same time
- Scans in color
- Color LCD display
- Pullout keyboards
- Will ship in June, 2010
- MX-M283N, a 28ppm A3 MFP
- MX-M503N, a 50ppm A3 MFP
- Optional air purifier for $500 with copier status lights
- 40ppm color A4 printer
- 40ppm b/w A4 printer
- ScanPro desktop scanners
- One model is b/w only, other is color
- Scan both sides of original at same time
- Can scan business cards and medical info cards

-=Good Selling=-

GBC "Ebinder 200" Spec Review

GBC, a division of ACCO, announced a new binding system, called the “eBinder 200” featuring:

- up to 200 pages bound on the fly, complete in-line system with no user intervention
- uses new “GBC Elipse” binding element for 360 degree wrap around design
- choice of 4 different colors of binding element
- cassette holds up to 50 binding elements
- is 22.8” wide
- will be shown attached to Xerox production print systems at PRINT 09 show, no pricing yet
Details from the recent Sharp Align 09 national sales meeting for its dealers:
- Was at the Gaylord Resort in Washington, DC
- Plans on launching a managed print services program based on partnerships
with LMI, PrintAudit and Compass in October
- Has more than 400 authorized dealers in the US
- Has 10 factory direct branches
- Has stopped buying copier dealers (due to poor economy)
- Showed future products:
- Un-named 62ppm & 75ppm A3 b/w MFPs
- 150 sheet document feeder that scans both sides of original at same time
- Scans in color
- Color LCD display
- Pullout keyboards
- Will ship in June, 2010
- MX-M283N, a 28ppm A3 MFP
- MX-M503N, a 50ppm A3 MFP
- Optional air purifier for $500 with copier status lights
- 40ppm color A4 printer
- 40ppm b/w A4 printer
- ScanPro desktop scanners
- One model is b/w only, other is color
- Scan both sides of original at same time
- Can scan business cards and medical info cards

-=Good Selling=-