FYI, I wrote this blog back in 2012 for a series of blogs titled, The Transition of the Copier Industry. Back in 2012, I focused my this blog around the Ricoh eWriter, today the Ricoh eWriter is no where to be found. Why? I have no clue, I thought this product would kick start paperless forms, service tickets, delivery tickets and many other mundane paper based processes.
The Digital Copier Industry of Today
The digital copier industry of today is changing and companies like Xerox, Ricoh, KonicaMinolta and Canon are making the transition to service led companies. These manufacturers and their dealers will be the sole provider for documents whether they are created electronically or printed, we/they want to help customers with print stream management, forms, email, archiving of documents (electronic and paper), they also want to provide consulting to help businesses increase efficiencies, provide easier work flows and reduce your costs.
I'll take an example of a Ricoh product 
because I'm more familiar with their products since I sell their products. One of their brightest products is the eWriter, it's not for playing games, surfing the web or doing your fantasy football at the office (Ricky), the ewriter is a business tablet that is designed to address technology gaps in the digital work flow by replacing paper based solutions with digital alternatives (I borrowed this from Ricoh). Basically, the Ricoh ewriter will replace paper, maybe the best example I can give is my own.
When making a sale, I need to produce a sales order, a maintenance agreement, and a lease. I need to print these documents and then have the customer sign them. Bring them back to the office and then print another 10 pages of information to complete the order process. This type process is archaic, thus if I had an ewriter all of my forms would be on the tablet, I enter the information on the tablet, capture the customers signature and then transmit the documents to the office. Then I'm done, thus if I wrote 10 orders per month I could increase my efficiency 4-5 hours every month. In ten months I could write another weeks worth of business! S
So why aren't dealers embracing this technology?
The Ricoh ewriter is just an example of awesome technology that is changing our industry. Other manufacturers have also developed real-time visual communication devices for the office that share video, audio an image sharing. Thus if you had one of these in each office your offices you would be able to communicate in real time with video, and audio.
It's not only just about the hardware also, it's about the services. Dealers and Direct branches can now offer an array of services including Managed Network Services, Managed Print Service, Managed Print Stream (managed print stream seems to be one of the most overlooked solutions in our industry) and Managed Document Services. Our industry is preparing for the eventual demise of what got us to where we are today. Putting toner or ink PAPER!
The holy grail is how can we get to new renewable revenue streams with print volumes that will be on the decline ? Of course I have some ideas, however I'll address these in Part #4
Note from Art: In recent press releases, most or all of the major copier manufacturers have reported lower profits. A few of these manufacturers even reported higher sales volumes and lower profits. What's my take? Too many players in the field equals a drain on profits, we're many years past the boom days of digital copiers and we've now entered a phase where the market is flooded with digital color devices. Basically, if we're just focused on selling copiers then the only thing we're accomplishing is stealing business from each other. Not a healthy plan for a mature market.
-=Good Selling=-
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