enx magazine
Phone: 1-818-550-7547 Toll Free: 1-800-850-4949 Fax: 1-818-550-7527
The #1 Sourcing Publication in the Document Imaging Industry
Bob Sostilio, president of the market research firm, Sostilio & Associates, cites Xerox as an example of a manufacturer that is leveraging print management. “Xerox knows more about their installed base than any other manufacturer out there,” says Sostilio. “It’s not new; they’ve been doing it for 10 years. You want to know where every click is made and how much toner is being consumed. Don’t wait for a manufacturer to install it on your machine, go out and find a third party who does it. It will pay for itself.”
Not only are the major office equipment manufacturers on the print management bandwagon, so are secondary suppliers like Muratec. “Control the output, control the customer,” noted Muratec Vice President of Marketing and Sales Jim D’Emidio at the company’s recent dealer meeting. “As a dealer, you need to get on the print management offense because someone will eventually try to manage all the print output from your customers.”
Options Abound There’s a wealth of print management solutions on the market with the leading third-party names encompassing FMAudit, Print Audit, Print Fleet, MWAi. Add to that a handful of smaller providers as well as home-grown solutions like Ricoh’s @Remote, HP’s WebJet Admin, and Toshiba’s Encompass. And the list goes on.With so many choices, one would think the market must be saturated. “When you combine the OEMs with the independents, I believe we’re all just scratching the surface,” contends Rich Piper, president of FMAudit. “All combined, maybe we’re engaging two percent of the salespeople on an assessment level and maybe less than that—one percent from an automated metering perspective.”
Likewise, Callinan estimates 30-40 percent of dealers are talking about print management, but less than 5 percent are taking advantage of it.
As far as the current crop of print management products, Callinan is hesitant to name names, but believes all of the products on the market are good. However, for dealers who just want to get their feet wet, he recommends HP’s WebJet Admin. “It’s vendor neutral and a free download that does a lot of things this other software does. You don’t need to be an HP dealer. You don’t even need an HP device. It picks up Canon’s, Ricoh’s, everything. Yet they aren’t out there running seminars, so nobody knows about it.”
Third-party print management providers and some manufacturers may not agree with Callinan’s assessment, especially since vendors like FMAudit are helping dealers take the print management plunge via a simple tool—a USB key for collecting output data.
“Our key is designed for rapid print assessment—get in, get the data, get out,” says Piper. “You then use that data strategically to move your sales guys forward.”
Print Management pg1 pg2 pg3 pg4 pg5 pg6 pg7 pg8 PRINT WORD DOCUMENT
40,000 COPIES MAILED OUT EACH MONTH * FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO IMAGING INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS * COMPANY & BUSINESS PROFILE MONTHLY FEATURES