Back in 1965 everybody was going to the moon. Remember that song? Okay, maybe not. However, in 2014 and beyond, everybody seems to be going mobile. OEMs, solutions, and services providers are rolling out mobile apps like crazy and it seems as if there isn’t anyone among that group who doesn’t have some sort of mobile strategy.
Rather than focus on what the OEMs, solutions, and services providers are doing on the mobile front, I thought it would be interesting to learn what the dealer community is witnessing in the marketplace when it comes to mobile applications as well as how they’re leveraging mobile technology and applications within their own dealerships.
Mitch Taylor, sales manager with 4 Office Automation in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, is already feeling the impact. “In the last six to eight months it’s gained a lot of traction. We just did a school board deal where everything had to be AirPrint and wireless. That’s becoming a big thing. I just submitted a tender today for a large university with a mobile print application to charge back printing to everybody.”
4 Office Automation has weekly technology meetings every Wednesday morning hosted by their senior systems integrator who educates the dealership’s sales force about new technology and solutions. Topics are often driven by what sales reps are responding to in their tenders and one of the most recent topics focused on mobile printing and secure print release.
On the internal operations front, 4 Office Automation has equipped its sales team and technicians with tablets. “We’re getting rid of laptops and notebooks,” states Taylor. “We’ve been using the mobile print applications on our devices for a couple of years now. If an e-mail comes in and there’s an attachment that needs to be printed, we can print from our iPhones. We’ve been utilizing those features for some time now.”
In Buffalo, New York, mobility is a key element of Copier Fax Business Technologies’ Documentelligence solutions sales strategy. “That’s all we’re focusing on when it comes to the bizhubs from Konica Minolta, but also through our document management systems and mobile forms,” reports David Scibetta, EVP/ CIO. “We’re focusing on mobility with everything and unchaining people from their desks.”
This, he says, begins with customer education. “Some customers don’t even have a mobile strategy in place so we’re helping them with that,” says Scibetta. “One way we’re doing that is teaching them how to manage the BYOD environment, and more importantly the MDM (Mobile Device Management) software so they can manage their devices in the field and know that everything is secure.”
Customers are responding to this mobile message. It’s not just the organizations that might be considered the most progressive who are embracing this mobile message. “All types of customers are interested,” states Scibetta.
One is a landscaping company that has equipped its employees with iPads. They use them to take pictures of the grounds and provide customers with quotes on the fly as well as communicate information back to the server in the office. Construction companies are embracing mobile technology as are Fortune 500 firms and even car washes. “It makes no difference,” says Scibetta. “People want access to their [information].”
That doesn’t surprise him. “Everyone has the whole world in their hands so why do we have to block out the business part? Let’s enable that, but make sure it’s secure and managed properly.”
Has Copier Fax gone mobile?
“We eat our own dog food,” responds Scibetta. “We run everything on mobile. When our reps go out and interface with customers, they all have iPads. They review customer accounts on the iPad, track the number of service calls on a certain machine, volume, and use them for proposing new equipment.”
Naturally, Scibetta’s IT staff has gone mobile too. “When they do a standard connection to a company’s network with a copier they all have iPads and fill in on the iPad what they did, what server they did it on, what drivers they installed, whether or not they added fax capability, and they collect signatures from the customer and it comes back here and goes into our ERP.”
He contends that it’s important for the dealership to use its own technology. “We’re pushing it so hard and if we don’t use it the customer might not have confidence in us.”
Ray Belanger, president of Bay Copy in Rockland, MA, is not seeing as much interest in mobile solutions from his customer base as some of the other dealers I spoke with. “We’ve seen some interest, but frankly it’s not as much as what I’ve been expecting. We were gearing up for that big push a few months back. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, but for us there’s not a tidal wave yet.”
What he’s found with some mid-size and larger customers with IT departments managed by old-school IT people, which is the majority, are that those individuals are still resistant to let users near their network. “They put up barriers, and a couple of executives we’ve met with have been insistent about workarounds for specific people,” notes Belanger. “They’re still protective of their turf.”
He expects that to change as younger IT personnel become more involved in decision-making processes focused on mobility and the cloud.
For the few customers that are interested in going mobile, Bay Copy offers various apps and solutions through the vendors they represent—Konica Minolta, Lexmark, Toshiba, Muratec, and HP.
Internally at Bay Copy, they’re still evaluating opportunities to take advantage of mobility. Most of Belanger’s employees have iPads, but at this point it’s a mixed bag among its sales reps and services techs who are using it as a business tool. “For us it’s not a mandatory thing,” states Belanger.
Cobb Technologies, with headquarters in Richmond, VA and offices throughout the state, is still in its infancy when it comes to selling mobile technology. As a successful dealership, they have the luxury of taking their time and figuring out how to do it right. That said, customers are driving them in that direction.
“That’s a hot button and everybody is interested in that,” states Toni Gorveatt, president. “We have been Windows based in our offering and as you know a lot of those mobility offerings are not Windows based. We’re working through that right now.”
Although Cobb hasn’t equipped its reps with tablets, most seem to find this technology useful in the field. “The majority of my reps have an iPad and they use it for work,” states Gorveatt. “We’ve been looking at putting all of our forms on the iPad or some sort of tablet device so when the reps go out they can fill in all their forms and paperwork on the tablet instead of using paper.”
Tony Nami, owner, Prior & Nami in Hamilton, NJ, is just now starting to see the issue of mobility come up with his customers although the numbers are modest at best. “We have been putting on the Bluetooth wireless kit on some of the Konica Minoltas,” he says. “If there’s a wireless hot spot in the building we use the Konica Minolta app.”
While Nami’s reps are starting to talk to customers about mobility and the awareness level is high, what interest there is seems to have been driven by what customers are reading on the Internet in the press. “Clients have become aware of what their tablets or handheld devices can do and they want their machines to do it too. Fortunately the manufacturers are responding by providing that capability.”
As far as his reps, they all use Salesforce and everybody has a tablet. “When they go out on a call they grab customer data and pop it into Salesforce,” notes Nami. “In addition, our brochures and price lists can be accessed on the tablet unlike in the old days when you only had the brochures you remembered to bring along.”
Chad Alban, sales manager, Stratix Systems, Wyomissing, PA, has noticed that mobility is becoming more and more a topic of conversation with customers. “It’s obviously out there; everybody has a smart phone. We’ve educated the reps that during demonstrations and when they’re out talking to people to talk more about that,” he says. “That’s how I’ve been selling the PaperCut solution, which enables mobile printing.”
PaperCut has been good to Stratix. “Some of the other software dabbles in it,” explains Alban. “When people hear about the ability of printing from devices that’s number one, but being able to track it is one of their bigger concerns and it opens up a conversation.”
On a personal level Alban uses a smart phone and an iPad. “I wish they would make it so you can use a mouse with it,” he says about the iPad. “I do mobile printing demos using that or my smart phone. Seeing is believing; just talking about mobile printing isn’t cool unless you can show them a specific application that they would use on a daily basis.”
Even though he seems to think that mobile technology is a positive development from a sales perspective, he still wonders about the price one pays for always being connected. “I use it daily. Unfortunately, smart phones have sometimes made us too accessible, constantly checking e-mail, sending out reminders and calendar invites. It’s changed society and the business world.”
It sure has.
And will continue to.
