{"id":23362,"date":"2017-04-19T17:03:26","date_gmt":"2017-04-20T00:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/?p=23362"},"modified":"2017-04-19T17:04:12","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T00:04:12","slug":"diverse-printing-environments-create-complexity-for-mps-accounts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/the-week-in-imaging-twii\/editors-blog\/2017\/04\/diverse-printing-environments-create-complexity-for-mps-accounts\/","title":{"rendered":"Diverse Printing Environments Create Complexity for MPS Accounts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"An assessment of a prospect\u2019s printing environment should be part of every MPS proposal. Done properly, it will show where an MPS program can bring value and properly set expectations. Infrastructure providers offer help in this area, too. Another advantage of an assessment is that clients often don\u2019t understand the complexities of their own environments. Without that understanding, it\u2019s hard to have a meaningful conversation about MPS.<\/p>\n

Part of that complexity is the diverse mix of device models and brands you find at a typical customer site. Sales will want to get as many of those devices under contract as possible, but it might not be practical for the provider with some units. This is especially true for dealers who need to support brands they don\u2019t carry.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Sarah Custer, Supplies Network<\/p><\/div>\n

To successfully sell MPS, dealers have to understand and shield the customer from the complexities involved with servicing fleets that likely include disparate models from multiple manufacturers. \u201cManufacturer dynamics is a key challenge for many resellers,\u201d said Sarah Custer, director of services and solutions at Supplies Network, which offers services infrastructure to dealers. \u201cAs our market matures, aligning with the right manufacturers is more important now than ever. Resellers have to balance a lot of requirements and knowledge of lines that they carry, requirements that are very different in A3 versus A4. They are trying to put together one cohesive program for end users. Resellers that can balance all of that and make one seamless solution will be the ones to come out on top in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Kevin DeYoung, QualPath<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWe are brand agnostic; we don\u2019t care what they have,\u201d said Kevin DeYoung, president and CEO of QualPath and the current president of the Managed Print Services Association (MPSA). \u201cThat\u2019s important because of the varying definitions of MPS. We\u2019re not in the business of ripping out a customer\u2019s fleet. We\u2019re in the business of leveraging its current fleet, finding transactional methodologies that are easier for the prospective account to understand and justify.\u201d When selling MPS, DeYoung believes you need to have empathy with the decision maker. In other words, if you were in the decision maker\u2019s place, would you agree to the proposal in front of you?<\/p>\n

Toshiba America Business Solutions (TABS) has been selling MPS services since 2004, and it recognized early on the need to support brands other than its own, which presents challenges. \u201cThe real value of MPS is to take a burden borne by the end user\u2014selecting, managing, and the care and feeding of a heterogeneous fleet of device\u2014and outsource that to a provider that can do that with greater expertise and with a pricing model where customers paid only for print that was consumed,\u201d said Bill Melo, chief marketing executive at TABS.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Bill Melo, Toshiba America Business Solutions<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe struggle today is that when you put that offering on paper, it looks the same across different providers,\u201d said Melo. \u201cThe point of differentiation for us, or anyone who does it well, is the quality of the tools we use to assess the customer\u2019s fleet, the expertise of those doing the work, and the willingness to support products not of our own manufacture.\u201d Since the beginning, Toshiba has relied on and continues to develop its Encompass application, which Melo believes to be the most complete and robust tool in the industry for documenting the customer\u2019s scenario and allowing a professional services person to collaborate with a customer in real-time to evaluate different scenarios for optimizing a fleet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An assessment of a prospect\u2019s printing environment should be part of every MPS proposal. Done properly, it will show where an MPS program can bring value and properly set expectations. Infrastructure providers offer help in this area, too. Another advantage of an assessment is that clients often don\u2019t understand the complexities of their own environments. Without that understanding, it\u2019s hard to have a meaningful conversation about MPS. Part of that complexity is the diverse mix of device models and brands you find at a typical customer site. Sales will want to get as many of those devices under contract as possible, but it might not be practical for the provider with some units. This is especially true for dealers who need to support brands they don\u2019t carry. To successfully sell MPS, dealers have to understand and shield the customer from the complexities involved with servicing fleets that likely include disparate models from multiple manufacturers. \u201cManufacturer dynamics is a key challenge for many resellers,\u201d said Sarah Custer, director of services and solutions at Supplies Network, which offers services infrastructure to dealers. \u201cAs our market matures, aligning with the right manufacturers is more important now than ever. Resellers have to balance a lot of requirements and knowledge of lines that they carry, requirements that are very different in A3 versus A4. They are trying to put together one cohesive program for end users. Resellers that can balance all of that and make one seamless solution will be the ones to come out on top in the end.\u201d \u201cWe are brand agnostic; we don\u2019t care what they have,\u201d said Kevin DeYoung, president and CEO of QualPath and the current president of the Managed Print Services Association (MPSA). \u201cThat\u2019s important because of the varying definitions of MPS. We\u2019re not in the business of ripping out a customer\u2019s fleet. We\u2019re in the business of leveraging its current fleet, finding transactional methodologies that are easier for the prospective account to understand and justify.\u201d When selling MPS, DeYoung believes you need to have empathy with the decision maker. In other words, if you were in the decision maker\u2019s place, would you agree to the proposal in front of you? Toshiba America Business Solutions (TABS) has been selling MPS services since 2004, and it recognized early on the need to support brands other than its own, which presents challenges. \u201cThe real value of MPS is to take a burden borne by the end user\u2014selecting, managing, and the care and feeding of a heterogeneous fleet of device\u2014and outsource that to a provider that can do that with greater expertise and with a pricing model where customers paid only for print that was consumed,\u201d said Bill Melo, chief marketing executive at TABS. \u201cThe struggle today is that when you put that offering on paper, it looks the same across different providers,\u201d said Melo. \u201cThe point of differentiation for us, or anyone who does it well, is the quality of the tools we use to assess the customer\u2019s fleet, the expertise of those doing the work, and the willingness to support products not of our own manufacture.\u201d Since the beginning, Toshiba has relied on and continues to develop its Encompass application, which Melo believes to be the most complete and robust tool in the industry for documenting the customer\u2019s scenario and allowing a professional services person to collaborate with a customer in real-time to evaluate different scenarios for optimizing a fleet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":23363,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[80,1650,1638],"tags":[3083,2409],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23362"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/136"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23362"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23365,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23362\/revisions\/23365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}