That’s
right - another article on managed print services. This time,
we’re focusing on what’s happening with MPS from a data
collection perspective, focusing on four data collection
providers—FMAudit, Print Audit, PrintFleet, and MWA. Each
offers solutions that are useful for any organization
marketing MPS. After all, without the data, it’s difficult to
make a case for MPS.
FMAudit
Independent dealers focusing on MPS have a huge menu of data
collection providers to choose from. Based on FMAudit Vice
President Darrell Levin’s informal research there’s at least
34 opportunities for someone in the BTA channel to find a
provider of print management software either hosted through
someone like a Supplies Network, an OEM, or directly from one
of the data collection providers.
The data collection providers recognize this opportunity,
especially in what’s to many still a meter-driven world.
“Meters are the best thing about the copier industry, but also
the biggest pain in the butt about the industry,” says Levin.
“Getting those billed accurately and on time.”
Like other third-party meter collection companies, FMAudit is
positioned well in the space. “We’re in a really nice spot,”
says Levin. “We’re kind of like golf ball sales guys. We sell
balls to the masses and some people play the game great, some
don’t know how, and some are happy with how they’re playing it
and just like to participate.”
As anyone who has worked with FMAudit understands or has
examined their product offerings, it all began with a USB key
for collecting data from a copier. That’s still an important
product for them, but the bigger deal in the MPS space is an
enterprise solution that encompasses the key, WebAudit for
collecting data over the Internet, and Onsite data collection
software that resides on a customer’s network. Today, those
three components make up FMAudit’s data collection offerings.
One can make a strong argument that the data collection
solutions providers have been providing solutions that are an
integral component of a managed print services engagement long
before anyone was using the term MPS even if the primary focus
of their products were copiers rather than printers.
“In the early days it was an assessment tool and we were just
collecting data,” explains Levin. “The integration piece with
e-automate, OMD, and La Crosse enable us to talk to people
from a defensive side. We sell a comprehensive solution today;
we’re not just selling for managed print, but for optimizing
your back-end, putting things together, and streamlining
processes.”
Levin emphasizes that what FMAudit offers is not just about
managing print. “It’s about getting data into e-automate or
streamlining billing, or making accurate billing, or in some
cases, managing one big account that’s a pain in the neck for
them. There’s more than just assess, analyze, and propose.
Nowadays, it’s monitor and gather data and information to
market deeper into current accounts, maybe to maintain or
sustain current accounts from a defensive posture.”
As far as Levin is concerned, it’s all about timing. “Whoever
gets the software there first wins. You don’t want your
competition coming in and telling them about managed print
whether you’re doing it or not; you want to get in with our
software.”
Although everyone and their brother is chasing after managed
print opportunities, Levin believes only a small percentage of
dealers have been successful to date. “The people who have
made the most money in managed print so far have been the
consultants,” he opines.
But FMAudit sees the potential and is fine-tuning their
systems and will likely have a new GUI interface in 2012. “Our
biggest initiative today is you can remotely install and
manage the whole thing,” says Levin. “You can send someone an
e-mail, and they know you’re collecting data from them. We’ve
got that up to speed. It’s simple and low cost to maintain for
our customers. The biggest thing that wasn’t is that supplies
are much more critical today than they were in the past. What
we do with our supply alerts are workflows: it triggers the
alerts, and sends information to e-automate or wherever. We’ve
had service alerts in the past but they were just alerts and
you had to figure out what to do with that.”
Beyond that Levin doesn’t want to share some of the other
things the company is doing out of fear that someone may be
reading or listening and take that idea and run with it. “A
lot of what we’re doing is double dark secret and I wouldn’t
want to publish,” he says. But he will say that FMAudit will
be further enhancing the tools and some of the value add so
that there will be greater adoption of the information being
presented and collected.
MWA
Intelligence
MWAi, a provider of machine-to-machine intelligence, is in a
pretty good place nowadays thanks to the growing interest in
managed print services.
“Three or four years ago when MWA was starting to get more
into the wider number of automation tools, strategically we
knew the core of the business was still going to be service
whether it was MPS or whatever acronym they applied to it,”
explains Mike Stramaglio, president.
With that in mind, MWA invested and continues to invest in its
core business, focusing on service automation, dispatch, and
essentially anything that enhances the ability to provide
remote service. At the same time, MWA had the foresight to
anticipate the impact of new technologies such as Droids,
iPhones, and RIM technology as well as location-based
management and the impact they would have on their product
offerings.
“We knew we would have to significantly increase the
intelligence built into the box,” reveals Stramaglio. “Sooner
or later the intelligence on the service side and the
intelligence on the machine side would come together with two
other components.”
That was automating supplies procurement along with any
software application that would improve print assessment and
meter reads such as CRM or a proposal-generation program.
