MFP Copier Blog

How many of us got rich with this??

Google announces plans for an initial public offering to raise as much as USD 2.72 billion. The IPO will be unconventional in that it will use an auction process and a complex averaging formula designed to prevent brokers' elite customers from winning more shares than average investors.

Not me, even though I tried to convince my wife that it was a solid investment, oh well!! Here's some of the popular threads from ten years ago this week.

RICOH RECEIVES “CERTIFICATION

          4/25/04 5:25 PM

 

          Topic by Guest

RICOH RECEIVES CERTIFICATION ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FROM COMPUTING TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION West Caldwell, NJ, April 15, 2004  Ricoh Corporation, the leading provider of digital office equipment, announced that it has received the Certification

 

Canon  Record Growth

          4/27/04 7:57 PM

 

          Topic by Guest

          LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y.(BUSINESS WIRE)April 27, 2004Canon U.S.A., Inc., a subsidiary of Canon Inc. (NYSE: CAJ - news) and a leader in imaging technologies, today announced Canon Inc. first quarter 2004 consolidated net sales of 798.1 billion yen (US

 

Kyocera Mita America Unveils

          4/27/04 8:02 PM

 

          Topic by Guest

Kyocera Mita America Unveils Strategic Product and Technology Initiatives at National Dealer Meeting Over 1,200 Dealers and Resellers Assemble to see how Kyocera Mita America is Building the Best Las Vegas, NV - Kyocera Mita America, one of the world's

 

PAPER HAS ALWAYS BEEN A PART OF THE ....

          4/25/04 5:34 PM

 

          Topic by Guest

          multifunction machines that now so often include scan-to-e-mail capabilities. Taking copier-based scanning one step further, companies including Xerox, Canon partner eCopy and HP partner NSi now offer capture middleware for copiers. This software lets

 

RE: Why Color?

          4/29/04 4:22 PM

 

          Reply by Guest

          Hey Ricoh guys. I recently became a member of the site and have learned a lot! I need some help though. I am competing with Xerox on a color deal. The prospect is doing around 10K per month color, 20K per month b/w and would like to staple duplex. Xerox

 

1060 and Twain driver

          4/26/04 10:16 AM

 

          Topic by wyzguynyuk

          every scanning software I can think of. I have tried it on two different 1060's. I have tried it on Windows 2000 and XP laptops with crossover cables. We have called Ricoh Tech Services and were told that the TWAIN driver needed NetBEUI running on the

 

New 31 PPM color

          4/27/04 7:52 PM

 

          Topic by Guest

          This unit will be previewed in Vegas. We saw it in NYC for AIIM, with a couple of Ricoh panels on the box. Hope Ricoh did their homework with this box! Art

 

Kyo's Drums Need User Intervention!

          4/27/04 9:40 PM

 

          Topic by Guest

          Please read atatched KYO tech report, this will cinch a deal if you are up against KYO This document has been archived, please send me an email if you would like to purchase. art@p4photel.com Kyocera Drum Letter (Document)

 

RE: 1060 and Twain driver

          4/26/04 4:29 PM

 

          Reply by wyzguynyuk

          am not yet sure that my client with the original problem won't have to run NetBEUI also (Ricoh Tech Services said they would, but my IT guys are not excited about using NetBEUI), but I'll find out tomorrow. I also wanted to let you know that my Service Mgr

 

RE: Kyo's Drums Need User Intervention!

          4/30/04 2:22 PM

 

          Reply by TroyS

          required. The whole process takes about 30 seconds.  We have been selling these products for three years now, and they eat Ricoh's lunch service wise.  Just my two cents.  BTW, We are a twenty year Ricoh dealer.

 

RE: CL7100

          4/26/04 3:50 PM

 

          Reply by Jayson Gilbertson

          Info and Brochure are posted on Ricoh USA. JG

 

RE: CL7100

          4/26/04 3:55 PM

 

          Reply by Jayson Gilbertson

          Driver is available from Ricoh-usa.

 

RE: 2232/38 ACS problem continued.

          4/27/04 10:49 AM

 

          Reply by Guest

          I ran into the same problem. But it makes senses why it doesn't work. You have to turn the user codes on for B & W as well. If you run ACS the user does not have access to the b & W or at least the code is not turned on. I don't know how Ricoh would fix

Due to a new promo that we put out to our Print4Pay Hotel members, we had a record number of Copier/MFP proposals that were emailed to us.

The promo is simple, email us 5 proposals that you've come across in the field and you'll receive a free six month Premium Membership for the Print4Pay Hotel.

You can learn so much from reading these proposals and quotes. Such as current cost per page pricing, discounting, who may or may not be using padded rates, quality of the proposal and scope of the proposal.  For me, and I'm sure for others it allows us to put our best foot forward when competing against various channels.

