The beauty about data is the granularity it offers or can offer, for the purpose of assembling a managed print services program. The more specific the information, the better the odds of crafting a pact that is comprehensive and beneficial not only to the client but the dealer itself.
John Sutton, Novatech
That’s the belief held by John Sutton, director of sales for Nashville, TN-based Novatech. While some MPS partners rely on base aspects such as machine type and volume, Novatech relies on data to spot trends while performing a fairly detailed analysis.
“Through the analysis of the data that we receive, and using that data to spot trends, we enjoy things like response times, supply fulfillment, etc.,” he said. “Competitor offerings as a whole are similar, but it’s our proactivity as a result of that data analysis that allows us to bring a higher level of service to our clients.”
John Turner, Loffler
John Turner, director of managed print services at Loffler Companies of Bloomington, MN, points out that data analysis is a large part of its customer quarterly reviews. “With our secure follow-me-print solution, we can report on user activity as well as the amount of print that was automatically deleted, because it was abandoned or deleted at the device,” he said. “This also provides an additional security level because there is not any print waiting to be picked up. The user needs to authenticate into the device and select print from their job queue, eliminating any abandoned print.”
Interviewing the customer can often produce more questions than answers. Kevin Morris, president and CEO of pure-play specialist OneDOC MPS of Oklahoma City, notes his team tries to speak to as many of its customer’s employees as possible, but they’re often in the dark in terms of usage. Some clients end up having more printers than employees, and one of the most overlooked aspects is the use of USB devices.
Kevin Morris, OneDOC
“We can put a program together and network those devices,” Morris noted. “Most companies don’t want to go into that level of detail, but we capture all of that stuff. Think about rules-based printing and printing in black-and-white instead of color. We can stop that kind of behavior. Every company we talk to, we’ll have a conversation about rules-based printing. Many of our competitors don’t.”
Rules are Rules
Kevin DeYoung, president and CEO of MPS specialist Qualpath in Pompano Beach, FL, notes that least-cost routing (steering print jobs over a certain threshold to a lower CPP device), sensitive document printing prevention, secure printing with audit trails and image capture for future reference and whitelisting applications that can and cannot output data are some of the key areas that improve costs and enhance security within organizations.
Kevin DeYoung, Qualpath
Naturally, it helps that a customer fully supports any rules-based and security measures that are implemented, rather than giving lip service. Lower-level troops within a client need to know that these methods are the law of the land.
“All of these actions are significant improvements,” he said. “The limiter in these actions is end user leadership support. If one doesn’t have leadership support, the end users will look at these new processes as inconvenient and rebel against the new processes. So leadership support is critical.”
