If you run into Shane Hannan, president of Print Control Software, Inc., maker of ROI Print Manager, at a conference, in a dark alley, or simply speak with him on the phone, you’re going to hear a lot about the importance of providing dealers with user level printing data. You’ll also hear a lot about how ROI Print Manager now integrates with FMAudit.
The relationship with FMAudit is an exclusive one and in its second year. The integration of these products involves a patent pending process for combining print device data with user level information. This past March at the ITEX show that Version 1 was released and now ninety days in and things seem to be going very well.
If you ask Hannan, or even if you don’t, he’ll tell you that this is an ideal integration between a dealer efficiency tool (FMAudit), and a solution (ROI Print Manager) enabling dealers to get more detailed information on their prospects or current accounts.
With all this user level information provided by ROI Print Manager the dealer and the organization using it can develop and implement an appropriate managed print strategy. The user level data set is something that Hannan says dealers never really had access to before, this data has always remained behind the customer’s firewall. He maintains that this information, synched with device details is something that industry have been pining for, enabling them to see what users are printing and better understand their workflow.
Plus it’s a boon for those dealers offering MPS.
Shane Hannan
“It’s critical information to help make sure they are making money on their deals because we’re picking up information on what users are printing, their work habits, and how can we improve that,” says Hannan.
He adds that by exposing this level of information dealers are seeing opportunities to plug in more workflow solutions and services.
This is a little bit different than how a dealer might have done it in the past.
“In the past they’d probably install some type of user assessment tool, and there are many of those on the market today, and they’re all pretty good tools,” says Hannan. “The problem is it’s like a one-off shot unless you continually have access to that data. The other problem with those tools is that they’re not 100 percent accurate because they’re not collecting [data] at the meter level, they’re collecting from the print spooler/print server.”
With this integration, the ROI Print Manager information is synched with the FMAudit meter information with the user print spooler alongside metering information on the device.
“Combining that and having that back at the dealership inside a tool that they use today as part of their main operations, which is FMAudit Central, gives them the luxury of having all that data in one place,” adds Hannan.
While ROI Print Manager can run standalone just like competitive products, collecting user information, setting print rules, quotas, identifying changes to user’s print behavior and reporting on all that, the advantage now having all that information together at one’s fingertips, and then taking all those reports generated by the software and being able to provide customers with a better account review.
“Now they can go in and say here’s your 20 high-volume users, here’s your most expensive users, here’s your high-volume users who are duplexing, here’s your high-volume users who are printing from the Internet, here’s who’s printing e-mail, and here’s your most expensive, most used, and least used printers,” states Hannan. “That depth of information is a totally different proposition for an account review vs. just going in with the components of meters, service uptime, and billing.”
When I asked Hannan what’s the one question dealers ask again and again about ROI Print Manager, he responds, “’If I’m exposing people who are printing e-mail in color isn’t that going to be detrimental to the dealership?’ Yes, in the short term but the thing is if you don’t expose that today your competitor is going to come along and expose that at some point. Wouldn’t you be better being ahead of the game and showing them that opportunity to save money and helping them improve their users’ workflow with more services and solutions revenue?”
Hannan emphasizes the need for user level workflow solutions, and admittedly he’s biased, but he makes a good point.
“Think of companies like Google, why do they make so much money? Because they collect a lot of data. The more data you have, the more control you have.”
This first generation integration with FMAudit requires the dealer to install two packages that operate on the same server in a virtual environment and hook together with the data going into FMAudit Central. Another benefit of the integration for the dealer is a single vendor relationship. The vendor relationship is through FMAudit and is an addition to an existing FMAudit contract.
Hannon reports the first release of the program was the most complex, particularly because it involved marrying up the two data streams.
“Doing that was huge and we had to share technology and then get it into FMAudit Central,” says Hannan. “Version 2 will provide more detailed reporting.”
That version’s release is scheduled for early August.
As far as future iterations of the product, Hannan expects the integration between the two programs to become tighter to the point where the dealer is only installing one application.
For those dealers offering MPS, they’ll have the option of managing their MPS programs from within their dealerships from FMAudit Central. “We’ve got all this great data detailing every printing aspect of their customer base. Now we will be able to generate account review reports to show customers opportunity for savings and workflow improvement. Next will be the ability to set print rules and print quotas inside FMAudit Central to limiting volume to difficult to service devices or routing volume to a dealers fleet. This is the type of information it’s going to help dealers advance their MPS programs.”
