This is the first in an ongoing series looking at what dealers across the country are experiencing in the MPS market and their strategies for marketing or not marketing MPS.
“I hate the word MPS, it makes me want to vomit.”
If we’re going to start somewhere with this series, those words from Reed Melnick of Nevill Imaging Solutions based in Dallas, Texas, and now part of the Kyocera Document Solutions America, are as good a place as any.
“We’re definitely taking over and are better at managing people’s fleets with our systems because it’s so much more cost effective,” adds Melnick.
Unlike some of his other direct competitors.
“The biggest thing I’ve seen that’s a little questionable [with other] manufacturer’s direct operations’ go-to-market strategies is that they’re starting to market the consumer [office superstore-grade] products to customers. Global Xerox is placing printers you should be getting at Office Depot and trying to get the customers to perceive it as a true commercial printer even thought the cost per page is so much higher and longevity isn’t there.”
He’s seeing other manufacturers do it too. And the customer is confused when someone else comes in trying to sell them a 35-ppm A4 device that’s three times the price of the office superstore model designed for home use.
Like others in the industry, Melnick has seen the number of competitors offering MPS go through the roof. “Everyone is offering it, but 85-90 percent of them don’t have the backend tools to handle it,” he opines. “They’re thinking, if everybody else is doing it, I can too even if I don’t know how because they’re just as dumb as I am. I had an account that wanted us to service their MFPs (not Kyocera) under a total solution contract, and wanted us to do it for some ungodly low cost because other people were doing it for that. As great as our company and people are we could never do a good job so we didn’t take it on. They had units that had been discontinued for six or seven years and people were telling them they could service them, but nobody could do a good job [at the prices they were quoting]. We see that coming up a lot.”
Has being acquired last year by Kyocera changed Nevill’s approach to MPS?
“If I didn’t have the Kyocera printers I probably would not be in that business,” states Melnick. “If I went back and looked at the last 215 case studies on the value of changing out printers, not as much as taking over the service on the printers, but revaluating through the customer relationship, the cost per page and all, I truly believe that’s the best solution out there for the customer. Again, with the low cost of ownership of the Kyocera products, that’s how you can get that done. The other part is you really have to have the good clean strategy on the backend to maintain these things right.”
