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Year in Review 2013/2014
Steven Swift, IDEAS
MPS vendors turn their
attention to SMEs
2013 was the year in which OEMs
and their channel partners started to
take Managed Print Services (MPS)
for SMBs seriously.
Until 2012, with the exception of Xerox
and its XPPS programme, most OEMs saw
MPS as a direct offering mainly for large
enterprise clients and struggled with the
idea of transferring the concept to channel
partners and much smaller accounts. HP
might claim to be another exception, and
certainly it has made several attempts
at launching channel MPS offerings, but
none of these has so far achieved enough
traction to make MPS a mainstream part of
HP’s printer channel business.
Change has been driven by increasing
awareness of the benefits of MPS among
SMBs that want to realise the same cost
savings and productivity gains that larger
counterparts have enjoyed. At the same
time, resellers have experienced increasing
pressure on their transactional business,
with many reporting declining revenues
and squeezed margins, especially on
hardware and colour clicks.
It should not be a surprise to anyone
that transactional revenues and margins
are under pressure. We are all used to
telling customers that they can expect
to reduce their costs by around 30% if
they move to MPS. If customers all take
that advice and achieve 30% lower
Ian Dunsmore, Print Audit Europe
Mind the gap between expectation and outcome
The next step in MPS is moving from devices to the user. Most
office equipment dealers have worked out how to manage a
device remotely, send the toner in advance and collect meter
readings. In 2014 I think we will see more customers demanding
value from their MPS agreement and looking to understand what
the factors are behind print volumes – the who, what and how of
office printing.
The gap between customer expectations of MPS and the delivery of MPS
programmes by providers will be in sharp focus as customer expectations
grow. At PAE we have taken the unusual step of assisting our partners by
not selling software. Instead, through our Premier Subscription service, we
give them the flexibility to consult and support their customers in a range of
solutions without the customer being tied into obsolete and outdated software
with costly upgrade paths.
The solutions encompass Remote Printer Management, as customers
increasingly prefer not to send in meter readings and request toner;
Management Information, Rules and Accounting Software to manage
and control the print environment; and secure printing from any device.
Customer satisfaction levels increase through this approach, strengthening
the relationship between the service provider and their customer. It also
allows the provider to increase their recurring revenue streams and
profitability.
In 2013 over 250 office equipment dealers signed up to this unique
programme and started to meet their customers’ requirements with more
than just device management. In 2014 we see this trend increasing,
challenging the traditional outright purchase model and all
the limitations that has for the provider and the customer.
As the printer market responds to the improving economic outlook,
PrintIT Reseller
asks
leading lights from the imaging industry for their thoughts about the year we’ve just
had and what 2014 has in store. To kick off our coverage, Steven Swift of IDEAS outlines
developments in managed print services (MPS). On the following pages, leading vendors,
distributors and resellers reveal their triumphs, hopes and fears.
costs, the aggregate result has to be a
corresponding dip in total market revenues
and a massive crash in margins.
The saving grace for the industry is
that in order to realise those savings,
customers need additional software tools
and services to manage their print output.
The challenge for resellers is to adapt their
business models and processes to ensure
that they can build these services and then
sell them at a worthwhile price to their
clients. The uptake has to be great enough
to recover sufficient revenue and margin to
offset the decline in sales of hardware and
consumables.
Some larger independents have been
able to make this transition successfully,
but many, especially medium-sized and
smaller resellers, have found that they need
help in identifying and acquiring the right
toolsets and adapting their organisations
to sell and implement these solutions.
OEMs are responding with channel
MPS programmes that typically include
integrated toolsets, training, pre-sales
support and access to special pricing. A
good example is HP’s new SPS programme,
leveraging IP from its Printelligent
acquisition, which has been piloted in
Germany and the UK and is expected to
roll out across Europe in 2014. Konica
Minolta has been supporting its channel
partners in several countries with a version
of its OPS programme, adapted for the
channel, but retaining the core toolset
based around PrintFleet and Perform
IT’s Vendor suite. Kyocera is rolling out a
concept that includes KyoFleet (a specially
designed version of PrintFleet), together
with access to Evatic service management
software and a commercial strategy that
actively supports the Channel. In the IT and
Office Supplies channels, Brother has been
actively promoting its MPS programme
with increasing success. Expect to see more
channel MPS activity in 2014 from among
others, Ricoh, Canon and Oki … and
maybe Samsung.
Software providers face big challenges
and opportunities. The industry remains
fragmented and populated largely by
relatively small, national companies. This
makes the sales activity too expensive
to access a significant share of the
market and creates problems associated
with insufficient scale of operations.
Additionally, many of the software tools on
offer have overlapping functionalities, but
also don’t easily speak to each other – for
example device monitoring software and
service management systems. Furthermore,
resellers may have to choose between
software tools offered by OEMs, which in
many cases work only with the sponsoring
OEM’s hardware, and independent toolsets,
which have multi-vendor capabilities.
This makes MPS software a jungle
in which many resellers are easily lost
without independent help. There is surely
an opportunity for one or two of the bigger
international software providers to step
in with an integrated software tool suite,
combined with a package of support for
the channel.
Year in review
Continued...
