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10 Years in the Cloud

fLAT RATE

This Week in the Copier Industry 5 Years Ago

This Week in the Copier Industry 5 Years Ago

Third Week of August 2018

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Real Copier Sales

I remember when plain paper copiers used rolls of paper and not sheets. I remember when the glass on the copiers had to move back and forth. I remember when copiers used liquid ink (toner) to produce an image. I remember when you used a dial to set how many copies you wanted to make....more here

Enjoy These Awesome Copier Threads from 5 Years Ago

MFP Industry Notes 08-19-2018

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inkjet print volume of 749 billion A4 prints - Consume 103,700 tons of ink - End users will spend $8.7 billion on ink - Inkjet equipment sales will reach $3.6 billion Denver dealer makes acquisition - LaserCycle, owned by Kirk Peck, and a dealer for HP, Lanier/Ricoh, and Sharp, announced it has acquired ALPS Altus of Irvine CA - ALPS (a laser printer service) markets Xerox, Brother and Samsung products
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Ricoh MP C6004SP vs Xerox C8070H

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Architect adds Ricoh PrintCopyTool in New Jersey “Simplifies CAD Workflow”

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A few months ago I was able to sit down with an existing client todiscuss thebenefits of Ricoh PrintCopyTool. Our client was near the end of their Ricoh MP W5100en wide format printer/scanner/copier lease. The Ricoh MP W5100en was a little long in the toothalong withusing theolder Ricoh Plotbase software.In additionour clienthad also added a… Read More
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Re: Around the Word with Konica Minolta

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and achieving efficiencies. For additional information, please visit www.HackensackMeridianHealth.org . About Konica Minolta Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. is reshaping and revolutionizing the Workplace of the Future ™ ( www.reshapework.com ) with its expansive smart office product portfolio from IT Services ( All Covered ), ECM, Managed Print Services and industrial and commercial print solutions.Konica Minoltahas been recognized as the #1 Brand for Customer Loyalty in the MFP
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Canon U.S.A. Set to Showcase Intelligent Solutions for the Future of Work to Legal Professionals at ILTACON 2018

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track and analyze printing, copying, faxing, and scanning usage to help users control and identify ways to help reduce costs. Workflow Intelligence The application of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in the identification and classification of case-related materials can help automate the now often manual processes of associating them with specific clients and matter numbers. The AI-powered Canon Smart Document Assistant technology, developed by Canon Information Imaging Solutions
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Your Copier

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thought naw you really don't want to hear me sing. "Your Copier" Just got a new copier today Let's give it the once over Put the paper in the feeder and pray Cause I bought my copier real cheap I just want to use the copier today I don't want the copier down today Looking around I found a screw Could this mean the copiers in trouble No screwdriver but have some glue Staying the night to try and fix it I just want to use the copier today I don't want the copier down today Try to stop my hands
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Canon U.S.A. Offers uniFLOW Online 2018.1 to Help Foster Workplace Productivity

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account, without entering an ID or password. uniFLOW Online 2018.1 aims to improve workplace productivity by giving administrators the ability to track and assess printing, copying, faxing and scanning costs directly within the cloud. Reporting capabilities and a real-time online dashboard can allow administrators to pinpoint areas in need of attention or adjustments to workflow. As with all uniFLOW editions, administrators will be able to restrict printer access to authorized users only, helping
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Lourdes Coss of Canon Solutions America to Receive 2018 Integrity Award

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professional service offerings. With the technology offerings of the Canon and Océ brands, Canon Solutions America helps companies of all sizes find ways to: improve sustainability, increase efficiency, and control costs in conjunction with high volume, continuous feed, digital and traditional printing, and document management solutions. A wholly owned subsidiary of Canon U.S.A. , Inc., Canon Solutions America is headquartered in Melville, N.Y. and has sales and service locations across the U.S. For
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Ricoh Showcases Digital Workplace Innovation at Integrate 2018

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, experience and industry best practice approaches with the industry at Integrate 2018.” Ricoh’s booth number at Integrate 2018 is E14. About Ricoh Ricoh is empowering digital workplaces using innovative technologies and services enabling individuals to work smarter. For more than 80 years, Ricoh has been driving innovation and is a leading provider of document management solutions, IT Services, commercial and industrial printing, digital cameras and industrial systems. Headquartered in Tokyo
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PrintCopy_Tool_Brochure

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Mac to Print via PCL

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I just ran across this today and thought I would share with everyone. Picked it up from spiceworks You can work around it by installing Gutenprint which will allow the Mac to Print via PCL. The PS module is the best course, but I've had several clients go this route. http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/MacOSX.php Found on Spiceworks: https://community.spiceworks.c...;utm_campaign=growth
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Why Product Knowledge Can Vault You to Success

