MFP Copier Blog

Cost Per Image, Cost Per Page, Cost Per Copy, Cost Per Print, whatever you call it, it all started with the copier industry.

The question above was posed by Greg Walters with a recent thread that was posted on LinkedIn.  I stated the reply of "I do, I do",  I was that eager kid in the classroom that was begging to give the answer, however after I hit the "comment" button I realized that maybe I don't know Cost Per Copy billing got started.

My first recollection of a copier billing model that preceded the Cost Per Page billing model was one that was used by Duplifax in the early eighties.  Duplifax was an Authorized Canon dealer located in Central New Jersey and they adopted a billing model that included something like three cartons of toner for "x" price but the kicker was that service, maintenance and parts were included for the life of the three toner cartridges (toner kit)!  This billing model was a game changer for those of us having to sell against Duplifax or trying to upgrade a Duplifax Canon box.

As sales people we were astounded that maintenance, parts and service was included when the customer purchased the toner.  The thought of including toner in a maintenance agreement in the mid eighties was unthinkable for most dealers, yet Duplifax turned it around and included the maintenance with the purchase of the toner.  Once the toner ran out, then so did the maintenance agreement.  After time we figured out that Duplifax was marking up the up the toner cartridges by 200-300% depending on what Canon model the customer had.  Thus when three toner cartridges had a retail value of $90, Duplifax resold the package around $375.

It was soon thereafter that some customers realized that they could get more bang for the buck by buying toner from another source at the regular price and using that toner to extend the life of their Toner Kit.  This unscrupulous act then forced Duplifax to start obtaining meter reads from the customer to make sure they were not substituting "extra" toners into their toner kit agreement.

The there was the regular billing model for maintenance in the early eighties and that model sold a maintenance agreement that did not include toner, and included "x" amount of pages.  There were no overage charges or let me rephrase that, for the dealer I worked for, and the dealers that I had to sell against you would sell a contract for $400 and it included 30,000 pages (again no toner, fuser oil and paper). These types of maintenance agreements led to a major problem, because in the early eighties there was no billing software (key note), there was no person calling for monthly meter reads, the only time we found out a customer was over the metered amount was when a service tech went to do a courtesy call (remember those) and or a repair call and the meter was logged.  Can you imagine how hard it was to tell the customer that even though the customer had expired you had to buy a new contract and that new contract was only good for 15,000 pages because they went over their allotted amount by 15,000.

Thus these two distinct billing models had their issues. It's my recollection and I could be way off, however I believe some of the early adopters of the cost per page billing was the direct operations of Xerox, & Minolta Business Systems due to the fact that they had the bucks to invest in early software billing programs that enabled them to offer the cost per page model.

Please, if anyone has anything else to had we would love to hear from you!!

-=Good Selling=-

On many appointments and especially the one that I have at 9:30AM in the morning I'll have all of the paper work necessary to "sign the deal" filled out the day or the night before the appointment.  In addition....................,

I've almost stopped writing proposals and am just presenting the sales order, the maintenance agreement and FAB points.  In essence I'm giving you everything you need in writing in advance to make a decision now.  Here's #13

13.      Assumptive Close:  See if you customer is giving you the buying signals, such as maintenance, supply and warranty questions. Go for it and take out an order form and start filling it out, don’t stop until the customer stops you.

-=Good Selling=-

Ten Years ago this week.............After 26 years, and at a distance from Earth of over 8 billion miles, Voyager 1 exits the solar system. It is expected to keep on transmitting into the 2020s. [47] [48]

Enjoy these threads from the Print4Pay Hotel forums 10 year ago!

I Get To Change Jobs!

RE: Building Credibility with the IT Department

November 4, 2003 11:00 AM

Reply by Scott Holloway

My territory is not a geographical one, but I am assigned the responsibility to call on all users of IBM AS400 or S/390 systems and I can tell you IT people are the hardest to reach that my 25 + years of sales have ever seen. Any information you can...

