Managed Services

Recently, in a workshop at the Las Vegas ITEX trade show, I shared my high-level process to successfully transform a dealership from traditional hardware sales to managed services. I have refined my transformation process over the last 10 years, and for most dealers it takes Read More

Selling technology successfully doesn’t happen by accident. There are a lot of philosophies out there on how to get it done. Before designing an effective go-to market strategy, you must consider the type of organization you are, what technological capabilities you possess, and Read More

There is a vast array of opinions in the industry regarding how managed print services should be executed and what success really looks like. Companies from the MFP space, IT providers and service organizations are all looking to sell MPS programs. Each of these company types has Read More

In the last month’s article, I spoke about the opportunities in the A4 space and how many dealers have thrown in the towel on MPS. In this article, I will address the common MPS mistakes and how to avoid them. The first mistake companies make when selling MPS is selling a blanket Read More

I was at the Lexmark dealer meeting in Fort Lauderdale in May and saw a great presentation from David Ramos of InfoTrends. In his presentation, Ramos highlighted historical and forecasted revenue for equipment, supplies and service (which are decreasing), unit placements for A4 Read More

Anybody that knows me well knows that I am a big proponent of SBB (Seat Based Billing) for Managed Print. I’ve talked at various events on the topic over the years and you may have been in one of those sessions. For better or for worse I’m actually now referred to as “that SBB Read More

On March 7, Fujitsu announced the release of PaperStream Server, a web-based, enterprise-class document processing platform that enables organizations to collect, process, index and route business critical content to Line-of-Business (LOB) or Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Read More

There are primary and fundamental steps to consider when pointing your business to managed services. Business owners are often the go-getters from days gone by and can be in the habit of turning their ship in a snap. Jumping ahead of competitors can be a great advantage if done Read More

Trying to predict the future of technology and how long your solutions will be valuable is impossible. Still, as the owner of a company that sells and installs technology you must have a strong vision and understanding about where technology is headed. Since you can’t predict it, Read More

With the amount of hype surrounding Managed Services one might think that it’s the perfect panacea for all the ills plaguing the document imaging industry. If you’re a dealer, you’d be a fool to ignore this trend. At least that seems to be the prevailing sentiment throughout the Read More

Everybody makes mistakes and the dealer community has made its share as they struggle to make a go of it in the Managed Services business. This month in the print version of ENX magazine the main feature is “Managed Services Made Easy.” The individuals we interviewed for that Read More

The main feature in the July issue of ENX is “Managed Services Made Easy.” That piece examines how to get started in Managed Services and whether or not buying an IT company is the easy answer. I also asked the experts I interviewed for that story to identify the biggest fears Read More

If offering Managed Services were easy, then every office technology dealer would be offering it. But not so fast, it’s not all that easy. And not many dealers offer it yet despite the many pundits who are promoting Managed Services as a way to offset declining hardware sales and Read More

When I talk about compensation and commissions that drive success, many people assume that I mean, pay out more money, but I assure you, that is not the point.  I simply mean, put your money where your plan is!  When I look at today’s sales organizations and watch how the day to Read More

Like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, I’ve seen many copier dealers try to transform their company and find their way to the future.  The natural progression is to morph their business offerings to include deliverables that involve technology services. Although, I Read More