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Would you agree or disagree with this statement? "You can have the best sales skills in the world, however, if you don't know your product you won't sell a damn thing". I'm a firm believer in the above, excellent product knowledge has allowed me to be extremely successful selling print devices. I feel bad for those sales peeps have the cheapest or lowest price along with zero product knowledge. The end result is guy and gals like me will eat them for lunch. LinkedIn is full of sales guru's
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Valtim Marketing Solutions Chooses EFI’s Midmarket Print Suite to Drive Efficiency and Growth

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that. That’s just one example of how this ERP implementation will position us for further growth without an excessive need to add more staff . “ I don’t think there is anyone out there that can offer the range of capabilities that EFI can within an integrated suite like this ,” he added. The workflow upgrade comes as Valtim is achieving significant success, with sales up 80% over the past six years. “ We expect that adding the Midmarket Print Suite will spur even more growth as it helps us
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Ricoh SP_C842DN_quote for July 2018

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Memjet Finds No Shortage of Good Reasons to Support PRINTING United

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, and this show is very relevant to telling that story.” Still another appeal for Memjet is PRINTING United’s theme of convergence: printers moving beyond their primary offerings to seek new profits in other print market segments. Voss notes that movement of the same kind can be seen among Memjet’s customers. “We’re witnessing a print cross-pollination with our OEMs” as they build products around Memjet technology for markets they hadn’t previously addressed, she says. There’s good advice in this
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Xerox cuts jobs in Webster, U.S. and Canada

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Some Xerox employees in Webster, Canada and other parts of the U.S. were informed Thursday that their positions will beeliminated,officials confirmed Thursday. Xerox representatives confirmed there are less than 250 job cuts in New York state, but declined to share more on local job cutnumbers. The positions eliminated included those in Xerox’s internal IT operations, including IT software engineers, systems engineers, program managers and associated support, as well as finance managers
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Ricoh PostScript3 Unit Type P11 "We need one"

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Does anyone have one that can be shipped overnight to me?
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Lead for 12 printers in Iowa

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click image for web link
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OneVision Software and SCREEN GP Americas with one stop-shop solution for label converters at the Labelexpo in Chicago

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cost and time savings. “More jobs, shorter runs, and a lot of low invoice value is what label converters are confronted with in their daily business. To increase their profitability print service providers need a high level of automation throughout their entire print production process incl. prepress, press and post-press. With the seamless integration of our Label Automation Suite, that covers the automation starting from the prepress stage, to Screen`s Equios workflow, label printers shall
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Color-Logic's Mark Geeves to Speak at IMI Conference

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dramatic results.Color-Logic decorative effects utilize the existing workflows of printers and designers, yielding dynamic results without the use of special equipment.Color-Logic supports the value of print and works with designers and printers to enhance their printed media.For more information, visit www.color-logic.com or call +1-513-258-0047. - End - Mark Geeves Co-Founder and Director of Sales and Marketing Color-Logic Hi-Res Photo Available
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Attention Sales Leaders... Are Your Sales Reps Sales Enabled Or Self-Enabled?

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“Your buyers want to work with salespeoplewhohave empathy for them, who understand theirroles and challenges, and who can be prescriptive in helping them." Mark Lindwall , Senior Analyst, Forrester Research Sales enablement, a catch-all phrase with many meanings. What is sales enablement and what purpose does it serve to those in sales? Sirius Decisions says, “The purpose of sales enablement is to ensure sales teams have the skills, knowledge, behavior, and tools needed to engage buyers in rich
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Four Glorious Reasons Why You Should Attend BTA National Conference in NYC

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looking forward to is Production Industrial Print: The Future of Imaging. The panel will be moderated by Frank Cannata. I'm looking forward to a robust discussion about the growth of print in Industrial applications. I'm a huge fan of digital label presses and niche printing devices. I also agree with Frank Cannata that the only true growth in print is with industrial print. It's my belief that print is not declining, however, print is migrating and we need to follow that migration in order
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Ricoh C4504ex proposal.pdf

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MP_C2004ex_August 2018 Quote

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Re: Mac to Print via PCL

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Art, There is a built in Generic PCL Print Driver in the MACs now. Vince
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Northeast Color Embraces Innovation as the First User of EFI’s Most-advanced Hybrid LED Inkjet Platform

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, Northeast Color. “ For example, we have a repeat job printing wood grain images on PVC, and we can produce 40 to 45 pieces of that job in a single shift on our current UV-inkjet printers; with the VUTEkh3, we will be able to do that in half the time .” Faster, easier maintenance and new print management tools The VUTEk h series platform comes equipped withImageEdgetechnology for fast and easy printhead replacement; automated table and carriage alignment; and a camera-based vision system for
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The Vintage Japanese Copy Machine Enjoying an Artistic Renaissance

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Within 24 hours, Terzis had used the machine to print a 50-page book, joining the ranks of 21st-century artists and publishers who are using old technology to make new creations. The Risograph, a machine that duplicates like a mimeograph but dispels ink like a screen printer, has come a long way from its humble 1958 beginnings in a small home in Tokyo. Originally intended as more of a courtesy to Japanese businesses than a printmaking phenomenon, this ordinary, grey machine’s bulky exterior
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Re: What do Millennial's, Horse Traders, Amazon, Ricoh MP 501SP all Have in Common?

