OKI/Agiliant Partnership Places the BTA Channel on the Fast Track to Managed Services

If anyone has any doubts as to OKI Data Americas commitment to the BTA channel, you can toss those doubts out the window based on this week’s announcement of a platform development agreement with Agiliant, Inc., whereby Agiliant’s MITOS (Managed Information Technology and Output Services) offering will incorporate OKI’s proprietary Total Managed Print (TMP) solution to provide a suite of services to be offered through the Agiliant Affiliate Network (AAN) within the BTA dealer channel.

From an industry perspective this announcement bridges the gap between managed network services and managed print services. According to a press release issued by OKI, this alliance is among the first of its kind, and will allow dealers to provide end-to-end, integrated Managed Network Services (MNS) and Managed Print Services (MPS) solutions to customers to supplement their office equipment sales, lease and service offerings. This, says OKI will allow dealers to generate immediate returns and benefit from recurring revenue streams.

The two primary components of the alliance advance Agiliant’s MITOS offering by providing dealers in the AAN with a standardized product suite and technology platform that streamlines operations, shortens sales cycles and automates many of the integration requirements for building and delivering managed services. Agiliant will incorporate key aspects of OKI’s TMP Portal into its business processes to standardize asset and life cycle management, sales and delivery components. In addition, OKI’s broad portfolio of award-winning printing solutions will be offered as a preferred printer brand within Agiliant’s MITOS solution suite throughout the AAN.

The AAN is a nationwide network of business technology product and service providers, largely comprised of BTA dealers – each having been carefully evaluated and selected as best of breed in its respective market. AAN member companies are exclusively licensed to market and carry the MITOS solution suite to deliver managed IT and document output management products and services to their customers.

Gary Stevens

Agiliant President and CEO Gary Stevens describes the Agiliant Affiliate Network as an exclusive network, and one that he hopes will eventually encompass the top 60 BTA companies in the top 60 markets across the country. Clearly both organizations feel this is a good fit. 

“We’re very excited about this partnership we feel tying into OKI and their innovation we can bring out vision to the market much faster,” says Stevens. “We’ve looked at OKI and the things that they’re doing and the things they’ve done and it’s just a perfect partnership.”

“OKI has been at the forefront of helping channel partners effectively enter the document output management space to embrace the accelerating convergence of the industry,” states Tim Brien, director of MPS for OKI. “Gary’s new venture Agiliant is one of the biggest stepping stones for the BTA copier industry in quite some time.” 

Agiliant is looking to help the BTA channel transition more from a commodity based model to a services-based model through MITOS.

“We’re a foundation for these BTA channel companies to use in every aspect of taking our services solution from first call to the customer to ongoing management,” says Stevens.

Tim Brien

“A lot of OKI’s go-to-market strategies are currently surrounding the BTA market as well as the integration of services on the IT side of the house as well as the managed print side—the MFP and managed print,” adds Brien. “As the world turns towards this new form of servicing, which the MITOS program encompasses, [dealers] need to turn around and take over the entire network infrastucture for managing their client’s expectations and being the single source of outsourcing of not only IT network security, data backup, cloud-based solutions, but also the printers and the copiers.”  

He adds that this partnership will make it a lot easier for dealers to overcome many of the obstacles of getting into managed services, which is an area Brien believes is more difficult for dealers to embrace than managed print services.

“This is something that every organization truly does need in the BTA world,” he says. “What [Agiliant provides] isn’t only the actual products or a remote monitoring system, but full management capabilities and full managmeent consultants along with sales consultancy, which really does help [the dealer] from the start up to the finish.”

The big question though is what benefits does this bring to the dealer? According to the press release, “Agiliant affiliates can now offer a comprehensive suite of managed IT and output services to customers. It also offers the potential to expand their existing office equipment sales, lease, and service offerings. Additionally, it provides a standardized product suite and technology platform that streamlines operations, shortens sales cycles, and automates integration for building and delivering solutions. Finally, and this is probably one that is most beneficial to OKI, it allows dealers to offer OKI’s print and MFP solutions as a preferred brand.”

The bottom line is this makes it easier for dealers to incorporate managed services into their business model and it allows them to do it a whole lot faster.

“It’s going to expedite [the process] and can get the BTA dealer to market in less than a 30-day period of time initially and [help them become] pretty successful after three to four months,” says Stevens. “It’s really a short journey to a services model in an efficient manner.”

“This is what the dealerships really need to do to turn around and grow their business in a natural way,” adds Brien, “as opposed to going out and buying a couple of more dealerships. This allows them to expand their business and expand their portfolio and the products they service and support.

How will the two partners gauge success?

“Based on the overall penetration of dealers into their account base and by expanding their account base to not just include printers or copiers, but to truly migrate into full managed services,” responds Brien.

OKI will also gauge their success on the expansion of their TMP program. Additionally, OKI will be working with Agiliant on benchmarks of where those dealers have expanded now that they have the ability to manage every single piece of network infrastructure, which Brien says, “Quite frankly gives them a competitive advantage and us a competetive advantage as a partner to that organziaiton where we’re going to get more calls for products.”

For Stevens success will be gauged on the ability to work closely with OKI to develop the processes necessary to help dealers in the AAN be successful.

“Can we tie the assessment processes together, streamline the sales process and get to success where we’re actually contracting for services in a way that’s not being done now?” he concludes.

(Editor’s note: The original article on the introduction of Agiliant’s AAN follows this one.)