Jennifer has always shown the expertise to simplify the complex and understand how to communicate it effectively. - Greg Bell, Customer Experience Manager
In the old days, a standard user interface on every copier was a good thing. User engagement was enhanced because knowledge workers recalled a single interface common to all devices; the duplex button was in the same place on every machine.
Today, apps are being installed on our most ubiquitous device, the copier/MFD/MFP, and changing all this.
In the past, "customizing the user panel" meant administrators had the ability to program jobs into the machine. For instance, when assembling monthly management reports, the job might include three-hole punching, print on both sides, covers and inserts. All these specifications could be recorded and saved, often correlating to a single button. The operator simply placed the originals on the device, touched the correct “saved job” settings button and indicated the number of copies required. After a few minutes, out came the finished job ready for three-ring binders – cover pages, inserts and, sometimes, tabs.
Last year, ITEX 2012 (Copierville) was upbeat, optimistic and MemJet was the belle of the ball. This year, instead of a MemJet moment, I learned the difference between an exposition floor, convention center and a ballroom. And if there was an unannounced theme of this year's show, it was The DeathOfTheConsultant.
Oh, we've also seen the future of our business.
The Good: More of the Same...only More
iTEX is the traditional copier yearly get together, it has been forever. Just as our industry has seen 'better' days, so too, have our shows and conferences. It is a tough world. The show revealed nothing new because we've created nothing new.
So we've talked to each other again...
We've heard the trainers and consultants talk/sell, again...
We had a great time in Vegas, again...
Whatever my 0.020 are worth, here it is: ITEX 2013 was a success.
The show floor was compact, yet bustling. As in previous years, folks remarked positively, some meeting with existing customers or new prospects and business was being written on the floor.
The Bad: The Beginning of the End for "Industry Consultants" and "Analysts"
As always, the best stuff happens between sessions in the hallways and at night, after the show. Last year it seemed as though we were all celebrating our existence - our ability to out last dire straits. This year, there were, of course, the same basic complaints:
"the OEMs sell below my cost"
"how can I get cheaper toner?"
"MpS is now a commodity"
Additionally, I heard new irritants, ones I hadn't expected:
"How many consultants are there nowa days?"
"The guy stood there for most of the session telling us why we needed to be there. Then didn't give us anything accept an invitation to hire him..."
"All these guys stir up how bad things are, how we should change or die, but never give us any answers or ideas."
"These aren't classes, they are running advertisements"
"Four years ago, these guys said MPS was a scam. Today, they sell huge MPS training programs..."
"Don't tell me how bad it is without giving me some ideas on how to survive..."
There was the preponderance of 'consultants' who received the worst mentions. Could this be an inkling of consultant overload?
When considering the rage against the MpS machine, all that angst has got to come out in somebody's direction - this time, its the "Consultants" who are getting the brunt. Perhaps it has a bit to do with all those promises made by guys who first compared MpS to color or digital and later developed MpS curriculum by cutting "copier" and pasting "managed print services".
Either way, I have never heard so many jabs directed towards consultants and analysts.
The Ugly:
This year was plump full of gripes, observations and down right complaints. The biggest regrettable issue is although I hear this directly, these feelings probably never reach the ears of show promoters - and that is a shame.
ITEX is our show. If we can't make honest observations and recommendations to those who form and mold the get together, the show will first become stale, then outdated and finally irrelevant.
We don't want this to happen.
Here's one suggestion - bring in presenters who want to share their experiences before selling a service or product. Perhaps establish TWO tracks; one informational and the other educational.
Just as ITEX was more compact this year, so too, is our market. The number of devices shipping is not growing, indeed, printed business output is dropping - some research shows as much as 17% over the past five years. - All Associates Group.
As you can imagine, there was a great deal of discussion around managed services and the opportunities for copier dealers in the IT world. We believe the IT realm represents a greenfield of new prospects and the future of our business.
One transformational issue: managed services providers do not need to establish large amounts of credit, build or rent spacious warehouses or fund lavish demo-floors. Providers can deliver under a lean business model - fewer employees, technicians and management, maybe even a world without quotas.
The Review -
We've picked some basic aspects of every show; the Venue, presentation(s) Content, Show Floor structure and overall impact, the gathering's Sales effectiveness, were leads generated or business conducted and the Between Session acuity, off-line conversations and tone.
We judge each category from 1 to 5 'clicks, 5 being the best. It is called the "Click-Call" rating.
ITEX 2013, Walters & Shutwell Inc. Click-Call -
Venue(Hotel, food, presentation, location, convenience, bar) - 2 Content(both presentations and educational combination) - 2 Show floor(structure, atmosphere) - 3 Sales effectiveness (were booth presenters happy, did session presenters achieve goals, ROI) - 4 Between Session acuity (what was the tone of offline chats between sessions and around the bar) - 4 Overall (gut feel of the entire experience) - 3.5 Clicks
Average - 3.7 Clicks
The closer to the Edges, the better.
Not bad.
We look forward to ITex 2014, mark you calendars - March 11-13, 2014.
I saw the managed services (IT) players eyeballing our little niche with dreams of grandeur - a dire report for us in the imaging world.
At the time, I envisioned MSPs and VARs across the nation embracing this new service, engaging large, corporate clients and SMB alike. I foresaw them encroaching into our area with all their whiz-bang technological
For my observations, I have been chastised, rebuffed, chortled at, poo-pooed and mocked.
Heck, the first time I took, TheDeathOfTheCopier "out in public" (Lyra, 2009), some guy looked at my name badge, cocked his head and practically yelled, "...Death of the copier? Do you know who we are? We're all dealers!" Like I knew his sister, biblicaly or something. Yikes.
