The document imaging landscape is littered with dealers who have tried to figure out how to properly do MPS and faltered. This month in the print version of ENX I wrote about how the document imaging industry can help dealers achieve success selling MPS.
However, to search out help one has to be faltering in some way and acknowledge that you do need help. But what exactly is it that prevents dealers and resellers who are offering MPS to fall short? You may already know the answers to that question if you’ve ever attended an industry conference where MPS was on the agenda—and what conference doesn’t include MPS in their educational sessions these days? If not, some folks from the document imaging industry have some ideas.
Doug Johnson, president of RedSage Group and formerly SVP, Managed Print Services for Supplies Network cites a few things that typically drive lack of success. One is sales reps without the proper education, training, or skill sets.
“It’s a different selling model than selling commodities,” states Johnson. “That’s the biggest challenge and most may not even have people on staff with the right profile to sell confidently on a services-based model vs. a commodity model.”
The other issue is the lack of the owner or principal of the dealership, something MPS gurus tend to point out over and over again.
“They have to recognize this is a fundamentally different business model—different skill sets, operational requirements, and different competencies,” emphasizes Johnson. “If they don’t put the time and effort ensuring everything around the selling process and the operational side, make sure that’s all lined up sales reps will behave on how they’re paid. They’re coin operated; if you tell them to do something, even if you provide the training, but there’s no infrastructural support or compensation to make them successful, they go back to selling the way they’ve always sold because that’s how they make their money.”
“In our experience, dealers who have tried doing an MPS program on their own are usually struggling with the implementation of sales processes or other similar areas,” notes Ray Loisel, senior vice president MPS, West Point Products. “In addition, they often falter at the pricing deals, contract management, and supply fulfillment as mentioned before. These are all areas in which our team of experts can leverage our collective expertise to get them on the right track.”
Mike Lamothe, founder of Office Document Consulting, an organization that provides dealers and OEMs with strategic support in MPS/MDS, sees another area where dealers falter with MPS and that’s how they handle Big Data.
“They’ve got FMaudit, for example, but they’re not using that data or there comes a point where the customer says ‘We want QVR (Query View Reporting) or business reviews, how do you support that?’”
But it’s not just the data, it’s how it’s processed, understanding what it means, identifying underutilized devices, and taking that data and integrating it into ODC’s software to perform an assessment.
Lamothe acknowledges that some dealers do a decent job with this data, but most try to interpret it themselves without using the tools available to interpret it for them.
“Then taking it to the customer is another hurdle and they stumble over proposals and aren’t offering a professional approach,” he says. “There are tools that provide that level of professionalism. If that piece breaks down, that’s where we get further into trouble with the end user customer and commoditize MPS.”
Where West McDonald, vice president of business development, Print Audit sees dealers stumble is when they are asked to do assessments. “For any decent size customer the first thing they want you to do is come in and tell them what’s wrong and then come up with some recommendations. On the assessment side, that’s where most dealers stumble. Part of it is assessments aren’t easy, particularly if you’re not using the right tool sets and methodologies to be able to deliver some kind of workflow message to the customer. That’s one of the things Print Audit customers and others using tools like ours enjoy—a focus on the user print behavior. Taking the assessment from a consolidation approach to a user workflow approach, that user workflow approach for assessments can be done much easier than an assessment for a physical environment.”
Gary Willert, president of LMI, often finds the structure of a dealer’s existing MPS operations an issue.
“What does the sales team look like or where do you need manpower in order to be successful?” he asks. “Those are probably your smaller dealers although it can be a larger dealer too. It’s an investment. Do you hire specialists? What does that person look like vs. your existing sales people? That’s an age-old question that I don’t think anyone truly understands what the best approach is until they start trying different things. That’s where compensation plans are key, setting quotas, making sure they have the education for their sales people to be successful.”
For Bill Melo, chief marketing executive, Toshiba, implementation is a major stumbling block.
“At this point with the space being fairly mature, the value proposition is pretty well recognized,” he explains.
MPS no matter how overhyped and how mature of an offering it’s become remains relevant to the office technology dealer channel. Because of that it’s always good to know the many ways in which things can go wrong.
