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PRINT MANAGEMENT FOR BEGINNERS

Print management is a golden opportunity for adding value in an increasingly competitive market.

By Scott Cullen

If office equipment dealers truly understood the potential of print management, they’d be rolling in dough for years to come. Gone would be the concerns of low margins, being priced out of deals by their manufacturer’s direct operations, or seeing their hardware business take a nose dive as customers migrate to low-priced printer-centric MFPs from the likes of HP and Samsung. Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but in an age where competition has become insanely intense, and in more instances, completely unfair, it’s time to look at new ways to stand out from the pack. Print management, or device management as it’s sometimes referred to, is one of those ways.

Print management is an end-to-end solution that takes into consideration all of a customer’s imaging and output devices to come up with the most cost-effective environment,” explains Tom Callinan, president of Strategy Development, a management consulting and advanced sales training firm. But for the office equipment dealer, print management is more than that. “It’s a highly profitable defensive and offensive position,” adds Callinan who is also a former copier dealer and facilitator of a print management workshop offered by BTA. His top print management clients are making total gross margins—equipment and aftermarket—of 55-57 percent. That’s not too shabby considering the margin model for a copier dealer is 45 percent with most copier dealers in the 35-40 percent range.

Callinan isn’t alone in encouraging dealers to protect themselves with a print management strategy. “If you’re not in it, get in it,” recommends Frank Cannata of Marketing Research Consultants. “It’s a tool to help you manage [your customer] and helps you retain your customer, plus it opens the door to sell other devices.” 

“Print management provides account ownership,” adds Brian Bisset, publisher of The MFP Report.

Office equipment manufacturers are also hyping print management and offering their own home-grown print management solutions although some are more committed than others.

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