RECAPPING THE LATEST AND GREATEST SOLUTIONS PARTNERSHIPS It’s getting so you can’t tell the players in the solutions space without a scorecard. There’s so many and the list keeps growing and growing. As the list of solutions providers grows, so do strategic partnerships, as they join together to leverage each other’s strengths and extend their reach beyond where it was as a solitary solutions provider. Historically, solutions providers have done a good job of partnering with the OEMs and many of those relationships are well known throughout the industry. Think of Canon and Nuance, formerly eCopy, as a prime example even as Nuance has extended its partnerships to include many other OEMs. We’re going to highlight a few notable strategic partnerships acknowledging that we’re only scratching the surface. Perhaps a second article later this year will cover additional strategic partnerships. MWA Intelligence + Intel + DRIVVE Here’s a solutions provider that understands the value of strategic partnerships. MWA has a laundry list of partners, with a notable one being Intel. The Intel partnership centers on technology with the two companies combining resources to develop products that fit squarely inside the MFP. “The logic is if Intel can be inside [the MFP], then MWA should be inside too,” states MWA President Mike Stramaglio. The Intel partnership is unlike other industry strategic partnerships where one usually finds two partners who have a keen understanding of the office equipment business. “Intel understands intellectually the business, but they’ve never had the opportunity nor do they seek to move into B2B distribution,” explains Stramaglio. “They just want to build things that facilitate that vertical market, whether it’s a laptop, LCD panel, or a copier. It doesn’t matter to them, they just want to make sure their hardware or chips are helping whatever products are being sold to be easily migrated on the network.” Last August MWA and Intel came together along with Blackberry RIM and Samsung to sponsor the first ever Hybrid Dealer Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona. The focus was on innovation and how new and improved technologies will affect the market and the hybrid dealer community. One of the things attendees learned was how Intel is partnering with MWA, working on a combined solution of Intel and MWA embedded technology. MWA’s most recent partnership, announced in August 2010, is with DRIVVE, a provider of business optimization solutions. The DRIVVE partnership allows the two companies to work together to synergize mutual business expertise, competencies and solutions in document management, digital collaboration, print management, managed print services, and remote device and service management opportunities with mutual customer bases. Other notable strategic partners include BEI Services, Blackberry, Compass, Digital Gateway, and Oracle along with OEMs such as Sharp, Samsung, and Muratec. MWA’s strategic partnerships meet two critical needs: “The partners we pick are driven towards meeting day to day needs while at the same time driven towards a de facto standard for the future,” notes Stramaglio. Supplies Network + PREO Last fall the MPS space became a bit more interesting with the announcement of a partnership between PREO, a print management solutions provider and Supplies Network, the wholesaler of IT consumables who also offers Carbon SiX, a turnkey program that helps resellers sell and manage their MPS engagements around the U.S. The partnership is primarily centered on MPS assessments and managing printing as opposed to managing printers. “We want to enable a more robust assessment process than are on the market today,” says Doug Johnson, senior vice president for Supplies Network. “We think there’s lots of opportunity to improve that, followed by very robust management processes.” Johnson finds PREO a good fit for Supplies Network and for expanding the assessment process because PREO is the only player in this space with SaaS-based architecture. “They’re vendor agnostic which is a hallmark for us, and their page measurement technology is excellent and allows us to get a more accurate read of a key ingredient of the most costly part of the equation, which is managing the supplies,” adds Johnson. The partnership makes sense too because of Supplies Network’s experience with managed print services. They already have a SaaS-based service offering in their portfolio and have been vendor agnostic since the beginning. In addition, they have relationships with print providers and work closely with many of the OEMs along with software and service providers. Add to that a large Carbon SiX program base of clients at the end user level as well as a reseller base of some 5,000 active dealers that the company can tap into to expand its managed print services offering. Print Audit + NewField IT Print Audit is recognized across the office technology landscape as a provider of print management software and has relationships with many of the leading OEMs. Its most recent strategic partnership, however, is with NewField IT, a software and service provider for the MPS market. Together the companies have announced a