Next, everything had to be integrated into the ERP for
billable purposes.
With this new market dynamic, MWA has altered its marketing
approach. “We used to focus aggressively on selling dimensions
of what we did,” explains Stramaglio. “So we’d sell service,
metering, supplies or RIM devices, and sometimes they would
hang together and sometimes they would not. We knew the market
wasn’t ready to hang them together, but we knew they had to be
built together. Today, we sell the enterprise. So if you want
just a simple meter read, you’re probably looking at the wrong
place if you’re looking at MWA. We sell things that are
embedded inside the machine and ensure the enterprise is
actually going from the service personnel through the machine
to all the document management and directly into the ERP. So
as a channel provider, reseller or hybrid dealer, you should
be able to leverage what you already invested in and take the
rest of our software and/or services into what you’re already
doing. So if you’re a Digital Gateway dealer, we’ll use that
as a core competency and hang the rest of the stuff around it.
But it is an enterprise sale.”
Meanwhile, MWA has a few new things in the works, some at the
request of the OEMs who embed MWA’s solutions in their
devices. “They’re asking us for greater insight in ensuring
the stability of the system, network security, Sarbanes-Oxley
compliance, remote service management, and firmware upgrades,”
reports Stramaglio. “For example, we can turn the equipment on
and off remotely and do firmware upgrades and collect data in
a new way for the OEM or the dealer.” Even if MPS wasn’t the
buzzword of the day, Stramaglio feels the business model would
have been changing across the data collection provider
landscape as well as the industry as a whole anyway.
“The whole MPS craze is a wonderful umbrella,” he says. “It
captures the next generation of business but it doesn’t really
represent the true nature of what is really a business
migration. We’re going from a hardware-component business to a
software and services business and it just happens to that the
MPS guys like Photizo have put this wrapper around it. It
works because it clarifies the marketplace for people, but
secondarily we’re doing what we would do and we’re enjoying
success on our own and the MPS push is just accelerating
acceptance and adoption.”
PrintFleet
Like other data collection providers, PrintFleet has found
that its products are increasingly important to its OEM
partners and the dealer channel, as each recognizes the future
of their businesses is dependent on the ability to
successfully manage the output on their customers’ devices.
“Our product is absolutely integral to our business partner’s
offerings,” says Chris McFarlane, president & COO of
PrintFleet. “What we’ve had to do to make sure we’re ready for
that is to increase the scale and functionality of the product
itself. In the last year we’ve spent time making sure that we
have the right talent and financial resources dedicated to the
core technology. Our goal is to continue to be the leader in
terms of accurate, reliable, and relevant data.”
To do that PrintFleet is working more closely with the OEMs.
“That allows us to make sure they can build their products
into our software,” explains McFarlane. “So when we reach out
to get the MIB (Management Information Base) information, we
can do that ahead of many others in our space. Through the
OEMs that we’re most closely aligned with, we’ll understand
their software in advance of it being launched.”
In order to stay aware of what the marketplace is asking for,
PrintFleet recently set up an advisory board that will provide
feedback on their technology and help shape future product
development. The board is comprised of executives from
PrintFleet’s OEM, distributor, and dealer partners to
represents all the critical stakeholders in the PrintFleet
community.
PrintFleet’s products are also evolving to handle larger
customer engagements, which is essential from an MPS provider
perspective. “If you look at the PrintFleet of a few years
ago, it would have been an exception for a customer with more
than 100,000 device licenses and now it’s not so much the
exception at all,” states McFarlane. “Our customers are
expecting to use the product in their business everywhere in
the world.”
The growing interest in managed print services is also
changing the way PrintFleet markets its products. “We’re much
more collaborative in our marketing efforts and we’re working
to not be white labeled,” says McFarlane. “Historically,
PrintFleet was behind the offerings of our business partners;
now we want to be with the ‘intel’ inside. Where their
offering may be bigger than PrintFleet, we don’t compete with
their core offerings or other elements of their business, but
we believe that our technology is integral to what they can
do. So we’re moving out if you like, from under the manhole
cover to ensure we’re recognized. We believe that this will
also help our partners.”
To do that PrintFleet has started a Platinum Partnership,
which is focused on exclusivity and collaboration in their
marketing efforts. Parts Now! is one of the first Platinum
Partners.
It’s not a stretch to assume that business from a data
collection provider perspective is growing whether or not it’s
because of MPS or in spite of it.
“PrintFleet has been fortunate to grow every year. Although
last year wasn’t as big a growth spurt as some prior years,”
reports McFarlane, “I think this quarter will be the biggest
in the company’s history, and we expect to be up above 50
percent or so year over year. We’re pretty excited that the
programs are working and that our customers seem willing to
work with us, and expand what they do with us. There are a
number of big leaders in this space using the PrintFleet
product.”