 

Finally, after 487 days I was able to experience an MFP connected to the world wide web!  Yeah, yeah, I understand that I'm a little late to the game and should have dedicated some time earlier, however I did not have access to the new MPC 8002SP system. 

Here's What Impressed Me:

• The speed of he browser, after hearing from others that the browser was so in some systems, the browser on the MP C8002SP was far from slow.
• The size of the LCD Color Screen was great and I was impressed with the colors that were reproduced from various web sites.
• I liked the fact the it was very simple to store "favorites"
• It was easy to navigate with through the pages.
• Of course my fav was that I was able to "print" the web page if I wanted (boy those Japanese are very clever)

Here's What Didn't Impress Me:

• What No Video??  Now we can't stand around the copier and watch you tube videos on how to use the MP C8002!!
• No Speakers???  Where's the web experience if there are no speakers?  If there were speakers I would have enabled Pandora and the system playing some rockin tunes!
• Bummer, you actually have to enter http//, then the web address, what a royal pain in the ass that is!  Thank goodness for the "favorites" feature.
• Some web sites were very slow to come up in the browser.

What I'd Like to See in the Next Generation

• Speakers!!! 
• Bluetooth: The I would not need the speakers and I could use a portable keyboard
• Video:  Imagine, set up fav videos on the web browser for operational or how to instructions that are on youtube!
• Ability to connect my tablet or smart phone:  Give me the power to scan to my phone, print from my phone, or even use my phone as the virtual keyboard.

All in all I had a great experience on the MPC8002, keep in mind that the 03 series is using an Android tablet and I can't wait to check out how that works.  Tomorrow, we're going to load UDOCX and finally scan2MS365, SharePoint, Dropbox and much more. It's my understanding the cloud scanning offer from UDOCX is much more robust than the Ricoh ICE. 

Check in tomorrow! 

-=Good Selling=-

No slipping, no sliding, no scraping frost or ice off the car windows, no bundling up to take out the garbage, no getting the driveway plowed in, no walkin the dog when it's below freezing outside and these are just a few reasons why it would be awesome to be in La Vegas on December 10th-12th of 2013 for the Business Imaging Expo Event!! 

Just think.....90 degree weather, sunshine, warmth, palm trees, and a few sarsaparillas can go along way to quench your thirst in Vegas.

All kidding aside, I'll be at the Business Imaging Expo and I've chomping at the bit to attend this event since I heard about it last February in Orlando.

Thus, here's my top ten reasons why I'm excited about being there and hopefully you'll be there to.

1) I recognize that solution selling is over and we (as sales people and dealer owners) need to focus more on being a valued business partner with our clients and prospects.  In a nutshell we need to focus on how we can improve their business with our knowledge (knowledge is power).

2) I want to learn more about capturing data from documents and understand the benefits of capturing that data so that I can present an awesome process that will help save time and increase my client or prospects ability to drive more business

3) What workflow can I concentrate on that will give me a competitive advantage over my competition.

4) I want to learn more about what I don't know in respect to process improvement and enterprise deployments.

5) I want to learn from others who are already successful with workflow and Business Process Management.

6) I want to meet with as many vendors as possible to see what's new, and what's the right fit for me to move forward as a valued business partner for my clients.

7) The need to know more about selling BDR, and what's the sizzle for SMB business owners. really looking forward to catching this from DATTO.

8) The Facts & Fictions of Managed Print......uh.. just from the list of speakers I can tell I've gotta catch this seminar.

9) The opportunity to network my peers, industry pundits and have a great time to increase my knowledge.

10) For 3 days I can shed the winter clothes, enjoy the sun, maybe win some cash and take a well deserved break before I need to break the bank the quota bank.

11) Bonus...., I get to have a drink with Greg!!!

