Feature Articles

Last week I blogged the “Death of the Direct Copier Channel”, in less than one week there were over 1,400 views. I’m guessing we hit a hot spot with many of those in the Direct and Dealer Channel. The Print4Pay Hotel forums also posted many comments like Read More

Businesses in all industries are contemplating more and more to add social media to their marketing plans. As a dealership, you may be wondering if there is really any value in using social media. If any of the following statements illustrate your worries about social media, then Read More

Last week’s announcement that RJ Young Company, based  in Nashville, Tennessee, had acquired multiple Ricoh direct branches (Huntsville, AL; and Columbus, Tupelo, and Gulfport, MS) represented a huge win for the independent dealer channel, a channel that has long been a Read More

The other day I received an e-mail from Monte Jensen of KBA Docusys and a Print4Pay Hotel member on the West Coast. He was pretty excited because they were releasing a new color page model being billed for ‘as low as 2 cents per page!’ This is for their Kyocera line of color Read More

Ray Belanger, president of Bay Copy in Rockland, Mass., reports on his big sale of the week. What was your most notable sale this week? Belanger: This week, we completed a large sale, a total of 47 units. In all, the sale included 35 Lexmark small multi-function units, along with Read More

Last week Print Audit announced what they call “a disruptive new business model” for print management. Print Audit Premier is a subscription plan for office technology dealers, providing them with access to all of Print Audit’s products for a monthly fee. Premier subscribers also Read More

This week Frank Grasso, president of CEO of TGI Office Automation in Brooklyn, New York talks about his dealership’s big sale of the week. What was your most notable sale this week? Grasso: A complete solution encompassing managed print and elimination of HP printers with four Read More

Oh, how those of us in the dealer channel long for the days when the copier manufacturers sold only through dealers. For those not in the copier business that long, yes that was the case. If you needed a copier, except for Xerox, you had to go through an authorized dealer. Read More

The explosion of mobile devices represents both the biggest trend and the biggest challenge to document imaging and print management in 2012. Thanks to cloud services, all the statistics point to an increase in the use of mobile devices for capabilities once reserved for the Read More

Let’s agree from the get go that the only constant in the office technology industry is change. However, one area in that world that is often slow to change is sales rep compensation, especially as the industry moves towards a services and solutions model. I speak to a fair Read More

A couple of weeks ago I shared my impressions of the Konica Minolta Dealer meeting. I thought it would be interesting to get another perspective, that of Al Scibetta, president of Copier Fax Business Technologies in Buffalo, New York, and the winner of the 2011 Konica Minolta Read More

This week, Reed Melnick, president of Nevill Imaging Solutions in Carrollton, Texas, talks about his dealership’s big sale of the week. What was your most notable sale this week? Melnick: Canon light production color units—the imageRUNNER Advance C7065—with a Fiery controller and Read More

We see ‘consumerization’ of IT as one of the biggest trends impacting the way organizations and their workers will interact.  This new wave, from knowledge workers wanting more user friendly experiences with businesses processes inside the firewall to expecting that their Read More

  Obviously there’s a major trend in the industry toward what we call the delivery of ‘managed document services’ and what most of the industry refers to as ‘managed print services’. Let’s call it a ‘delivery model’ if you will and that’s going to become more prevalent in Read More

An important trend and challenge for our dealers and what we need to focus on is our dealer’s ability to establish sustainable business growth. Part of the answer is to expand their offerings to customers by focusing more on a services-led approach. When we say ‘services’ we mean Read More