A Measure of Success: Photizo’s Hybrid Provider Benchmarking Service Looks to Quantify MPS Success

Ken Stewart

Anyway you look at it managed print services is a numbers game. One of the challenges facing MPS providers is ensuring that the numbers add up and they’re winning deals and making margins. While the copier industry has proven metrics and guidelines in place, metrics are still being developed to indicate just how effective a provider is at providing managed print services.

At the forefront of this research is Photizo Group, who is compiling metrics that will serve as prime indicators of MPS success. You may already be familiar with Photizo’s Hyrbrid Provider Development Model. While that model is more focused on companies making a transition from product-led to services-led business models, these new metrics are designed from a cross section of legacy copier dealers, IT VARs, reprgraphics companies, and pure play MPS providers.

Ken Stewart, director channel analysis for Photizo, has been gathering information from successful MPS providers around the world and creating metrics somewhat similar to but not the same as what traditional copier industry consultants have done and continue to do. “I have a lot of respect for what Hey & Hanson and Johnson are doing but when we looked at that we felt that was still very focused on legacy copier dealership. People can approach MPS from a lot of different ways. How do we serve a set of common criteria where people are really seeing success?”

Stewart explains this is an educational framework for providers. “We grade them on how ready they are to get into MPS and then we give them a roadmap of the paths they can take to improve their operations.”

The information that’s been gathered has come from leading MPS providers around the world. Stewart says they’ve been excited to participate and are glad someone is creating an industry specific MPS model versus these other models that don’t really work for them.

“We’re looking at hybrid providers that are coming from different backgrounds or heritages where 25-50 percent their revenues are from managed services,” reports Stewart. “Some folks are pure play MPS providers only, generating well over 90 percent MPS revenue. These guys are killing it and don’t want to be lumped in with hybrid providers; they’re services providers focused on the category of managed print.”

The index has more than 450 metrics and provides a comparison against a median, an average, a high and a low. Questions focus on how did you build your existing customer base, where revenue has come from in the last six months, and are they targeting existing customers versus net new customers? Ultimately it’s about how these providers are approaching the market, how they’re servicing the market, what the differentiators are, and what the sales cycle looks like.

“What’s interesting is there’s a strong mix between those that go after existing customers by optimizing them and those going into new customers, establishing a beachhead and moving in and optimizing later,” says Stewart. “But all are apex predators in their marketplace.”

The services information derived from the study has been particularly illuminating to Stewart and the providers supplying this information. “Where I see interest is the questions around services offered, showing what services they provide customers as well as what they don’t provide,” notes Stewart. “We’re beginning to show these service offerings, the service levels associated with those, and how they are monetized. The end goal for this index is to create a picture for providers of what you want to be when you grow up.”

Another important element of the study is an itemized individual profit model. “That was interesting and [many] didn’t realize where the revenue was coming from—supplies, service, hardware, etc.,” adds Stewart. “What we found is that clients want to understand how other companies are doing with this kind of profit model.”

As far as surprises in the original data collection, Stewart says one surprise was how willing providers were to provide this information. “There’s a real hunger for it,” he says. Another surprise was that many providers weren’t surfacing as many service metrics as he thought they would so there’s some paths for opportunity there.

At this point Stewart is looking to create awareness for an independent model of best practices and metrics. “I don’t want to say benchmark just yet because it’s not there. But people are seeing valuable information.”

The plans are to offer providers this service where they would run it once or twice a year and then have access to Photizo’s industry metrics. The assessment is not a burdensome process and Stewart says it takes about an hour for a provider to fill out the information. The results are then compared to the results of other providers so the provider can benchmark their performance.

“Whether you listen to us or not you need an internal way to measure these things,” contends Stewart.

Dealers interested in learning more about the Partner Transformation program can visit http://photizogroup.com/ or contact Ken Stewart at Kstewart@photizogroup.com or Hannah Smith at Photizo at hsmith@photizogroup.com. The cost is $995 but Photizo is currently running a special service pricing of $499 for 1-time to incent awareness.