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Good story Art! Hopefully this isn’t indicative of the future wave of decision makers. I’ve competed against the Amazon quote as well. Asked for the link and found the device wasn’t shipping from the US therefore how could they determine if it was the right plug/power and also in this case, shipping costs brought it back in line with my number. Having some one millennials in my sales force and personal life, I think where our industry may suffer a bit is there lack of perception as to the
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Re: Mac to Print via PCL

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Nice, great info Vince!
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Re: Your Copier

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Funny. But true. Clever
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Better Buys Honors More Lexmark Devices

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on LinkedIn and Twitter . About Better Buys After more than 20 years as a trusted authority on office equipment, Better Buys is now a software resource site dedicated to helping companies in the market for various business software, such as Business Intelligence solutions, HR Software, CMMS Systems and more, as well as printers, copiers, and scanners. Leveraging an experienced team of in-house editors, Better Buys offers a range of content and resources designed to help organizations make

Xerox's MFP "All in Plan" Reveal

A few days ago I was alerted by a Print4Pay Hotel member about the new Xerox  "All in Plan".  I had some time on my hands and paid a visit to the Xerox site and gleaned everything that I could about this new program.

For me "all in" meant that the plan was similar to KonicaMinolta's flat rate program.  Pay a monthly payment that includes the MFP along with maintenance/supplies and print as many pages as you want.  Since Xerox is a competitor I owed it to myself to learn as much as I could as fast as I could.

What I thought was unlimited is not.  The brochure is carefully wordsmithed that states you'll have a fixed monthly price no matter what you print.  That "no matter what you print" appears several times in the brochure. Thus the "no matter what you print" is more about the types of coverage that is used to print the document and has nothing to do with unlimited prints.

The web site is an e-commerce site where clients are asked simple questions to determine the type of printer or copier that is the best fit for their printing habits.  After selecting "find a printer", you're navigated to the next page to answer a series of questions which include.

  • color or black print?
  • how many people will share the print device?
  • what is your print volume (heavy, average or less than average)
  • types of documents that you print (photos, brochure or text)
  • will you need to scan, copy or fax?
  • do you need 11x17?
  • then printing from smartphones or tablet

After answering all of these questions you are then asked if you are a business to proceed. The next page will give you the pricing, in my case the site gave me a choice of three A3 color MFP's with the price per month.  The next step is to create an account. It seems that only 3 color A3 devices are offered at this time.

Okay, I'm a business and I created an account.  One I got past that I was then awarded the lease contract and the maintenance/supply agreement. Of course I did not select the buy button!  But I had the documents for review.

Here's what I found out:

  • Program is run through XFS Financial
  • All Service is routed the XBS dealer that is associated with your zip code
  • According to your answers for the questions I listed above your lease has a benchmark.  That benchmark in my case allowed me 12k per month (I picked heavy user)
  • In the Ts & Cs there is a clause that states that if you are over the benchmark volume three months in row Xerox can raise your monthly price or mandate that you get an additional print device that for an additional monthly fee.  I'm guessing that monthly fee also includes maintenance and supplies
  • Toner and meter reads are automated
  • Fusers, drums, imaging kits are not on auto shipment and the client needs to make a call to Xerox
  • 36 month FMV lease term
  • 150-60 days LOI
  • Device always has to be connected to the internet/network
  • Payments are auto charged to credit card or debit card
  • Clients may need to contact Xerox so Xerox can remote in to install patches or firmware updates
  • Clients need to notify Xerox of printer location within 10 days if the device is moved

What Happens When?

  • Your coverage volume is to high, could there be an additional charge for that also
  • You don't get your maintenance kits in a timely manner
  • You don't like your service provider.  You can only use XBS

Summary

All in all it's not a bad plan but it does have some covenants that may need to be addressed somewhere down the road such as the coverage volume. There is no auto escalator that I read about.

The most critical is the benchmarking for the monthly volume. If you're off on your calculations you'll pay the price with an increased monthly fee or you'll have to get an additional print device.

After speaking with an XBS person today I was told that anyone that creates an account is assigned to a sales person. At least I'm happy to hear that.

