A Peek Inside OKI’s Total Managed Print Portal

Tim Brien

Sometimes you just need to go where nobody has gone before and that’s what OKI Data Americas has done with their Total Managed Print (TMP) Web Portal that expands their existing MPS program and is available at no cost to OKI channel partners. The cloud-based TMP portal offers a suite of nine brand agnostic services that can expand and augment a dealer’s new or existing MPS model. Because it’s a modular and scalable solution, OKI channel partners can leverage all nine modules of the Portal, or pick and choose which components best meet their requirements.

The TMP Portal provides a comprehensive toolkit, including best practice methods for assessing, monitoring, and optimizing fleet management for organizations of all sizes. It also automates processes that many dealers currently perform manually, provides unbiased recommendations for print optimization across all brands and technologies, and offers a simple, step-by-step process with online support to maximize a dealer’s managed print engagement. The Portal supports a variety of data capture formats from vendors such as PrintFleet, FMAudit, and Print Audit, and is designed as a modular and flexible solution for dealers who are already well versed in MPS as well as those just starting to market MPS.

“OKI has developed a program, which allows you to go from the start, which is capturing data and take you all the way through to finalizing an MPS engagement and managing an MPS engagement,” explains Tim Brien, director of MPS for OKI. “The great thing about this is that it’s a completely agnostic system, which is also extremely modular. It allows all of our dealers to choose the different options they want to have in house or the functions they want to outsource to OKI’s Total Management Print program.”

According to Jim Fitzpatrick, manager of MPS at OKI, this is not a new system. OKI’s analysts have been using it internally for the last eight years and to date have performed more than 800 assessments with it.

Web-Based Interface

TMP’s Web-based interface makes it easy for dealers to get up and running on the portal.  All they need to do is a log into OKI’s BPX (Business Partner Exchange) system, which is available to all OKI dealers. Once they’re in they can go directly into OKI’s data analysis, which is a proprietary analytic engine.

“This is a key function that really differentiates OKI’s Total Managed Print program from a lot of the others on the market,” says Brien. “What we’ve done is taken all the data people are putting in the system, and because the system was designed to be utilized by companies already having existing MPS knowledge or infrastructure, up to those with no MPS knowledge or infrastructure, we’re basically taking all the guess work out of creating a managed print services engagement.”

All data and logistics captured by the system can be provided to the dealer sales rep who exports this into a proposal generator, developed internally by OKI, and create a proposal that shows the customer an optimized, vendor-neutral environment. The proposal generator can be custom branded with the dealer’s logo. Although this is a vendor-neutral system, it can suggest OKI replacement devices if the dealer prefers to program it that way.

In the proposal stage the system provides the capability for several different closing options, such as TMP or with their own external program if, for example, they were a Kyocera dealer or if their leasing partner was USBank. The system can also support customers who prefer to make a capital purchase.

“This is a vendor neutral system and allows the dealer to interject different types of hardware if they happen to be an HP, Canon, or Kyocera dealer as well as take all those additional devices that aren’t going to be replaced and place them under a managed print services engagement along with their costs and substituting any of the features they already have,” explains Brien. “If they already have their own servicing entity, their own supplies they’re going to fulfill, they can select which pieces they currently supply themselves or which pieces they’d like to outsource from the TMP program.”

Inside the Portal

Data capture is an important element of the system, and besides the flexibility of allowing copier dealers to capture information using data collection technology from a range of vendors, those in the IT world can take advantage of data collection and analysis tools from Level Platforms, EnABLE Technologies, and other vendors.

The system typically supports three different types of users—the administrator who loads products and administers the entire portal, the owner/manager of the dealership, and the sales rep. The administrator is usually the first person to access the system and can set basic information such as the name of the dealer’s MPS program. Note that this is not branded as Total Managed Print and administrator’s can also add their dealership’s logo, so in the customer’s eyes, this is a program branded and administered exclusively by the dealer. The administrator can also set minimum margins on hardware, service, and supplies that sales reps aren’t allowed to go below unless they ask for and receive an override from the owner/manager. 