Can you tell I'm excited about this event? Our industry continues to evolve, and as Ricky Bobby states if you're not first, your last and I always have this thing about being first!!!  Hope to see you there.

Oh yeah, one other note, you can register here!!!

-=Good Selling=-

Many times in my selling career I get caught up with just trying to meet my quota instead of putting meat on the table.

Yes, I'm anal about hitting those monthly and quarterly and yearly numbers, and yes, I have been known to sacrifice GP just to make sure the sale is made. In most cases it's the easy way out to move on the next sale.

I continually have to remind myself to leave some room in every proposal for the just in case scenario's.

12.      Drop Close: Offer to drop the price today if you can get their business. I don’t like using this, because most customers may then ask “why didn’t you give me your best price the first time”?  However it has the done the trick on many occasions to get the customer to move.  Always keep something extra fudge in the deal just in case you need.

-=Good Selling=-

Tonight I had the pleasure to have dinner with Vince McHugh. Vince works for NECS and writes his own blog named The Connected Copier.  Vince has much of the same background as myself being that we both started out in the industry as technicians.  I had to change to sales when the owner of the company stated that I was doing a great job at taking the systems apart and not so good at putting them back together.

We reminisced on how we got to where we are today, and Vince had to told me a story about he was in training (I believe) in an 80 story office building where he was learning to service the 3M secretariat II copier. One in which you needed to remove the paper with tongs because the paper was on fire and had to drop it into a waste receptacle.

I then told Vince about how I started my own dealership with a technician, I was in sales and our first line of Authorized copiers was Towa. Vince exclaimed Towa, what's a Towa?  Well back in the eighties Towa was a relabeled Sanyo copier. Does anyone remember the Sanyo copiers and fax machines?  Hey, at that point in my sales career it was good to be Authorized for anything, Towa fit the bill. 

I also spoke about my relationship with Brother LTD, my dealership was an Authorized reseller for Brother work processors, typewriters, fax machines and yes one of the first color copiers. We had one in our office and we resold color copies for about $2.00 each!  But more importantly having the Brother dealership and Authorized repair facility allowed up to grow and customers came to us for repairs and in most cases they ended up buying additional products from us.

We as dealers need to find alternative ways to add new services to gain additional net new clients (the life and blood of growth), sometimes that can be done with adding a new line, or a new service.  Of course you need to do the research to find out what products or services to add is best for your market place.

All in all I enjoyed the time I spent with Vince, and I look forward to reading his blogs and his threads on this site. 

-=Good Selling=-

This is a rerun blog post from April of this year on the old blog site, since that post there were many threads on the P4P forum related to the above topic.

Charging for Scans is an ongoing discussion on the Print4Pay Hotel members.

I believe the industry as a whole needs to start charging for scans especially with page volumes migrated downward. Ask yourself "why are we giving it away for FREE"!

It seems most dealers do not have a scan charge policy and those that do only implement it after they've realized that the scan volume is higher than the copy and print volume. Replacing parts in the document feeder is not costly, however the labor is, especially if you are out there once a month for document feeder issues and or replacing preventative maintenance parts for the document feeder. Check your page volumes, are they up or down?

So, what should be the cost for scanning or the "click charges", should it be based on a cps (cost per scan) with a minimum and overage every month, or should there be a annual cost with overages? I see it in the street everyday, more customers are wanting to scan to reduce their printed or copied page volumes. They are emailing, and LAN faxing more scanned documents. Problem is most of us are not capturing the revenue stream.

Would it be outrageous to charge a customer .015 per scan for a minimum of 1,000 scans per month ($15.00) with the overage at .008. Most of us have had the mindset that scanning should be less expensive the cost per page charge, and why is that? Just because someone said so. Scanning contracts could and should include parts, labor, training, reconnecting scan2email and scan2folder issues. Heck, we're getting those calls now under the cost per page contracts and doing them anyway.

