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13
Solutions Providers that Should Be On Every Dealer’s Radar
Having so many choices isn’t a bad thing…if you know where to
start. We polled industry analysts and successful dealers who
share their thoughts as to the third-party solutions providers
that should be on every dealer’s radar. Let’s emphasize from
the get-go that these solution providers weren’t selected by
me or ENX. They were selected by our sources. Is it the
definitive list of solutions providers? Maybe, maybe not, but
just because these are the providers that our sources say
should be on your radar doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re
the best ones for you or your customers. These are just the
ones that you should be aware of because of their presence and
impact on the industry. And now, without further ado, and in
no particular order, here is a baker’s dozen of solutions
providers that should be on your radar:
1. Nuance/eCopy – Although recently acquired by Nuance,
the eCopy brand is alive and well with the company still
positioned as the mother of all MFP scanning solutions. The
acquisition made a whole lot of sense from a product
perspective and even though eCopy has taken the MFP world by
storm through its relationships with numerous OEMs, don’t sell
the Nuance product line short. eCopy products, which should be
on every dealer’s radar, whether or not their hardware
manufacturer has partnered with eCopy (and most have), include
ShareScan, Scan Station, and PaperWorks. If you’re not
familiar with Nuance you may know their products: Dragon, a
speech recognition software; OmniPage, a desktop OCR and PDF
conversion application; PaperPort, a desktop scanning and
document management application for the PC and the one that
might be the best fit for many of your customers; and PDF
Converter for converting, creating, and editing PDF files.
www.nuance.com •
www.ecopy.com
What they’re saying about eCopy and Nuance
“eCopy desktop is certainly a nice tool to have. It provides a
lot of functionality that Adobe has at a fraction of the
cost,” says Randy Allen, vice president of marketing for ASI
Business Solutions in Dallas, Texas. “That’s certainly an
angle for presentation. We find sales reps who include it in
their presentations speak about it and the offerings that ASI
can bring to them to spark additional conversations.”
“eCopy lets you connect to so many things; it has the power to
transform the sales process for the dealer and he doesn’t have
to go out and say, ‘You ought to be using A,B,C solutions.’
Instead he can say, ‘What are you using? Let’s see if we can
connect to that,’” adds Brian Bissett, editor of The MFP
Report.
2. Equitrac – With printing and copying costs so
important to many organizations’ bottom lines, there’s no
doubt every dealership needs to have an intelligent print
management and cost recovery solution that tracks, analyzes,
and allocates the cost of every document output to any device
in its menu of solutions. If you’re going to start somewhere
with one of these solutions, there’s no better place to start
than Equitrac.
www.equitrac.com
What they’re saying about Equitrac
“Every dealer has traditional Equitrac customers in their
base—legal, educational, etc. — and Equitrac also has
[solutions] that gradually branch out into more commercial
accounts,” notes Bissett.
“Equitrac is the de facto standard in almost every legal firm
out here,” adds Greg Walters, author of The Death of the
Copier blog and a long time feet-on-the-street sales rep.
“It’s been around forever. There are other systems that do the
same thing, but name recognition is all Equitrac.”
3. FMAudit – For a company that’s only been offering
print management assessment software since 2004, FMAudit has
made a big impact in a short period of time. The company
claims to have more than 800 dealer clients with over 2.3
million devices under management. If that’s not reason enough
to put them on your radar, we’re not sure what else will
convince you. The company offers remote meter reading and
print management assessment tools along with solutions for
data analysis, TCO proposal generation, consumable level
monitoring, and service alert filtering. It all started with a
USB key, which remains an important data collection tool even
as the company has moved to collecting information via the Web
with its WebAudit software. FMAudit has an impressive roster
of partners, including Canon, Dell, HP, Konica Minolta,
Kyocera Mita, Lexmark Muratec, Océ, Ricoh, Samsung, Savin,
Sharp, Toshiba, and Xerox.
www.fmaudit.com
What they’re saying about FMAudit
“We use FMAudit, and after all of our analysis we came away
feeling that it was the best choice,” says ASI’s Allen.
4. Print Audit – Looking to make a go of it in print
management, Print Audit is where a lot of dealers start. The
company offers print tracking and auditing software that
enables organizations to analyze, reduce and recover their
printing volumes and costs. The company has relationships with
numerous OEMs, including Toshiba, Konica Minolta, Canon,
Xerox, Ricoh, Sharp, Pitney Bowes and many more. From a
product perspective, the name to know is Print Audit’s
flagship software, Print Audit 6. The company also offers a
variety of scan, fax and copy tracking tools to help dealers
reduce and recover their document creation costs. These
solutions range from externally connected hardware terminals
to software that runs directly on supported imaging devices.
www.printaudit.com
What they’re saying about Print Audit
“Print Audit seems to be at the top in terms of exposure
[among MPS providers],” says Bissett.
