{"id":17013,"date":"2016-03-17T18:09:19","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T01:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/?p=17013"},"modified":"2016-09-15T09:25:07","modified_gmt":"2016-09-15T16:25:07","slug":"how-to-identify-and-avoid-mps-pitfalls-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/the-week-in-imaging-twii\/mps\/2016\/03\/how-to-identify-and-avoid-mps-pitfalls-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Identify and Avoid MPS Pitfalls: Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

MPS has been around long enough to identify the many pitfalls that can prevent a dealer from being successful. Some of the pitfalls have been learned firsthand others by watching others fail. We asked successful MPS dealers and MPS advocates from the document imaging industry to share with us the biggest pitfalls they\u2019ve seen or experienced over the course of their careers.<\/p>\n

Kevin Morris, CEO of OneDOC MPS in Oklahoma City, OK and a member of the board of the Managed Print Services Association, has seen a few pitfalls in his travels, including one during a recent visit to a company that was under an MPS contract from a competitor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had this huge storeroom full of supplies,\u201d recalls Morris. \u201cWhen we asked why they had all these supplies, they told us the dealer they do business with just keeps sending them supplies. I asked, \u2018It\u2019s not like supply and demand?\u2019 \u2018No, we just stock up, we even have toner on the shelf for equipment we\u2019ve gotten rid of.\u2019 They probably had $30,000 worth of toner on the shelf. I don\u2019t know how many accounts that [dealer]has, but if they have many like that, that\u2019s a lot of money sitting out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Kevin

Kevin Morris<\/p><\/div>\n

The way that OneDOC MPS avoids that pitfall is by providing customers with just-in-time shipments.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople get toner when they need it rather than having it sitting around on their shelves,\u201d says Morris.<\/p>\n

Another pitfall is failing to understand the cost of that as well as the cost of service and supplies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was at a BTA meeting and somebody stood up and said, \u2018We just bill everything out at two cents a page and roll from there,\u2019\u201d recalls Morris. \u201cI said, \u2018Really? On some devices you might make money and others you might lose your shirt. How do you go in blindly like that?\u2019 At our company we know what the cost of operation is for every model from every brand. I can go into our database and see exactly what those things costs. Understanding those cost mechanisms is important.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Nathan Maust, a major account executive with ASI Business Solutions in Dallas, TX, one of the biggest pitfalls he\u2019s seen is pricing models that weren\u2019t calculated correctly with the end result the dealer loses money on the MPS deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember when I was our managed print specialist and I took over a healthcare account for a previous rep\u2014several hundred pages a month, $5,000-$6,000 a month in billing, and for some reason it was sitting at 3-4 percent gross margin and we couldn\u2019t find out why.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we started doing more detailed analysis of the documents being printed it turned out five printers out of 80-something was being used by doctor\u2019s to print X-rays. Picture an X-ray, there\u2019s very little white on that page. Those five printers were bleeding us dry and we ended up parting with that client with the mutual understanding that it wasn\u2019t working. We couldn\u2019t continue to offer the level of service that they had become accustomed to for that type of price. It wasn\u2019t realistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Nathan

Nathan Maust<\/p><\/div>\n

What that taught ASI was it can\u2019t simply look at how many pages the customer is running on its devices and coming up with an aggregate cost per page based upon that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to become very efficient and detailed in understanding what our clients are printing, how they\u2019re printing, and how that impacts the pricing model.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another pitfall Maust has witnessed is organizations that continually deliver poor supplies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are many drill and fill companies that don\u2019t provide quality compatible supplies,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat happens is devices require more service, color quality is poor, and you have unhappy customers. There are large companies in this market that when you talk to their customers, they continually complain about issues they have caused by inferior supplies.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Bill Melo, chief marketing executive, Toshiba America Business Solutions\/Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions, the one big pitfall he sees dealers struggle with is how to price deals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a common pitfall because it\u2019s kind of complicated. If you\u2019re picking up a fleet that has 20 or 30 printers, you can have 10 different ones. Those 10 different ones probably have different price profiles based on the types of toner they use and the availability of reman, so pricing a deal can be complicated. Unless you have a good tool to do that you can easily make a mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Toshiba

Bill Melo<\/p><\/div>\n

The other thing he finds that has been compounded significantly with MPS and an area where Melo doesn\u2019t think everyone executes as well as they should is the re-supply process.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone calls you up about their MFP and says, \u2018I\u2019ve run out of toner, ship me a new one,\u2019 that\u2019s dicey enough, but for every MFP you have two or three printers, or five, or six or eight printers, now your re-supply process and risk has gone up several fold. Unless you have a good process for remote monitoring, automatic toner replenishment, as a dealer, even if you priced the deal correctly to begin with you can get yourself in trouble very fast by sending out the wrong toner or too much. The cost of toner for printers is significantly higher than it is for MFPs and you have a lot more of them to service.\u201d<\/p>\n

