Light production print can be a stepping stone to new customers and it offers the opportunity to grow your business. When managed properly, it can position a dealership for growth and continued success. When managed poorly, it can spell problems that may haunt the dealership for years.
This is not an arena you want to dip your toe in and see how it goes. To do it effectively, a significant investment in parts and training is required. If you only have a couple of devices in the field, your ability to properly support the equipment will be nonexistent.
The Market Assessment
The first phase of making the light production print decision needs to be a market assessment to see how many potential units you can reasonably expect to place. If that number is less than 10, this is probably not a market you want to tackle. Additionally, these need to be in a geographic area that one team can support.
If your territory covers a wide area and you expect to have equipment scattered throughout the territory, this may not be a wise decision. To be proficient on a product, a technician needs familiarity and experience: Working with a product on a regular basis is mandatory to solidify proficiency. If a tech supports only one of a certain model in the field, it will be difficult for the tech to be proficient on that model.
Understand the Difference
Most light production print customers will have very different expectations and requirements than the traditional MFP client.
First, in the production print arena, copy quality is critical. Where a typical MFP customer won’t notice or care about print density, fill or precise color shades, a production print customer looks at output all day long, hunting for imperfections. This means that you can expect more service calls and you may have trouble reaching the expected yield on components.
Second, because the client is depending on the equipment to generate revenue, they will expect a very quick response to service calls. In general, they will not tolerate excessive response time, or a lack of parts availability.
Preparation is Key
If you have examined the market and find that there is a good opportunity to place multiple devices and can do so in a limited geographic area, it is time to start preparing. These five steps can make all the difference.
Identify Technicians: Review the skill set of the potential technicians, selecting those with good customer relations and troubleshooting ability. Customer relations is a key skill because in most cases they may be dealing with challenging customers. Troubleshooting skill is also vital since fixing the equipment right the first time is essential. A production print client will not tolerate a technician troubleshooting by swapping parts until he finds one that works. You will need a minimum of two technicians for your production print team. This allows for continuity of service in the event of vacations or one leaving the company.
Training, Before Shipping: The first step is getting both technicians trained before you sell your first unit. Most manufacturers require a trained technician before shipping equipment, and even if they don’t, you want a trained technician available to set up and install the equipment. Having both trained will provide necessary practice when they set up and install the client equipment.
Identify Parts: Work with your manufacturer’s service representative to identify the parts that commonly fail and then set up stocking levels to make sure that these parts are in inventory and available. Depending on the equipment population, you may want to have them in the production team’s car stock. If any of the PM components are labor-intensive to rebuild, it may be beneficial to have one spare unit that can be swapped rather than rebuilt at the customer site. Production print clients are not tolerant of extended down times, so anything that reduces that will be appreciated by the client.
Staff Smart: As previously mentioned, it will be vital that you always have one technician available to handle the production print needs. You will need to be careful about approving vacations and training so that you don’t wind up short. Since the production print team’s first responsibility is always to those accounts, you will want to consider reducing these technicians’ territory of non-production equipment.
Choose the Right Equipment: While this is an issue that will affect service more than the sales department, it is vital that the sales department understands what equipment will perform well in a specific volume band. Too many times a dealer will place light production print into a client for a reason other than volume. When this happens, everyone suffers. If you are a multi-line dealer, I recommend choosing one manufacturer as the production print product. The only hope to be effective is if your technicians service the same products on a consistent basis. Having products from multiple vendors defeats that plan. You will have to accomplish training for each product and you will have to inventory spare parts for each line.
Profit Margins will be Different
Dealers also need to understand that the profit margins will typically be lower on both the equipment and on the per-copy charge. It is critical to make sure that you protect the per-copy charge since the number of copies is so large. A difference of .001 per copy on 200,000 is a $200 difference per month, which equates to $12,000 over five years.
When calculating cost per page, you will need to base everything on an 11×17″ page. Printers love to pay for one page and sell two pages. You may also want to limit the toner included in the contract since print shops have no problem printing pages that approach 100 percent coverage, especially if they view the toner as free.
If the market will support it, and you properly manage it, production print can present a significant opportunity for dealers who want to grow their business. The key to success is doing the market research and then making sure the opportunity is large enough. If you can properly manage the program, you’ll reap the rewards.