5. MWA Intelligence – MWAi isn’t messing around when it
comes to managed print services. The company that built its
brand in the machine-to-machine solutions arena with products
for managing people, systems, and assets also offers
professional services. MWAi solutions include asset and
resource management tools and the requisite software,
hardware, and communications technologies to manage employees,
assets, and business operations. The company uses a
platform-independent approach to asset, service, and mobile
workforce management that is scalable to accommodate any
dealership’s requirements and grows as their business model
changes.
What they’re saying about MWAi
“They’ve put together a complete turnkey package for large and
small independent dealers to get into MPS and be successful at
the same time,” notes Bob Sostilio, president of Sostilio and
Associates.
“I like the way they tie into the manufacturers, for example
the service part of Sharp’s OSA,” says Lou Slawetsky, founder
of Industry Analysts. “They’ve done a better job of
integrating the hardware to their solutions.”
6. LMI Solutions – They may have started as a provider
of aftermarket consumables, but LMI has taken that expertise
and leveraged it as a foundation to enter the MPS space. The
company says it provides turnkey managed print solutions to
more than 500 dealers already and you can bet that number is
growing as awareness of MPS grows. The company’s LMI PageTrack
Advantage combines print management technology, consumables,
and a fulfillment system that the company says is designed to
maximize dealer profits and ensure end-user satisfaction.
www.lmisolutions.com
“Everybody says they’re in MPS and everybody defines it
differently, but LMI probably has the broadest definition of
any of them,” says Lou Slawetsky, founder of Industry
Analysts.
What they’re saying about MPS solutions.
“Any of the MPS packages out there like FMAudit, PrintFleet
and MWAi are what dealers should pay attention to,” contends
Frank Cannata, president of Marketing Research Consultants.
“Those are just three that come to mind and they’re all good.
I don’t think anybody could go astray with any one of them.”
7. Open Text – A provider of enterprise content
management solutions, Open Text offers everything from
scanning to data export, to integrating and automating the
flow of fax, paper, and electronic documents and data. Perhaps
best known for its fax and document distribution applications
(Formerly Captaris & Castelle), including RightFax and
FaxPress, which help organizations manage fax document
delivery and allow users to capture, store, manage, and
archive their documents.
www.opentext.com/fax
What they’re saying about Open Text
“If you’ve got a huge company with a lot of incoming fax
lines, RightFax is a real good way to go. It’s been around for
awhile, it’s easy to install, and okay to support,” observes
Walters. “I like the software. It can be a rather large
package, and if you’ve got more than ten fax lines coming in,
it’s a great application. If you’ve got below that, you can
get away with one of those appliances that sit in the phone
closet by Castelle.”
8. Objectif Lune – Objectif Lune got its start in the
variable data printing industry in 1993 by creating custom
turnkey solutions which evolved to a suite of products called
PlanetPress Suite. Today the company provides solutions for
all aspects of the variable data printing industry, including
transactional and promotional printing, workflow automation,
and Web-to-Print. PlanetPress Suite is the company’s best
known product, particularly in the office dealer community. It
allows organizations to maintain and grow their customer base
by adding value to business documents and distributing them in
a format that best suits recipient preferences. According to
the company, its ease of use, affordability, and open
architecture make it the perfect solution to enhance, produce,
and distribute business documents with relevant content that
will be sure to capture the reader’s attention and get the
message across. The software also allows users to generate
sophisticated forms, enabling them to transition away from
preprinted forms.
What they’re saying about Objectif Lune
“It’s not widespread through a lot of our accounts, but it
drives a lot of high copy volume in the ones that use it, says
Ray Belanger, president of Bay Copy. “Also, the company has a
very good support organization, and they are spread through
all the major manufacturers’ platforms, which gives us some
level of security that they’re going to be around to support
this for awhile.”
9. Docuware – This is one of the names that should be
at the top of every dealer’s list of document management
providers. DocuWare is an integrated document management
solution that automates business processes by managing any
type of document, regardless of format or source in a central
document pool. This includes paper records, letters, faxes,
drawings, PC and other electronic files as well as e-mail.
