{"id":21617,"date":"2016-12-01T13:35:54","date_gmt":"2016-12-01T21:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/?p=21617"},"modified":"2016-12-01T20:18:21","modified_gmt":"2016-12-02T04:18:21","slug":"innovolt-on-a-mission-to-eliminate-power-related-service-calls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/the-week-in-imaging-twii\/editors-blog\/2016\/12\/innovolt-on-a-mission-to-eliminate-power-related-service-calls\/","title":{"rendered":"Innovolt on a Mission to Eliminate Power-Related Service Calls"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jun

Jun Ho Son<\/p><\/div>\n

Innovolt, a leading manufacturer of power protection products, caught the industry\u2019s attention on September 1 when it announced the hiring of Ed McLaughlin and Phil Boatman as the company\u2019s vice-chairman and president, respectively. Both were well known in the office imaging space; McLaughlin is the former president of Sharp Imaging and Information company, and Boatman held several senior-level sales and marketing positions at Lexmark.<\/p>\n

ENX Magazine recently had a chance to speak with Boatman and Innovolt CEO Jun Ho Son about the company, its new management team, and the market potential for its power protection products.<\/p>\n

The addition of McLaughlin and Boatman are already having a positive impact, according to Son. \u201cHaving Phil and Ed has really helped open doors for us and foster conversations,\u201d he said.
\nThose conversations are important, because Innovolt takes a very different approach to power protection. That requires some discussion around the very real differences and how they drive meaningful results against what\u2019s out there in the market today.<\/p>\n

\"Phil

Phil Boatman<\/p><\/div>\n

That includes power sags where the voltage drops below normal for a short period of time. Problems caused by sags are often mistaken to have other causes, and that can create headaches and lost time for service organizations and their customers. Innovolt offers the only device-level protection against sags, which the company says represent about 75 percent of all power-related issues.<\/p>\n

Boatman believes that this gives Innovolt a compelling story for dealers, because power protection focused only on spikes or surges is redundant with what\u2019s built into equipment power supplies. \u201cBasic surge protection is a technology that’s been around for a long long time,\u201d said Boatman. \u201dBut without fail every dealer or partner that I’ve spoken with over the last couple of months has told me pretty much the same thing: They’re still looking for an edge. Any kind of edge.\u00a0They want to be able to demonstrate a greater value to their customers and they want to understand how they can become more efficient as an organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

The edge that Boatman believes Innovolt\u2019s products provide is more reliable equipment in the field and greater service efficiency. \u201cThat’s why I’m so excited coming on board here. There’s so much opportunity for us to to work with the dealers out there and provide them something that nobody else has,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

According to evaluations with customers, a dealer can save anywhere from 20 to over 40 percent on service calls by eliminating faults caused by these power anomalies. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean you necessarily let go of a big portion of your tech service reps,\u201d said Son. \u201cIt can also mean you can add business without adding headcount.\u201d A service tech that had been able to manage 100 machines might now be able to do 150. \u201cEveryone is dealing with retaining customers,\u201d Boatman added. \u201cA customer whose equipment goes down two times a week might drop [the dealer]. The real meat of it is when [dealers] look at their entire fleets that they’re maintaining and see how we can drive some pretty substantial benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Breakdown

Breakdown of power issue disturbances<\/p><\/div>\n

Dealers and their customers don\u2019t have to take Innovolt\u2019s claims on faith alone. The company offers cloud-based reporting based on power data its products collect. This allows service techs to quickly identify or rule out power issues as the cause of an equipment failure. \u201cThe worst case [for a service tech] is to come back after two or three visits for the same problem after trying a lot of things and then telling the customer, \u2018we think it\u2019s a power problem,\u2019\u201d said Son. It also validates having the products in place as both dealers and customers have a record of all power issues that occurred.<\/p>\n

The company offers power protection options for everything from small standalone units to production machines. \u201c[Dealers] generally keep the pricing of those things at around 10 percent of the actual equipment,\u201d said Son. \u201cSo part of the challenge for us was to make sure that we were able to actually present customers with an option to remain economically viable at lower [equipment] price points.\u201d<\/p>\n

