JIm Coriddi
An important trend and challenge for our dealers and what we need to focus on is our dealer’s ability to establish sustainable business growth. Part of the answer is to expand their offerings to customers by focusing more on a services-led approach. When we say ‘services’ we mean everything from IT network services to professional services to managed print services to production services. Those are capabilities and resources that Ricoh has invested significantly in over the past few years. Our intention is to make those services available to our dealers.
We are currently building a mechanism—our CHAMPS Program—to put our dealers in a position where they can use Ricoh’s resources to offer these services to their customers. Not to say that some of our dealers don’t already have some services [in place], but we’re looking at it from a standpoint of offering a menu of resources and putting our dealers in a position where they can choose different elements of these services without the initial upfront infrastructure costs. If they do look to transition into these services on their own, this is a good starting point to build up some revenue and be able to make those investments as opposed to building the infrastructure and making those investments prior to having any offset revenue to help with those investments.
We see this piece as a great opportunity and a way to ensure that our dealers can differentiate themselves in the marketplace and not become commoditized, and their relationship with their end users does not get cut off by the next low price that knocks on their door.
In general, our dealers understand directionally what they need to do. Some of the more progressive dealers have gone in this direction in a big way and there’s a portion of dealers that get it and want to. But this is not a conceptual change; this is something that requires investment and a change in how the dealer approaches the customer. Most of our dealers get it, some have already taken the initiative, and others are looking for a way to be able to take the step. Our CHAMPS Program helps to bring our dealers along for those that want to be committed to a services-led approach but maybe aren’t positioned now to make the investment.
The ongoing challenge that we all have is growing clicks or print volume. What we’re seeing more and more is the unit placements of the lower segment MFPs, which used to be a large percentage of the total units placed by our dealers, starting to decline. What that means is dealers now need the ability to control where that print volume is going. A lot of that is going to A4-type devices and printers and the opportunity is getting an MPS-type of contractual arrangement with their customers. That’s very opportunistic; a lot of the current printer placements are not under contract so our dealers have a tremendous opportunity to come in and build more of a contractual relationship with these customers by incorporating MFPs with A4 devices or even standalone network printers as a part of an overall MPS contractual arrangement. The challenge is maintaining and growing the page volume. The opportunity is incorporating more of an overall print strategy with their customers and grabbing some of that volume that’s been migrating to printers and some of that volume they have not had in the past that was output on printers.
Together we are extremely excited to work closely with our Ricoh/Savin/Lanier dealers to secure a more sustainable services-led business model.