If we get enough of these I'll create a spreadsheet of average cost per page pricing for the various models.

Here goes, click on the link to view the quote.  Yeah,,,, you gotta have a premium membership, but you can get that by clicking anyone of the links. Hope to see you on the best site for Imaging Professionals in the World!!

Lexmark 796dt3_ Sharp 4111N proposal quote.pdf

Konica Minolta Bizhub C654 proposal quote.pdf

Konica Minolta BizHub 350 New and Repo.pdf

Konica Minolta BizHub 501 Recon.pdf

Lexmark XS654de proposal quote.pdf

Konica Minolta C454 _ Konica Minolta C554 proposal quote.pdf

Konica Minolta bizhub 224e Proposal

KM C364e Proposal

Lexmark XS795dte Proposal_redacted.pdf

Canon iR Color Advance C5250 Copier Bid Pricing

-=Good Selling=-

Another email asking me if I had written a blog about educating end users of copiers why they should get a new copier from a dealer and not get one from a retail establishment. I hoping they and guessing that they were referring to the a Staples, Max, Best Buy and the hordes of others who offer low end POS's.

1.  Ah, that small color copier may be inexpensive, however, the cost of supplies will drive you up a wall!  Just think, typically color prints will cost .20 to .30 cents a page.  Printing or copying only 500 pages a month will cost you $125 per month or $1,500 a year for just the supplies. Compare that to a small office color and your monthly cost could be as low as $40 per month or $480 per year.  That's a huge savings..

2.  When that little POS breaks, who is going to come on-site and fix it? No one, you gotta put that sucker in your car and then drive it to a service facility. In most cases they will give you an estimate to repair that is higher than what you paid for the system.

3.  Do you think that color copier/printer will last last five years?  Think again, you're probably lucky if you get 18 months of service out of the system before something very expensive fails.  

4.  THE BIG LIE!  I'll be you didn't know this, when manufacturers state the cost per page for these inexpensive systems they are only referring to the cost for the toner and maybe the drum.  That's because the other consumable items they count as a "part" and "parts" don't count in their eyes when they state the cost per page for consumables.

5. Most likely, if you're going to print 500 pages each month, you'll need to buy three of these units in a 4 year period.  Why?  Because they are built to fail and engineered to chew through consumables.  That $700 systems quickly becomes $2,100 and that's not taking into account of the fortune you'll spend on the supplies.

6.  I have questions about my machine, who can I call?  Well, you need to call the manufacturer and hope that the line is not busy, the person answering the phone understands the English language, you can understand what they are saying, and that they just don't give a crap and hang up on you.

The small color copier/printers that are sold at these stores are sometimes priced lower than what it costs the manufacturer to produce that unit.  It's a lost leader and they are counting that you'll be buying supplies that POS for many years.  

Real color copier/printers from local Authorized Dealers can last at a minimum 5 years or longer.  Combine that with the excellent on-site service, their years of experience and knowledge. All of that means excellent bang for the buck and tremendous value!!!   Do your self a favor contact your local Authorized Copier Dealer.

-=Good Selling=-

Alright, I took a little extra time off from the Print4Pay Hotel, however, I really needed the break.  Working full time selling copiers and working part time writing about selling copiers is a heck of a lot of work!!

Coming through US Customs at Liberty International (Newark, NJ) is always a pain in the rear end!  This trip was no exception. After we picked up our bags we were ready to be picked up by our driver, as we walked outside we found that the roadway was blocked due to some poor soul that was hit by a car.  After a few calls to the driver and more walking, we finally were on our way home.

I struck up a conversation with the driver to catch up on the Mets (they suck again), the Yankees for the wife (boo!!) and then asked if they had every found the missing Malaysia airliner.  For some reason the driver had told me that he had retired a few years ago and was a 30 year veteran of the copier industry. I said WHAT??

So, there we were, two copier comrades sharing copier war stories, and the good thing was my wife could not get a word into the conversation.

Apparently he had worked in New Jersey all of his life as a copier service guy and then graduating through the ranks to managing service departments departments.  In fact he was working for one of the premier Sharp dealers in New Jersey when they were bought by Ikon.  Ikon at that time was buying just about every Sharp dealer that was breathing.  Indeed he did have one sad story and that was related to him being hired by a North Jersey copier company, there he implemented OMD, saved the company thousands, the trained one of the owners and then got the boot!

Thus many of the dealer principles that he worked for I also knew them which lead to some interesting stories that I can't repeat hear.  I just thought it was a blast to have recalled the NJ copier industry the entire way home. I was also happy that the Copier Industry had been good to him and supported his family and allowed him to send his kids to college.

Good Selling=-

Here's a recent email from a Print4Pay Hotel member.