We will publish Part 2 of How to Identify and Avoid MPS Pitfalls next Friday in the ENX Enews<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MPS has been around long enough to identify the many pitfalls that can prevent a dealer from being successful. Some of the pitfalls have been learned firsthand others by watching others fail. We asked successful MPS dealers and MPS advocates from the document imaging industry to share with us the biggest pitfalls they\u2019ve seen or experienced over the course of their careers. Kevin Morris, CEO of OneDOC MPS in Oklahoma City, OK and a member of the board of the Managed Print Services Association, has seen a few pitfalls in his travels, including one during a recent visit to a company that was under an MPS contract from a competitor. \u201cThey had this huge storeroom full of supplies,\u201d recalls Morris. \u201cWhen we asked why they had all these supplies, they told us the dealer they do business with just keeps sending them supplies. I asked, \u2018It\u2019s not like supply and demand?\u2019 \u2018No, we just stock up, we even have toner on the shelf for equipment we\u2019ve gotten rid of.\u2019 They probably had $30,000 worth of toner on the shelf. I don\u2019t know how many accounts that [dealer]has, but if they have many like that, that\u2019s a lot of money sitting out there.\u201d The way that OneDOC MPS avoids that pitfall is by providing customers with just-in-time shipments. \u201cPeople get toner when they need it rather than having it sitting around on their shelves,\u201d says Morris. Another pitfall is failing to understand the cost of that as well as the cost of service and supplies. \u201cI was at a BTA meeting and somebody stood up and said, \u2018We just bill everything out at two cents a page and roll from there,\u2019\u201d recalls Morris. \u201cI said, \u2018Really? On some devices you might make money and others you might lose your shirt. How do you go in blindly like that?\u2019 At our company we know what the cost of operation is for every model from every brand. I can go into our database and see exactly what those things costs. Understanding those cost mechanisms is important.\u201d For Nathan Maust, a major account executive with ASI Business Solutions in Dallas, TX, one of the biggest pitfalls he\u2019s seen is pricing models that weren\u2019t calculated correctly with the end result the dealer loses money on the MPS deal. \u201cI remember when I was our managed print specialist and I took over a healthcare account for a previous rep\u2014several hundred pages a month, $5,000-$6,000 a month in billing, and for some reason it was sitting at 3-4 percent gross margin and we couldn\u2019t find out why. \u201cWhen we started doing more detailed analysis of the documents being printed it turned out five printers out of 80-something was being used by doctor\u2019s to print X-rays. Picture an X-ray, there\u2019s very little white on that page. Those five printers were bleeding us dry and we ended up parting with that client with the mutual understanding that it wasn\u2019t working. We couldn\u2019t continue to offer the level of service that they had become accustomed to for that type of price. It wasn\u2019t realistic.\u201d What that taught ASI was it can\u2019t simply look at how many pages the customer is running on its devices and coming up with an aggregate cost per page based upon that. \u201cWe had to become very efficient and detailed in understanding what our clients are printing, how they\u2019re printing, and how that impacts the pricing model.\u201d Another pitfall Maust has witnessed is organizations that continually deliver poor supplies. \u201cThere are many drill and fill companies that don\u2019t provide quality compatible supplies,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat happens is devices require more service, color quality is poor, and you have unhappy customers. There are large companies in this market that when you talk to their customers, they continually complain about issues they have caused by inferior supplies.\u201d For Bill Melo, chief marketing executive, Toshiba America Business Solutions\/Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions, the one big pitfall he sees dealers struggle with is how to price deals. \u201cThat\u2019s a common pitfall because it\u2019s kind of complicated. If you\u2019re picking up a fleet that has 20 or 30 printers, you can have 10 different ones. Those 10 different ones probably have different price profiles based on the types of toner they use and the availability of reman, so pricing a deal can be complicated. Unless you have a good tool to do that you can easily make a mistake.\u201d The other thing he finds that has been compounded significantly with MPS and an area where Melo doesn\u2019t think everyone executes as well as they should is the re-supply process. \u201cIf someone calls you up about their MFP and says, \u2018I\u2019ve run out of toner, ship me a new one,\u2019 that\u2019s dicey enough, but for every MFP you have two or three printers, or five, or six or eight printers, now your re-supply process and risk has gone up several fold. Unless you have a good process for remote monitoring, automatic toner replenishment, as a dealer, even if you priced the deal correctly to begin with you can get yourself in trouble very fast by sending out the wrong toner or too much. The cost of toner for printers is significantly higher than it is for MFPs and you have a lot more of them to service.\u201d We will publish Part 2 of How to Identify and Avoid MPS Pitfalls next Friday in the ENX Enews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[85],"tags":[328],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17013"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17013"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17034,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17013\/revisions\/17034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}