Well, it doesn't make me all that happy to report the name of this blog is starting to look more prophetic than humorous. The Fourth Horseman is soon upon us.
Why?
For starters, there's too much "P" in MPS.
Couple this with 15 years of over selling, over buying and over capacity; The first 3 Horsemen.
And who are the Angels of Darkness ?
The IT guys. No, really, I mean it.
The "Complex" Sale -
For we copier-schleps, the characteristics of the complex sale are usually rolling multiple buyouts into one lease and building configurations that price out less per month then the current monthly.
This may entail calls to different lease companies, digging up some "like-new" devices, begging your service manager to lower his CPC cost, etc.
It may even mean bringing in a "content specialist" of some sort extending the selling cycle, lowering the buyout amount with each 30 days.(what a strategy)
But there is a group out here who know the complex sell to mean a bit more - like multiple decision makers, staged processes, with milestones and critical paths.
And hang on to your hat for this one - these folks know Assessments.
What we call assessments - starting with the basic copier review to FM asset tracking and all the way to the current MPS data collection and walk-throughs, have nothing, and I mean zilch, nada, zip, in common with these guys' assessments.(Think of the Wright Brothers vs. the Shuttle.)
They bill for these assessments - in the 10's of thousands. And people pay them.
I ain't kidding! I've seen it with my own eyes.
Their initial(hardware) roll out may take 30 to 60 days to complete, but the total project could take 3 to 5 years.
There are team meetings, with clients, as often as every week. MPS QBR's are fluff and marketicture in comparison.
For them "PM" refers to Project Manager, not Preventative Maintenance. And they "PM"(as a verb) EVERYTHING. They invented Visio.
Today, I had a conversation with a traditional, IT Managed Service Provider. He has software that monitors ALL assets on the network. He mentions HP's OpenView, CA-Unicenter, Tivoli and EDS. Google them.
We get to talking the standard MPS stuff. Of course I'm thinking this is just another home grown, MPS infrastructure in a box offering.
To be fair, it certainly can be.
But what surprised me the most, what set this option apart was not the dashboard, the "single pane of glass" view of the fleet. It was something he said:
"...Managed Print Services should be an I.T. based system and process. A process that moves beyond the monitoring and into action oriented..."
You see, IT Directors and CIO's understand "action oriented"; this fits into the way they manage all the other assets on the network.
I know, some of us out here have started conversing with IT folks and there are a few copier dealers who have made the jump from transaction to managed services.
A few. Very few.
For the rest, predictions aren't coming, they are already here.
The Lure of Managed Print Services -
MPS, she's a sexxy beast.
Red hair flying, sassy, saucy, intense, never blinking.
And she is very cool - seductive.
She drew us in, even drove us to the party.
An underground party revealing strange, new and yet vaguely familiar things. The temptress, Managed Print Services, leads deeper with a promise of "more".
The dance, at first, looks jumping; cracking, fun.
Before you know it she's gone. You're alone and befuddled and feeling out of place.
By the time you realize you're in over your head, it is way to late. The fortunes promised taste of iron - those around you are not your friends. They are going to eat you alive.
To put the MPS beast down it will take the best of both worlds.
Their Strength in process and our Creativity in Sales.
Shakespeare's: ''The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers,''
The Bard's line is often misinterpreted - in context, Dick The Butcher was referring to only the corrupt lawyers...yeah, right.
There is a lawyer in Texas, indeed a team of lawyers across the country, who have implemented a sure-fire methodology guaranteeing streams of revenue from the scan-to-email function of every, single scan-to-email capable device on the planet.
We've been looking for a way to convert scans to revenue and very soon we'll have a billing model based on seats/users instead of clicks. We think we're so smart - the attorneys beat us to it.
They can litigate any and every person who utilizes the one-button, scan-to-email functionality of every MFP device - and it is legal.
Didn't see that in your HP manual, did you?
Patent Trolls All Over -
When I lived in California there was an epidemic of small lawsuits filed against very small food service eateries - mom and pops type. These businesses were typically family run, possibly non-english speaking and would run into problems if a handicapped person would try to use their restroom.
It seemed there was one particular person who would enter the place of business, take some measurements and if they did not match code identically, send off a letter threatening legal action if compensation was not given. Because most businesses could not afford legal counsel, they would send a check.
Today, in our industry, there are patent trolls who seek out small businesses, send threatening letters and expect to get paid and it's one hundred percent legal.
Laurence Klein, was the first person to think up a system that scans to documents on a network. The earliest of the four patents that these trolls use was filed by Klein in 1997. He patented the idea, therefore, he receives, or is entitled to, compensation each time somebody scans a document to email.
It's crazy, but here's a bit of a conversation between the lawyer and a possible litigate:
Victim -"Just to reiterate, my home printer—if I scan to e-mail, it's an option on my Hewlett-Packard printer—I do that, I owe you money?"
Troll - "If you said you hooked it up to the Internet, and in one button, you can scan and e-mail directly out—yes, you have violated the patent that we own,"
Lest you think this happens to people we don't know as I did, just this week at ITEX one of my close copier buddies, without prompting, regaled me with his story of woe - specifically, one customer's tribulation. His client was threatened with a lawsuit and did not know what to do. In desperation,
this client was trying to pass the buck to the reseller. But there was no joy.
The patent covers the process, not the actual machines or suppliers of the machine, just the process.
But there's more - a network of at least eight different shell companies with six-letter names like AdzPro, GosNel, and FasLan are now sending out hundreds, if not thousands, of copies of the same demand letter to small businesses from New Hampshire to Minnesota.
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