Recently I read an article you had written about whether or not solutions were worth the hassle and I find myself wondering the same thing many times.  We have been evaluating and using Autostore in our office and you mentioned you had made a sale.  Can you provide any information on how/why you were able to make the sale?

Our demographic is relatively small and most of our users are using either scan to email for the purpose of sharing their information or scan to folder with a simple windows file structure for intercompany sharing, archival and disaster recovery.  From what I’m looking at including a Windows 7 “server”, software and initial professional services I’m looking at around 3-4k or about $65 per month on a 60 month lease.  On many of our deals that would be a 50-100% increase.  I can’t see where users are going to the see the benefits of scan to any shared folder, scan to Word, Excel and searchable PDF and a basic workflow to be worth the increase.  I’m thinking unless I can uncover a specific workflow and deliver a ROI based on that it won’t be justifiable.  To do this means deep account penetration and most of our sales people have not proven to be able to do this.

I appreciate your feedback and input!

It seems like every President's Club trip gives me a story to tell about a unique sales experience that I had.

This years trip consisted of 5 nights at the Hard Rock Hotel in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.  The trip was outstanding, weather was beautiful and the service was excellent! 

I tried to ask as many Hard Rock employees as possible (for those that spoke to languages, kudos for them), how they liked their job.  Every single one of them answered that they loved their job and it showed in their zeal for outstanding customer service. I was pretty amazed to say the least. At work I can be a curmudgeon at times, but this trip and the attitude of the employees will have a lasting impression (until) my first commission statement is wrong),

Truly, all kidding aside.  While walking the palatial hall of restaurants and expensive stores I was approached by a native Dominican. "Ola" he stated, of course I gave back an Ola to him also. He then asked me if I had received an invitation to view the Presidential Suite.  I replied I had not. My first thought was, hey, am I missing out on something here?  Thus I entertained additional conversation with my friendly Dominican. After communicating back and forth a bit, I finally got the picture that he wanted me and the wife to view the Presidential Suite because he was selling time shares. I also communicated that we go to a different resort each year, his reply was that they have Hard Rocks all over the world. I still wasn't interested and thanked him for asking me.

While catching back up with the wife, I realized that the thought that I was missing something or the lack of not having the invitation piqued my interest. So much that I carried the conversation forward.  Of course this gave me ideas about how to engage new prospects (DMs) on the first call. You're all getting my drift here, right!  

I'll take a lesson from my friendly Dominican and remember to ask if my prospect received our invite first, and then wait for the answer. Do, I think I was suppose to get an invite for something?  Not after speaking with him, however, we all run events from time to time and I'll make sure I pack this one away to use it later.

-=Good Selling=-

The creation of searchable .pdf's is a great thing. Especially if it happens automatically. However, many MFPs still do not provide this service. I can think of six ways in which including OCR services in your offer will add value to your proposal.

1 – Cut search time and increase retrieval rate

Do your prospects find it easier to find information on the internet than in their own office? After OCR documents can be retrieved by searching for a word, phrase or number in the content. Moreover, users won’t have to search through every page manually either. This will dramatically cut search times, currently estimated to be 25 minutes per employee per day, and improve search success rates.

2 – No more retyping

Most companies process documents after they are digitized. Often this includes manually retyping the whole or part of the content. Not only does this take unnecessary time and effort, but it also increases the chance of mistakes. After OCR users can simply copy-paste the parts they want to reuse.

Why do your customers need OCR? These were just two ways in which OCR can help save your customers time and money. I'm sure you know more! Let me know what arguments you use most and we'll make this list complete.

Due to a new promo that we put out to our Print4Pay Hotel members, we had a record number of Copier/MFP proposals that were emailed to us.

The promo is simple, email us 5 proposals that you've come across in the field and you'll receive a free six month Premium Membership for the Print4Pay Hotel.

You can learn so much from reading these proposals and quotes. Such as current cost per page pricing, discounting, who may or may not be using padded rates, quality of the proposal and scope of the proposal.  For me, and I'm sure for others it allows us to put our best foot forward when competing against various channels.

If we get enough of these I'll create a spreadsheet of average cost per page pricing for the various models.

Here goes, click on the link to view the quote.  Yeah,,,, you gotta have a premium membership, but you can get that by clicking anyone of the links. Hope to see you on the best site for Imaging Professionals in the World!!

Konica Minolta BizHub C654 _ BizHub 363 proposal quote.pdf

Savin MP C5503.pdf

Xerox WC7845PT.pdf

Ricoh MP 5002 Bid.pdf

Ricoh MP C3503 Bid.pdf

Ricoh MP 4002SP.pdf

Xerox WC7835PT Copier Bid Pricing.pdf

Xerox WC3613DN Copier Bid Pricing.pdf

Xerox W5355 _ WC5335 Copier Bid Pricing.pdf

Xerox WC7855PT Copier Bid Price.pdf

-=Good Selling=-