Docuware’s solutions target small to mid-sized companies—many
dealers’ bread and butter—as well as government agencies and
departments in large organizations. Consider too that more
than 400 authorized DocuWare partners make up a worldwide
independent reseller network.
www.docuware.com
What they’re saying about Docuware
“If you want to carry document management software, you
probably want to carry one from a vendor that knows how to
work with you as a dealer and understands your business model,
pricing structure, profit motive, etc.,” says Bissett. “One
that seems to stand out in that area is Docuware.”
10. EMC2 Documentum – Perched squarely at the high end
of the document management arena is Documentum. The EMC
Documentum platform provides a client infrastructure with the
framework and tools that allow users to process and use
content management functionality across a range of desktop,
portal, or Web-based applications. The Documentum platform’s
client layer consists of a component-based user interface (UI)
framework upon which EMC provides a comprehensive suite of
applications for users to access the EMC Documentum
repository. It includes end-user interfaces, administrator
tools, and integrations with popular authoring tools and
enterprise applications.
What they’re saying about Documentum
“Documentum is a great system,” maintains Walters. “It’s huge.
I did a project where we did workflow management, digital
floor management, and changed the way the whole company
invoiced and everything, and Documentum was a big part of
that. I like that package, but it’s a high-end package and by
high-end I don’t mean expensive; I mean you have to have guys
who can make it jump through hoops.”
11. Microsoft Sharepoint – Microsoft Office SharePoint
Server 2007 is an integrated suite of server capabilities that
provides content management and enterprise search, enabling
shared business processes and facilitating
information-sharing. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
provides a single, integrated location where employees can
collaborate with team members, find organizational resources,
search for experts and corporate information, manage content
and workflow, and leverage business insight to make
better-informed decisions. www.sharepoint.microsoft.com
What they’re saying about Sharepoint
“Every dealer should be knowledgeable of and consider the
opportunity with SharePoint whether they want to be a
SharePoint seller themselves. It may or may not be a fit [for
their dealership] but they definitely need to be aware of it,”
says Bissett. “It’s part of the infrastructure they’re going
to find out there. They can either be a reseller for
Sharepoint or connect to Sharepoint. If they decide on the
second route, they can either go through NSI or eCopy to do
that, and increasingly a lot of the vendors are developing
their own support. Konica Minolta has it on some of their
devices and Canon has it on some of their new imageRUNNER
Advance models, as does Toshiba.”
12. Notable Solutions, Inc. (NSi) – NSi solutions allow
for document capture, processing, and routing and the company
is considered by many an erstwhile competitor to eCopy. The
company has fashioned a name for themselves in the solutions
arena with its flagship product AUTOSTORE. That
product captures paper and electronic documents from virtually
any source and in any format. Looking for validation as to why
they make this list? Consider the company they keep. NSi has a
boatload of partners, including EFI, Fujitsu, HP, Kodak,
Kyocera Mita, Ricoh, Sharp, and Xerox on the hardware side and
Captaris, Equitrac, IBM, and Nuance among many others on the
software side. www.nsius.com
What they’re saying about NSi
“They have their own pros and cons and a little different
pricing model than eCopy. And they have embedded support for
Kyocera where eCopy doesn’t,” says Bissett.
“We have one large account that uses NSI and it’s been good
for us because it helped us get that big deal,” says Chip
Miceli, president of Des Plaines Office Equipment.
13. Ringdale FollowMe - FollowMe is a roaming, secure
printing, and accounting solution for companies looking to
leverage its printer roaming capabilities and print security
capabilities. It also provides accounting for all of an
organization’s copiers and printers so that automatic reports
can be generated for users, cost centers, cost codes, and
printers. FollowMe supports all industry standard printers. In
addition, Ringdale offers FollowMe Embedded, a solution that
does not require any external hardware to the MFP when used
with PIN authentication. So far Ricoh, Toshiba, HP, OKI,
Xerox, and Sharp provide this solution to their dealer
channel.
What they’re saying about Ringdale FollowMe
“We’re part of Ricoh Family Group and have stayed pretty close
to the offerings they’ve placed before us,” explains ASI’s
Allen. “Ricoh is adopting Ringdale FollowMe and that’s proved
to be a pretty darn good offering…. it’s not terribly
expensive to offer a solution that makes business sense,
financial sense, and common sense.”
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, let me leave you with the words of Greg
Walters, who nails it when answering the million dollar
question:
“Who should be on your radar? All of them,” emphasizes
Walters.