I was speaking with Mike Lamothe, president of Office Document Consulting, Inc. the other day for another article I’m writing and he shared an interesting anecdote related to MPS that I can’t resist sharing.
Wait, wait, before you tell me MPS is so yesterday, I’m not convinced because it’s still seems to be a topic of discussion wherever I go. In fact there was even a session devoted to MPS during the recent Toshiba road show.
Lamothe tells me that one of the big mistakes dealers make with managed print that he’s seen a lot of here in the U.S. is that dealers aren’t doing the proper mapping. “They’re not taking a physical inventory of what they’re supporting inside the organization,” he says. “I see it every day.”
As a result they end up providing toner and service to devices that are outside of their scope.
How big of a deal is this?
Based on Lamothe’s experiences, customers are telling dealers they don’t have any local devices when in reality they have 25 or 30, or some other number. “I heard 100 just last week,” states Lamothe.
If the dealer is taking direction from the customer and not verifying the information or understanding what’s being presented, or from a consumable or service perspective, how technicians are deployed and consumables are deployed to that device, that’s a recipe for failure in Lamothe’s opinion.
Without turning this into a commercial for Office Document Consulting, who provide mapping tools, Lamothe recommends dealers physically map the assets and current states and rationalize what that end determination is going to be so they know exactly what devices they’re supporting and what’s under contract.
I guess that’s common sense unless one’s not doing it. Based on Lamothe’s observations, too many dealers are taking the easy way out and taking their customer’s word on faith when in reality if you want something done right sometimes you’ve got to do it yourself.
Thanks for reading.
