Vaclav Muchna
One of the great things about being a journalist covering the document imaging industry is that there’s always a new story around the bend, a new company to write about, or an old company that I haven’t written about before, and a new subject to interview.
You may already be familiar with Y Soft, a print management software company based in Brno, Czech Republic that’s doing business globally, including here in the U.S. I’ve seen their name around, but wasn’t completely clear about what it was they did and what kind of presence they had here in the U.S. and in the document imaging channel. Much to my surprise they do indeed have a presence and are growing that presence as well as expanding into 3D printing.
If you’re a dealer that sees the value in print management and 3D printing, you might want to learn more about Y Soft. And what better way to learn about Y Soft than by speaking with the company’s President & CEO Vaclav Muchna.
You have a couple of different products, SafeQ and b3D, tell me about each of those?
Muchna: YSoft SafeQ is an enterprise print management solution. It helps Fortune 1000 and SMB companies get the most out of their multifunction devices – by user/department cost allocations, secured badge printing and enhancing office productivity. While costs are always a concern, we are hearing more and about how SafeQ helps with document security and workflow improvements in areas like scanning and supporting mobile and remote workers. We acquired be3D late last year. It’s an exciting area for the business channel. We are bringing high-quality, mid-priced 3D printers in a variety of sizes to market. We are focused on fused deposition modeling (FDM) technology now and have models that cover print volumes ranging from cubes in sizes of 5.9” (15cm) to 15.7” x 23.6” x 31.5” (40x60x80cm).
Why does a dealer typically sell a Y Soft solution?
Muchna: I see two reasons. The first one is that they want to differentiate among their competitors, looking for additional value for their customers. This journey typically starts with transformation from “box moving” to an MPS type of offering. In my opinion, every MPS deal should have something like YSoft SafeQ, which allows, for example, to split the costs on the invoice from the dealer to the customer by their departments.
Another reason is a reaction to customer needs; maybe they want to enable employees to print from their mobile devices. Or, they want to simplify scanning and have a secure scanning audit log, for example.
Who do you view as your competition?
Muchna: By market share, we have to acknowledge Nuance. At the same time, according to IDC’s June 2015 ISV report on device and print management market share, we are pleased to note that in every category, Y Soft is the fastest growing company worldwide. We credit that to our strategy of providing the channel with excellent local support and service. And as a smaller, independent company, we can be more nimble and flexible to the needs of the channel and customers. There are of course many local competitors and in those situations we compete with a comprehensive product offering and again, very professional service and support.
Are there certain vertical markets or types of customers where Y Soft is the ideal solution?
Muchna: Enterprise print management, for the most part, is really a horizontal solution. I mean everyone prints, right? However, there are cases where integration with third party vertical solutions, particularly in workflow, may make sense. It is not too meaningful to say you are a vertical solution without really studying these solutions, how customers use them and where you can add value. It is an area that we are looking at though and can staff accordingly to do the necessary research and integration work.
How can a dealer or reseller selling Y Soft products be successful?
Muchna: Selling software solutions takes a different approach than selling devices. This is not a new concept – it is true for every industry. By partnering with Y Soft, dealers know they can rely on our expertise in assessing the customer’s needs, designing the software solution that fits the customer’s current print environment and can scale for growth and provide the necessary professional services to ensure the customer’s critical success factors continue to be met. Many times we hear from dealers that they do not want to provide the 1st level support to customers. We’ve just introduced a new level of support, called Direct Support, that lets dealers focus on new business while letting Y Soft handle support.
Y Soft also provides card readers as an option in a print management solution. If the customer requires card readers, with Y Soft, it is one less vendor to bring into an overall solution.
How can you help those dealers be successful?
Muchna: We need to differentiate those experienced with existing infrastructure (IT knowledge, experienced sales reps focused on value, software architects, etc.) from those occasionally selling solutions.
For those just starting with solutions, our pre-sales and post-sales resources help guide dealers through the entire selling process (customer engagement), discovery (technical requirements), delivery (implementation), and customer care (post-sales support).
For experienced solution sellers, we help them with a very wide product offering – Ysoft SafeQ has seven different modules covering security, print roaming, rules-based printing, scanning, credit and billing, mobile and reports) at prices reflecting their ability to provide a bigger part of the service on their own. Our flexible modular licensing allows them to be inexpensive when they need to compete on price. Our full suite license provides them with the competitive product when they need to compete on value.
How are the margins for selling a Y Soft solution?
Muchna: As you’d expect, margins for software solutions are greater than hardware. This enables us to have a lot of flexibility in pricing. Our brand new Partner Reward Program allows dealers to further increase their margin based on various activities such as showroom equipment or promotion of YSoft SafeQ with web links for example. Additional margins are available for dealers that provide technical support.
As Y Soft does not sell directly, it would never happen that the dealer is competing directly with us.
What’s next for Y Soft?
Muchna: A lot! For dealers, we’ve been looking at a Software as a Service pricing model for quite some time now and working with our OEM partners on making sure a subscription model would fit and be transparent. It is ready and we’ll provide details in the coming days. We are also formalizing our entire customer & partner engagement process and making it part of how we do business, which really streamlines the sales cycle and provides pre-emptive customer support. It is in beta now and we will be introducing it soon. We are continuing to expand our OEM embedded support and are always looking at new features that help customer extract more value from the MFP. And, in October, we will announce a new version of YSoft SafeQ with a whole lot of new features, many of them truly innovative.