When McFarlane talks about customers he’s talking about the
likes of Konica Minolta, Kyocera Mita, Canon, Synnex, and LMI
Solutions. PrintFleet hasn’t ignored the dealer side of the
equation either. “We continue to reach out to them very
vigorously,” says McFarlane. “The dealer channel is as
important to us today as it’s ever been.”
One way that PrintFleet engages with the dealer channel is
through its MPS advisors. Every dealer that becomes a
PrintFleet dealer is assigned an MPS advisor. That advisor
works along side the dealer and provides consistent MPS
guidance to ensure that their needs are met, and to help them
work towards continuous improvement and profitability with
their MPS programs.
PrintFleet is currently preparing to launch the next version
of its software: PFE Impact. McFarlane says, “Users will find
additional functionality and usability that is better tailored
to their needs, as well as the flexibility to support various
MPS programs.”
The new version will include a GUI-based report builder, which
means the user won’t require the same technical skills
required previously to use it. “They’ll be able to dive in and
get their data with far greater flexibility than before,” says
McFarlane.
An enhanced alerting system will provide distinct event-based
notifications. “The options within the alerting system are
much greater and effectively eliminate the hassle of
duplicated notifications. This allows the users to better run
JIT supplies delivery and other proactive programs,” says
McFarlane.
Another new development is PrintFleet Enterprise Central that
will provide real-time data based on a large pool of
information allowing their partners to make adjustments on the
fly. “It’s in its infancy, but we see value in that,” notes
McFarlane.
Print Audit
“We’ve been doing this for about 10 years and they’ve been
called some very interesting things,” says John MacInnes,
President and CEO of Print Audit about managed print services.
“Solutions used to be the way. But the MPS craze has been
fantastic for us because it’s highlighted the need for what
we’ve been talking about. We’re kind of that garage band
that’s been around for 100 years but all of a sudden they’re
called an overnight success. I don’t think we were
visionaries, the world is just catching up to a need.”
It’s easy to see where Print Audit’s solutions fit into the
MPS discussion. If not, MacInnes offers an explanation. “We
not only collect information on what’s happening with the
imaging device, so we’re not just doing meter reads, supplies,
and toners and all that, we’re also managing what the users do
and where they are sending their print jobs,” he says. “That’s
been extraordinarily successful for us.”
Print Audit has two separate products that perform those
tasks. Acknowledging that customers are looking for a one-stop
shop approach, Print Audit is in the midst combining the data
sets and pieces of information into one broader product
instead of two separate products.
What Print Audit is doing in response to the MPS craze is
looking at technologies that would allow for less paper to be
used such as notifications that promote duplexing, for
example. They’re also providing solutions that encourage using
less toner on a page as well as capabilities that measure how
much toner is used and then actively trying to reduce that
amount so that it’s transparent to the customer. “We’re also
showing the end user customer ROI not just cost ROI, but
environmental ROI,” adds MacInnes. “That really helps the MPS
providers sell their services. ‘You’re going to save this many
trees, this many propane tanks, this much carbon.’ So we’re
putting a lot more calculations into the system that show
that.”
Not surprisingly, more dealers are paying attention to Print
Audit than ever before. “When companies think of managed print
services, they think of managing the users. So the good thing
about what we have is that it’s also introduced by customers
to dealers; so there’s a lot of pull from the customer side,”
says MacInnes.
In spite of
the buzz wordiness of MPS, Print Audit avoids that terminology
when positioning and marketing their products. “We typically
don’t use MPS,” states MacInnes. “What we do when we introduce
ourselves to new dealers, we take them through a MIF review
and we get an idea of what their MIF is and what they’re
missing in their MIF and show them the ROI of working with
these tools. That works great with MPS because then we can
say, not only can you now measure competitive devices, you now
have an opportunity to go after them and control them.”
It’s difficult to ascertain whether the MPS craze has been a
boon to Print Audit’s business or the down economy where
reducing costs and closely examining ROI are more critical
than ever. It doesn’t matter one way or another to MacInnes
who reveals that the company grew to the tune of 25-30 percent
last year and January 2011 was their best January ever.
In the coming months the company will release Print Audit
Secure, what MacInnes describes as a tool that allows people
to print jobs from their desktop. The job then goes into a
hold queue and the user can release those jobs from anywhere
in the organization instead of just the printer they sent it
to. It’s secure in that it releases the job only when the user
is at the device. “The nice side effect, in many cases, is the
jobs aren’t released at all,” reports MacInnes. “You know when
you walk by a printer and see all those jobs that were left
behind, that’s going to go away with this product.”
What
MPS Means to the Data Collection Service Providers