The All in Plan appears to be the first salvo with an e-commerce sight that delivers the lease document and the maintenance agreement document electronically and offers the ability to digitally sign the document with out every speaking with a sales rep.  Yes, it's somewhat scary and is most likely the future in an industry that is contracting. 

However the future is not here yet. I will continue to prove my worth because at some point in time we are still needed to navigate the agreements and find the best fit for the clients. I can only think about all the issues that will be created with these types of agreements when the client does not know their printing habits when it comes to type of documents and whether they are a heavy or light user.  We all know that print volumes can change and locking client in for three years could cause that predictable expense to become a non-predictable expense.

Here's a link for the conversation threads on the forums for the plan, you can also download the lease and the maintenance agreement https://www.p4photel.com/topic...copiers-and-printers

Here's the link https://allinplan.services.xerox.com take it for a spin and see what you come up with.

-=Good Selling=-

6 Reasons Why Flat Rate Service Program Will Change the Copier Industry

I remember when plain paper copiers used rolls of paper and not sheets. I remember when the glass on the copiers had to move back and forth. I remember when copiers used liquid ink (toner) to produce an image. I remember when you used a dial to set how many copies you wanted to make.

Yup,  it's been a pretty incredible journey to see the industry evolve over the last 38 years!

Back in the early eighties their was only one plan for a copier maintenance agreement.  We included "x" amount of pages that either included all parts and labor except for drum and toner or "X" amount of pages that included the drum and no toner.  In most cases the only way we knew how many pages were used on the copiers was from a service call or a courtesy call.  Courtesy calls were used to keep techs busy when they had no calls.  Techs would stop in unannounced, clean the glass, the mirrors, the lens and the covers and also get a meter read. 

Even back then we had issues when clients went above and beyond the "x" amount of pages they were contracted for.  There wasn't a cost per page back then, or let me say at least  not for the dealers I worked for. If a client went over their contracted pages it was a hassle to get the extra dough out of them.  Bad business for the dealership and clients were not happy either.

At some point in the late eighties or early nineties someone came up with the brainstorm to include toner in the annual maintenance agreement price.  

Toner included? 

How can that be possible, it can't be done, how can they turn a profit, they'll be out of business in a few years. Those were some of the rumblings that we heard from other dealers and industry pundits. The toner included was the birth of the cost per page. Dealers charge clients a per page cost, multiply the annual volume and all consumables are included paper and staples. Dealers found a way to make some tidy profits.  

Thirty years later, I'm hearing the same type of rumbling when the likes of the KonicaMinolta program or a dealers Flat Rate is mentioned. 

Empirical analysis

In baseball we hear about sabermetrics,  which is the empirical analysis of baseball. Statistics that measure in game activity.  I'm no guru when it comes to all of the analytic software that's used in the copier industry, however, I do believe that someone has done the homework on thousands of copiers in the field and had come to conclusion that if we charge "x" amount per month for "x" model of MFP that we're going to make the margin of profit that we need. Even if a certain percentage of the MIF goes over the monthly volume.  Pages printed in the office is declining and not increasing. If you don't believe me just ask some of my friends at Print Audit. In fact, when the next recession hits, which it will, office printed pages could decline by another 6% (I remember this from a recent education event for BTA).

Reasons Why Cost Per Page Will Be an Obsolete Billing Model

  • Clients want a predictable expense that will not disrupt their budgets
  • Clients are tired of paying overage charges
  • Clients will get excited when you have something to offer that they're not expecting
  • No more counting pages for dealers, will which reduce labor costs with dealerships
  • Elimination of billing errors on cost per page invoices. (I've seen it, the MA calls for color at .07 and black at .012 and when it comes out of accounting the invoice bills color at .012 and black at .07. That's great if the black volume is high and color volume is low, but that happens when it's reversed.  Do you think the client is going to tell you about the error?)
  • Fosters a better business relationship for both client and dealer. (Nothing is more detrimental to the business relationship when a client finds out that they have been billed for 60K color pages per year and 60K black per year and they are only print half of that volume)



As with all contracts there are ways to minimize a dealers risk when offering a "Flat Rate" for unlimited pages. It's more about the program that each dealer or manufacturer will offer and how much risk they will entertain.  The "Flat Rate" (kudos to Ethos Technologies for the term) may not be right for every client and does not have to offered to certain vertical markets. 

The "Flat Rate" cost for unlimited pages is here to stay because clients want predictable expenses. In addition dealers have done their sabermetrics with their fleets and have come to the conclusion that it's a profitable model when done right.

On September 14th @ 4PM we'll be hosting a webinar centered around the KM unlimited click program.  Spots are filling fast and we can only take "x" amount of attendees. If you're interested send me an email and I will send you the details. apost@p4photel.com

-=Good Selling=- 

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