In addition to recommending devices, the system evaluates the dealer’s device offerings and identifies the best device by price, utilization, size and fit for each customer. If everything is even, the system selects the device recommended by the dealer.  

For example, the administrator might enter OKI, HP, and Kyocera devices, accessories, service plans, and consumables into the system. They can load their own pricing into the system as well. There’s also a default way to load OKI products which will save the administrator a fair amount of time.

“The dealer has full control of the products loaded in the system and the products that are automatically picked by the system,” says Fitzpatrick. “We were very careful to make this system as flexible as possible for dealers to load their own products and do it in such a way that they could use price lists from other places and load those into the system.”

OKI subscribes to a back-end service from GAP Intelligence, which provides OKI with data on more than 10,000 products on a weekly basis, including new products as well as street pricing and competitive specs. This is a particularly useful feature, especially since many dealers typically don’t invest in this type of service. The ability to quickly access this information can save a dealer hundreds of hours compared to tracking this information down on their own, according to Fitzpatrick.

“When we talk to our partners in the field, this is a key area that they find beneficial,” notes Fitzpatrick.

Flexible Acquisition Options

OKI’s program also provides dealers with flexible acquisition options, including different ways to acquire hardware and different ways to process CPC (cost-per-copy) pricing. OKI also provides full implementation services nationwide, allowing dealers who operate regionally to capture and manage MPS engagements outside of their region.

While OKI has invested in a variety of remote monitoring tools, PrintFleet is its core remote monitoring tool for processing toner orders, meter reads, and services requests and other elements that need to be audited within the MPS engagement. It’s available to OKI dealers free of charge. The remote monitoring system is integrated with a personalized supplies fulfillment component.

“The great thing about personalized supplies fulfillment is the fact that as you turn around and look at what dealers are requiring, people are looking less and less to stock internally,” says Brien. “The entire market is moving towards just-in-time inventory fulfillment and that’s one of the benefits of managed print services. You’re looking to take things off the customer’s hands and this does that.”

All toner ships directly to the customer’s location and can be directed to a specific department or location within that organization. This component of OKI’s TMP portal is proactive in that it consolidates shipments, shipping the customer the toner they need today along with what they’ll be needing for the next several days.

Back-end Processing and Billing

Back-end processing and billing is another key component of OKI’s program. For some of the more copier-centric dealers who have a CPC program in place, the program allows them to use their existing CPC infrastructure. For organizations without that infrastructure, OKI supplies complete back-end processing and billing along with integration into back-end solutions such as ConnectWise and Autotask.

Continuous fleet optimization and reporting is described by Brien as one of the most important elements of the program.

“As we look at TMP and managed print services in general, one of the things people forget to do on a long-term basis is managed the customer’s environment,” he says. “They come in, initially propose a new scenario, turn around and bring the customer onboard, but there’s nothing in their constant reporting mechanisms and the customer goes into this stage of focusing on how [their environment] is producing.”

Because OKI has found that sales reps typically don’t check back on their MPS customers on a regular basis, they’ve created a process in which the OKI system automatically looks at all the customer data through the remote monitoring system whether it’s monitored by the dealer or via OKI’s TMP remote monitoring system.

“We can look at all those devices on a regular basis then take that information and automatically send reports to the end users or sales reps telling them this account is falling off from an optimized state and these are the devices that need to be changed out,” explains Brien.

This capability not only provides the customer or sales rep with this information, but also automatically creates a proposal for them as well as all their lease documents with automatic notifications and paperwork filled in and sent in an e-mail with their dealership’s logo on it.

Summing Up the TMP Portal

Most printer and MFP vendors have already introduced a managed print services program, but no one seems to have taken the approach that OKI has with its TMP portal. It’s most definitely new, different, and offers dealers the utmost in flexibility. What’s particularly brilliant about this introduction is that dealers can pick and choose the components they want to use and don’t have to completely abandon their existing MPS programs whether it’s their own, from their device vendor, or some other MPS solutions provider.