This week Terry Bogner of Austin Technology Group in Austin, TX discusses what’s hot and what’s not in his market. Austin Technology Group sells equipment from Sharp, Muratec, and Kyocera.
What’s hot?
Bogner: All the different scan features we can talk about on the new generation of copiers. The new copiers have a lot more scanning features. As a Muratec dealer we even have a feature called ScanTag that automatically integrates to an existing content management system. I mention this because of the two excellent articles you wrote about document/content management in the recent issue of ENX.
What’s not?
Bogner: What’s not hot is giving this away for free. I think about this when I go to my mostly empty Post Office to check for mail. We need to be smarter than the post office and start charging for scans. Some customers brag about how they are now mostly paperless. I guess they expect me to be happy for them. I just stand there silently calculating how much that’s going to cost me on their cost per click maintenance agreement. Don’t get me wrong, I love scanning. I just think it’s time that we get compensated for the wear and tear it puts on the document feed as well as the false service calls when scanning problems are caused by their network and not the copier.
