Well, it happened: some pioneers in the print industry are delivering an as-a-Service model. The participants of the imaging channel must respond and deliver print equipment, its supplies, parts and labor to repair in this as-a-Service model. It’s a fixed cost for a product which eats consumables. Some in the industry are beside themselves and will more than likely lose control in how they proceed, unless of course, they move forward in a timely manner based on knowledge over desperation caused by waiting.
Some will take the wait and see approach, which will more than likely cause the pains associated with forced change. When sellers don’t adapt to market shifts, they always come up short when the shift is in full force. I believe this no-meter-billing movement will come fast. End users have been buying technology through an as-a-Service billing model for many years. It would be hard to find large numbers of software buyers who are not on a SaaS model, and soon the same will be said regarding print customers.
In 2019, the end users at the enterprise level will begin writing RFPs with “no meter” requests, and they will have respondents. It’s in the response of some which create the spreading of more respondents. Dealers will begin offering more and more customers the model, thereby creating more customer awareness of the better way.
Dealers, get a plan, get the knowledge. Billing print equipment—its supplies, parts, and labor—without chasing a meter reading is only complicated to those who stubbornly fight to keep things as they are. Or they still believe that saving the old way is better than learning to create the new way. The new way is meter-less; it’s an as-a-Service billing model, a billing model which has been integral to the managed IT services deliverable for years.
DaaS is a contractual agreement based on a financial arrangement, which is designed to provide its customers with a fixed cost for all components of the deliverable. The key which glues all the ingredients together is leasing. So, choose your leasing partner wisely. I recommend DLL Leasing. DLL provides DaaS models for some of the largest technology companies in the world. DLL Leasing prides itself on delivering the future to the present. It’s one of the reasons I endorse them.
So, now that we determined there is a qualified leasing company to provide the financial component of DaaS, let’s discuss the science of understanding total service cost. BEI Services, the world’s largest print services metrics company, has extensive data, which they have been collecting for over 25 years. It’s within this data that dealers can truly understand the total cost to service print equipment—all print equipment from all manufacturers.
For the last 25 years, BEI Services has helped the dealer channel control cost and bring visibility to cost awareness. BEI does this better than all those who attempt it, or frankly claim to. BEI Services’ database has over four million devices. No one else in the world has this massive resource of data, and the expertise to understand how this data will help dealers deliver DaaS (or as Wes McArtor, BEI’s co-founder defines as iDaaS, imaging Device as a Service). Give McArtor a call and get the facts behind the numbers in whatever you decide to call the “no meter” movement. Remember, it’s much more rewarding to those who control a market shift rather than fall victim to it.
The changes to any billing model must always include what I call CABB, or Cost Awareness-Based Billing.
For those who still believe that the cost-per-copy (CPC) model will remain the prominent model, I would suggest searching through your memories to the time when the CPC model replaced the service billing model, which excluded consumables. Remember the arguments, remember the fears, and now remember the speed in which the CPC model completely replaced the old one. It should be logical to assume that today’s technology to communicate will increase the speed of the “no meter” or DaaS model replacing the CPC model. Don’t get run over by your competitors, and remember to look in new places for the new competitors coming soon.
In Closing
“Innovators listen to the old way’s arguments to keep things as they are, then create a new approach from what they hear.”
What will they hear from you?