For 2017, Innovolt looks to grow both its dealer channel and customer base. Son said the company will continue to develop its analytics capabilities. \u201cWe want to underscore how the data can be used by technicians,\u201d he said, adding that he expected Innovolt to provide more data points in a more practical format. \u201cPeople will apply new technologies in ways and situations that they understand,\u201d said Son. \u201c[Analytics] can be a really substantial differentiator, but only if you make it easily accessible and easy to apply to what they do today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Innovolt, a leading manufacturer of power protection products, caught the industry\u2019s attention on September 1 when it announced the hiring of Ed McLaughlin and Phil Boatman as the company\u2019s vice-chairman and president, respectively. Both were well known in the office imaging space; McLaughlin is the former president of Sharp Imaging and Information company, and Boatman held several senior-level sales and marketing positions at Lexmark. ENX Magazine recently had a chance to speak with Boatman and Innovolt CEO Jun Ho Son about the company, its new management team, and the market potential for its power protection products. The addition of McLaughlin and Boatman are already having a positive impact, according to Son. \u201cHaving Phil and Ed has really helped open doors for us and foster conversations,\u201d he said. Those conversations are important, because Innovolt takes a very different approach to power protection. That requires some discussion around the very real differences and how they drive meaningful results against what\u2019s out there in the market today. That includes power sags where the voltage drops below normal for a short period of time. Problems caused by sags are often mistaken to have other causes, and that can create headaches and lost time for service organizations and their customers. Innovolt offers the only device-level protection against sags, which the company says represent about 75 percent of all power-related issues. Boatman believes that this gives Innovolt a compelling story for dealers, because power protection focused only on spikes or surges is redundant with what\u2019s built into equipment power supplies. \u201cBasic surge protection is a technology that’s been around for a long long time,\u201d said Boatman. \u201dBut without fail every dealer or partner that I’ve spoken with over the last couple of months has told me pretty much the same thing: They’re still looking for an edge. Any kind of edge.\u00a0They want to be able to demonstrate a greater value to their customers and they want to understand how they can become more efficient as an organization.\u201d The edge that Boatman believes Innovolt\u2019s products provide is more reliable equipment in the field and greater service efficiency. \u201cThat’s why I’m so excited coming on board here. There’s so much opportunity for us to to work with the dealers out there and provide them something that nobody else has,\u201d he said. According to evaluations with customers, a dealer can save anywhere from 20 to over 40 percent on service calls by eliminating faults caused by these power anomalies. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean you necessarily let go of a big portion of your tech service reps,\u201d said Son. \u201cIt can also mean you can add business without adding headcount.\u201d A service tech that had been able to manage 100 machines might now be able to do 150. \u201cEveryone is dealing with retaining customers,\u201d Boatman added. \u201cA customer whose equipment goes down two times a week might drop [the dealer]. The real meat of it is when [dealers] look at their entire fleets that they’re maintaining and see how we can drive some pretty substantial benefits.\u201d Dealers and their customers don\u2019t have to take Innovolt\u2019s claims on faith alone. The company offers cloud-based reporting based on power data its products collect. This allows service techs to quickly identify or rule out power issues as the cause of an equipment failure. \u201cThe worst case [for a service tech] is to come back after two or three visits for the same problem after trying a lot of things and then telling the customer, \u2018we think it\u2019s a power problem,\u2019\u201d said Son. It also validates having the products in place as both dealers and customers have a record of all power issues that occurred. The company offers power protection options for everything from small standalone units to production machines. \u201c[Dealers] generally keep the pricing of those things at around 10 percent of the actual equipment,\u201d said Son. \u201cSo part of the challenge for us was to make sure that we were able to actually present customers with an option to remain economically viable at lower [equipment] price points.\u201d For 2017, Innovolt looks to grow both its dealer channel and customer base. Son said the company will continue to develop its analytics capabilities. \u201cWe want to underscore how the data can be used by technicians,\u201d he said, adding that he expected Innovolt to provide more data points in a more practical format. \u201cPeople will apply new technologies in ways and situations that they understand,\u201d said Son. \u201c[Analytics] can be a really substantial differentiator, but only if you make it easily accessible and easy to apply to what they do today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":115,"featured_media":15128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[80,1650,1638],"tags":[628,486],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21617"}],"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\/115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21617"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21666,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21617\/revisions\/21666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}