{"id":22509,"date":"2017-02-01T16:43:41","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T00:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/?p=22509"},"modified":"2017-02-02T20:57:11","modified_gmt":"2017-02-03T04:57:11","slug":"staffing-properly-is-critical-to-success-when-servicing-production-printers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/the-week-in-imaging-twii\/editors-blog\/2017\/02\/staffing-properly-is-critical-to-success-when-servicing-production-printers\/","title":{"rendered":"Staffing Properly Is Critical to Success When Servicing Production Printers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"When dealer starts to look at the production print market, an easy assumption to make is that the existing service team can support the new product line. That assumption is dangerous and wrong according to everyone ENX spoke with for our February magazine feature, \u201cProduction Print Growth Drivers: Why Some Dealers Are Cashing In.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"

John Fulena, Ricoh Production Printing Business Group<\/p><\/div>\n

Production print customers run their machines long and hard, and their expectations for support are higher as a result. Downtime for a copier is an inconvenience. When a production printer goes down, revenue is lost, costs increase, and opportunities might be lost. \u201cMost if not all our successful dealers selling production have dedicated people,\u201d said John Fulena, vice president of Ricoh\u2019s Production Print Business Group. \u201cTo Ricoh, that\u2019s really a prerequisite. We\u2019re always there as a safety net, but if they are not self-sufficient, it\u2019s very hard to maintain and grow the business.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Erik Holdo, Konica Minolta<\/p><\/div>\n

Adding responsibility for production print to your copier service team is a bad idea, in part due to the more demanding expectations, but also because of the additional complexity of servicing them. That goes double for dealers who sell high volume inkjet systems. The higher up the production print market a dealer goes, the greater the commitment. \u201cIt\u2019s really up to the dealer to make the investments needed to attack the market,\u201d said Erik Holdo, senior vice president Production Print Solutions at Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A. Inc. He noted that Konica Minolta makes all its production print offerings available to the dealer channel.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Becky and Bob Maxwell, Komax<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201c[Komax] made the commitment on the service side by training multiple technicians on the different production print products,\u201d said Bob Maxwell, owner of Komax. \u201cIt costs you money to send those guys to school and takes a lot of time for them to do their certifications. But if someone\u2019s spent $100,000 on a piece of equipment that\u2019s going to make money for them and it goes down, they can\u2019t wait until tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Hunter McCarty, RJ Young<\/p><\/div>\n

RJ Young has gone another step and hired a full-time trainer who teaches its clients\u2019 personnel how to use the equipment when it\u2019s installed. If the client adds or replaces staff, the trainer goes back to work with the new person. \u201cThis cuts back on our service costs with what we call operator error where the operator didn\u2019t know how to do a certain job,\u201d said McCarty, COO at RJ Young, a Canon and Ricoh dealer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why a lot [of dealers] have hesitated to get into production,\u201d said McCarty. \u201cIt\u2019s demanding, and the clients are going to need special kinds of services that you don\u2019t normally give to your average client. These clients are going to need special attention from day one, and you\u2019ve got to take care of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lucia Perez, Xerox<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cAt the beginning, support should start with print service and workflow assessments,\u201d said Lucia Perez, marketing manager, in-plant for Xerox Corporation. \u201cThen the dealer can help the customer develop customized applications or application configurations.\u201d She also recommends ongoing service and maintenance check-ins and troubleshooting, and providing automatic system updates.<\/p>\n

Response times vary from four hours for lower volume systems to two hours for high production units. Both dealers and OEMs stressed the importance of having service level agreements (SLAs) in place that spell out mutually agreed-upon terms and contingencies. A common contingency is that the dealer runs the client\u2019s jobs on its own equipment if the customer\u2019s machine can\u2019t be fixed in a timely manner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When dealer starts to look at the production print market, an easy assumption to make is that the existing service team can support the new product line. That assumption is dangerous and wrong according to everyone ENX spoke with for our February magazine feature, \u201cProduction Print Growth Drivers: Why Some Dealers Are Cashing In.\u201d Production print customers run their machines long and hard, and their expectations for support are higher as a result. Downtime for a copier is an inconvenience. When a production printer goes down, revenue is lost, costs increase, and opportunities might be lost. \u201cMost if not all our successful dealers selling production have dedicated people,\u201d said John Fulena, vice president of Ricoh\u2019s Production Print Business Group. \u201cTo Ricoh, that\u2019s really a prerequisite. We\u2019re always there as a safety net, but if they are not self-sufficient, it\u2019s very hard to maintain and grow the business.\u201d Adding responsibility for production print to your copier service team is a bad idea, in part due to the more demanding expectations, but also because of the additional complexity of servicing them. That goes double for dealers who sell high volume inkjet systems. The higher up the production print market a dealer goes, the greater the commitment. \u201cIt\u2019s really up to the dealer to make the investments needed to attack the market,\u201d said Erik Holdo, senior vice president Production Print Solutions at Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A. Inc. He noted that Konica Minolta makes all its production print offerings available to the dealer channel. \u201c[Komax] made the commitment on the service side by training multiple technicians on the different production print products,\u201d said Bob Maxwell, owner of Komax. \u201cIt costs you money to send those guys to school and takes a lot of time for them to do their certifications. But if someone\u2019s spent $100,000 on a piece of equipment that\u2019s going to make money for them and it goes down, they can\u2019t wait until tomorrow.\u201d RJ Young has gone another step and hired a full-time trainer who teaches its clients\u2019 personnel how to use the equipment when it\u2019s installed. If the client adds or replaces staff, the trainer goes back to work with the new person. \u201cThis cuts back on our service costs with what we call operator error where the operator didn\u2019t know how to do a certain job,\u201d said McCarty, COO at RJ Young, a Canon and Ricoh dealer. \u201cThat\u2019s why a lot [of dealers] have hesitated to get into production,\u201d said McCarty. \u201cIt\u2019s demanding, and the clients are going to need special kinds of services that you don\u2019t normally give to your average client. These clients are going to need special attention from day one, and you\u2019ve got to take care of them.\u201d \u201cAt the beginning, support should start with print service and workflow assessments,\u201d said Lucia Perez, marketing manager, in-plant for Xerox Corporation. \u201cThen the dealer can help the customer develop customized applications or application configurations.\u201d She also recommends ongoing service and maintenance check-ins and troubleshooting, and providing automatic system updates. Response times vary from four hours for lower volume systems to two hours for high production units. Both dealers and OEMs stressed the importance of having service level agreements (SLAs) in place that spell out mutually agreed-upon terms and contingencies. A common contingency is that the dealer runs the client\u2019s jobs on its own equipment if the customer\u2019s machine can\u2019t be fixed in a timely manner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":115,"featured_media":22510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[80,1650,1638],"tags":[2034,224,955,312,501,2802,362],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22509"}],"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=22509"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22527,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22509\/revisions\/22527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}