The news came out last week that GreatAmerica Leasing Corp. and Samsung Electronics America have joined forces to assist Samsung office equipment dealers with an equipment finance program. According to a press announcement that appeared here last week in the News Bytes section, the zero percent, 36-month lease program was developed to help qualified Samsung dealers expand their market share and provide additional incentives to their customers. Additionally, Samsung has added GreatAmerica as a Samsung MPS Select Partner.
This is a strategic move for Samsung, a relative latecomer to the U.S. office technology market under their own brand, as they look to grow their dealer channel. Plus they’re now put together a managed print services program that will further bolster their efforts with that channel. The Samsung MPS program provides dealers with a suite of tools to optimize and manage their customers’ printer, MFP and copier fleets, while reportedly lowering their operating costs and providing opportunities for enhanced revenue and profits. The zero percent program will certainly reinforce the MPS program.
“Samsung is subsidizing and putting some dollars towards helping dealers have a more competitive lease program in conjunction with what they think is a very competitively priced product,” states Greg VandeWalker, senior vice president, strategic relationships for GreatAmerica Leasing. “The other thing they’re trying to do is position their products from an MPS perspective and saying. ‘if you’re in MPS their product is clearly a good product to be using.’ That’s the main reason they picked us [as their leasing partner].”
GreatAmerica’s experience in managed print services will be an asset to Samsung.
“One of the benefits we bring is that we really are the best when it comes to managed print services—at billing, at understanding it, at setting them up, all the details you need to have,” notes VandeWalker. “We’ve mastered those and continue to add more value and service around MPS billing.”
He describes GreatAmerica as “the great enabler of managed print,” which is another reason that dealers tend to work with them.
“The dealers or OEMs sell managed print, but it’s a completely different thing to build a managed print [program] and manage it,” explains VandeWalker. “We can help them offer an efficient and effective managed print program.”
He expects the Samsung relationship to expand GreatAmerica’s footprint in the dealer channel beyond where it is today. He acknowledges that Samsung is carried by some of GreatAmerica’s existing dealer customers, but there’s plenty more that will be exposed to GreatAmerica through this partnership.
“This is going to help broaden our footprint in the copier channel,” adds VandeWalker.
For Samsung dealers the ultimate benefit will be the zero lease financing with VandeWalker noting that this rate completely removes price from the discussion and allows Samsung and its dealers to talk about the quality and TCO of their product.
“They feel they have a good story to tell there,” says VandeWalker.
Gauging the success of the relationship is easy from GreatAmerica’s perspective.
“At the end of the day we’re a finance company and it’s one of two things, how have we been able to increase our lease volume and how many devices do we have under management?” says Walker. “We’re always looking to increase that number.”
Incidentally, working with OEMs is a relatively new strategy for GreatAmerica. They’ve been part of the Toshiba program for a year and a half and also have an arrangement with Kyocera. Expect to hear about three additional OEM relationships in the near future.
“We purposely stayed away from the OEM programs until a couple of years because we completely dominate the dealer channel,” explains VandeWalker. “But as the OEMs start buying up dealers, we can’t be on the outside so we made a strategic decision a couple of years ago to start forming relationships.”
Timing is everything and this announcement coincides with the upcoming introduction of Samsung’s MPS program, which is expected to be more of an ala carte style MPS offering.
Ron Nevo, senior manager, product marketing, Samsung Electronics America, Enterprise Business Division, notes that about 90 percent of the company’s MPS engagements will be under leases, so this relationship is a no-brainer. Just as GreatAmerica looks to broaden their reach within the dealer community, Samsung expects this will help them grow as well.
“We believe this will bring more dealers on board besides the dealers we have today because it’s also a better program for our existing dealers as well as new dealers to offer a better MPS program for their customers,” says Nevo.
Why should dealers consider Samsung?
“Besides of great products and good performance, and the choice of programs that our dealers can offer to their customers at a low cost,” concludes Nevo.