User Data feature for NewField IT’s Asset DB software suite. This feature enables user specific printing habits and device output activity to be brought together into a single floor plan view. The initial release accepts user data pulled from Print Audit Assessor. By bringing data from Print Audit Assessor to a single floor plan view, an MPS consultant can use Asset DB to facilitate a more sophisticated future state plan design by taking into consideration both specific user habits relating to a specific device as well as the optimum device positioning. According to a NewField IT press release, “Enabling data integration with alternate software, such as Assessor - developed by Print Audit - is a key area of the module development. Print Audit Assessor gives dealers and vendors the ability to provide potential customers with an extremely detailed and accurate snapshot of their printing environment.” It wouldn’t be a stretch to say this partnership expands Print Audit’s footprint in the MPS arena. Another partnership announced last year was with Sharp whereby Sharp is offering Print Audit’s Print Audit 6 and Facilities Manager tools as a suite of products known as the RemoteFleet Print Management Solution. The RemoteFleet Suite provides Sharp dealers with the capability to automate meter collection and simplify supplies management. United Stationers + NER Data Corporation Witness what United Stationers is doing with NER Data Corporation, a data center infrastructure solutions and managed print provider, in the managed print space. Many of us think of United Stationers as a wholesaler of office supplies to the independent office products dealer channel, and they are, but now they seem to be positioning themselves as a player in the managed print space. Besides its relationship with United, NER has a strong partnership with HP and is an authorized HP service provider that also provides proprietary MPS software. Its Enterprise managed print solution is Print4.hp. Last year United and NER announced they were strengthening their partnership through a new agreement that expands NER and United Stationers existing relationship around United’s managed print program HQueue while allowing for future collaboration around NER’s technology solutions business and United Stationers’ Azerty Division. It’s a nice fit considering NER has a strong focus on medium to large enterprise customers and hybrid VAR resellers while United Stationers’ bread and butter is the SMB market. According to NER, “This focused approach allows for a highly effective delivery and execution of industry leading MPS to all sized businesses.” Nuance + Software Alliance Partners + EMC + Microsoft Nuance casts a wide net when it comes to strategic partnerships. For example, they have Software Alliance Partners who expand the availability of the company’s connectors and services to e-mail, document management, fax, cost recovery and other enterprise applications. That list encompasses more than 50 different software companies. Add to that strategic partnerships with a dozen hardware OEMs as well as EMC Partner Solutions and Microsoft Partner Solutions and what you have is a solutions provider whose many industry partnerships have been integral to the company’s success. “Typically the partnerships we have are with the application providers, system integrators or VARs that create connectivity to business applications,” explains Bill Brikiatis, director of corporate marketing. For connectivity to a business application such as a document repository, a financial system, or an ERP system, Brikiatis says the best partner is someone who understands the back-end application. “We typically insulate the business partner with our SDK from having to know how document scanning works and what the variations are of the different MFP manufacturer’s platforms,” he explains. “They use our SDK, we allow them to simulate those environments, and what they bring to the table is an understanding of how the back-end business application is used, and they can create a connector using our SDK in much less time than it would take them to connect to multiple MFP manufacturer environments.” Okidata + DataRay An effective marketing strategy is focusing on vertical markets and OKI Printing Solutions is doing just that via its strategic partnership with DataRay, a provider of patient safety technologies. Combining OKI Data hardware and DataRay patient security solutions, healthcare clients are provided with solutions for creating 2D barcode/RFID wristbands and labels as well as label reformatting technology for pharmacy applications. OKI Data’s role is to develop reliable, functional printing hardware that can be used in different vertical markets for a wide variety of applications. “No manufacturer has the ability to reach each and every vertical market and claim expertise within the industry or with solutions,” says Nick Ciarlante, director of OKI Data’s Specialty Products Division. “Having these partners, who we can sponsor and who can sponsor us back, helps provide more than a piece of hardware to end users. They bring added value to our printers. At the end of the day if your printer isn’t integrated into a solution that really meets a customer’s need, you have a piece of plastic and some metal.” The partnership with DataRay benefits both OKI and its resellers. “We along with DataRay do not have enough market reach to send that technology or solutions to all the end users that could possibly use it,” explains Ciarlante. “To bring any solution that we make to our solution providers, we now take a message of two companies. The market reach is dramatically intensified when you can have a dual partnership.” While the DataRay partnership is an example of a partnership that has vertical market ramifications, OKI has a nice mix of partners tied into their MFP business as well, including Nuance, Obectif lune, EFI, and Ringdale. Equitrac + Nuance + Omtool + NSI + EFI Equitrac’s strategic partners provide functions such as scanning, document management, fax, online payment, and time & billing systems. And the beat goes on. Notable strategic solution partners include EFI, NSI, Nuance, and Omtool. As far as hardware partners, you’ll find all the usual suspects from Canon to Xerox and everyone in between. The best strategic partner for Equitrac is a partner who has a solution that can be integrated with theirs. Sure that sounds obvious, but that’s the way it is. “There are prerequisites that have to be in place in order for us to have a partnership,” says Noel O’Dwyer, vice president of marketing and strategic alliances. “We need an integration with their solution and their solution needs to play in the particular market we play in.” What’s true here and true with just about every other strategic partnership is that both partners have to help each other win business. “At the end of the day, we’ve got to be bringing opportunity to the table,” says O’Dwyer. He uses Equitrac’s strategic partnership with Nuance as an example. “We’re actually participating in and presenting RFPs together for some major deals.” O’Dwyer doesn’t think Equitrac has reached critical mass when it comes to strategic partnerships. Future partnerships are likely to center on vertical markets. Although it’s still early to mention future strategic partners by name, O’Dwyer reports that over the next 12 months expect to see announcements about strategic partnerships in vertical markets such as financial services and healthcare. NSi + Kyocera Mita + Xerox + IKON What you have here is a provider of paper and electronic content capture and business automation solutions. The company’s flagship product, AutoStore, captures paper and electronic documents from a copier, scanner, or printer, then routes the information into the appropriate business system based on the document type. AutoStore is compatible with nearly 500 models of MFPs and network-attached scanners, including those from Fujitsu, HP, Kodak, Kyocera, Lexmark, Ricoh, Savin, Lanier, Sharp, and Xerox. Private labeling is where NSi has excelled in the partnering arena with Kyocera reselling KYOcapture powered by AutoStore and Xerox reselling Xerox SMARTdocument Travel powered by AutoStore. Add to that, IKON DocAccel powered by AutoStore and what NSI has are three powerful partners taking their solution to market via private label. “Not only do their customers have a need for this type of smart MFP capture, they’ve come to us to get that unique branding,” says Mike Morper, NSi’s vice president of marketing. “More importantly we team sell with these organizations and over the years we’ve earned a reputation as their trusted advisors. They are experts with their equipment. We are never going to recommend Device A over Device B, but we can help them understand how their device can help solve a business problem.” FMAudit + GreatAmerica Leasing Leasing companies remain an integral player within the office technology landscape as evidenced by the strategic software partnership agreement announced in 2010 between FMAudit and GreatAmerica Leasing Corporation. Under the agreement, GreatAmerica is offering FMAudit Managed Print software technology as part of their current FleetView remote monitoring software program. In addition, FMAudit adds a second platform to the FleetView program; offering GreatAmerica dealers and resellers options for their remote monitoring technology. FMAudit provides a comprehensive dealer managed print services software solution that includes features such as local printer data capture, browser based WebAudit, remote Onsite data collection deployment, supply triggered alert marketing and replenishment, service alerts and bi-directional ERP sync for meter billing. FMAudit has many more partners, including ECi, Digital Gateway, Compass, DocuAudit, BEI Services, Encompass, Tech Data, and NuKote, as well as a Who’s Who of MFP and printer manufacturers. More to Come When it comes to strategic partnerships, there’s always a new one on the horizon. So rest assured this isn’t the end of the story, but only a few chapters in what will continue to be an ongoing story in ENX. Scott Cullen is a regular contributor to ENX and has been writing about office technology and solutions since 1986. He can be contacted at scott_cullen@verizon.net if you’d like to be included in his next article on strategic solutions partnerships.