I think the main issue is that most dealers and or Direct Branches have no clue how many scans are being made, and the ones who do are afraid that charging for every scan may chase business away. Ask yourself, where can you get a 50ppm color scanner with scan2email, scan2folder, 100 page document feeder and the capability of scanning 11x17. A quick search on the Internet produced no scanners with these capabilities!

We are solving a business problem for our customers, the problem is the cost of printing a page. The average document gets copied 19 times! *That's the problem, being copied 19 times! *source: Coopers & Lybrand

So, why can't we charge .01 or .015 per page to have the document scanned? Some will say well they can just get a desktop scanned and scan all they want, true they can however, most of these devices are TWAIN devices, most are not as fast as MFP's, and most can't be integrated for scan2email, scan2folder and third party software scanning solutions, also how many of these devices would they need? At 5,000 scans a month a customer would spend $50 - $75 per month, I'm sure the savings far out weighs copying the document 19 times and then migrating the document where they need to go.

Charging for Scans needs to happen in our industry now, or we run the risk of putting our selves out of business as paper becomes a less accepted means of communication.

-=Good Selling=-

An October frost was about to settle on the pumpkins that were nested between two hay bales outside of the Gotham Police Headquarters.

In the city streets there were bands of goblins, ghosts and witches all hunting for the sake of savory treats for the night. The night was All Hallows Eve.

Sargent Joe Friday and Officer Bill Ganon were workin out of bunko on the night shift. "Joe, there's call from Cap, states we gotta a call and we need to hightail it down to Atlantic Office Solutions on Fifth Avenue, Cappy states a guy called in muttering something about Vampires and power... something or other and then they were cut off"!  With that Joe and Bill were off and running to their squad car and within minutes they arrived at the fron entrance of Atlantic Office Solutions.

Crime Scene Investigation:

"That's funny" Joe thought.  Joe pointed at the buildings and stated "Bill, have you ever seen anything like this, all of the lights around Atlantic Office Solutions is off, but the main building is lit up like a Christmas tree"! Now usually nothing and I repeat nothing fazes Joe & Bill, however this being All Hallows Eve and that dreadful call where vampires and power seems to have Bill and Joe a little jumpy.

Bill banged on the glass door again and again, and not a soul was to be heard.  Bill turned to Joe "Whadda think Joe, should we just invite ourselves in", "We gotta see what's going on or we'll never hear the end of it from Cappy" stated Joe.

Bill then gave a good tug on the door and don't you know that the door was unlocked!!!  Bill and Joe walked in, they rounded the reception area and then scampered into the hall, it was then that they heard the terrible screaming!!!

Running down the hall was a lean middle aged man with short silver hair with a matching mustache and he's screaming his darn head off!  Bill grabbed him as he ran by, took him to the ground, put his face to the floor and asked "what the hell is going on"?  The middle aged guy on the floor was screaming "Power, power, the vampires are stealing my power"!  Joe leaned over and gave the guy a good whack in the head and told the guy to "calm down, calm down, we're da cops".  "What's your name" asked Bill, the guy on the floor replied "Larry, Larry Wisemann".

"Joe, I don't know about you but we've been here for 15 minutes and I ain't seen no dam Vampires"! Joe then told Bill "Hey me neither", Joe looked down at Larry and stated "Larry tell us what the hell is going on". "My power, my power, their stealing all of my power, the employees left for the night and I had to come back because I forgot my daughter’s gift. I walked in and all the damn lights, copiers, printers, fax machines, coffee makers and water coolers were left on"!!!, "it's gosh darn Vampire Power I tell you, and the damn power company is draining the profits out of me", exclaimed Larry.

Little did Larry know that Bill Ganon knew what he was talking about, Bill had been moonlighting as head of security for ESP. "Larry, Larry calm down, this is not the end", Joe chimed in and asked "Bill, whadda ya thinking?"  Bill then stated "Larry, we need you to come downtown to the offices of ESP, we've got these hoo dads, I mean.....", what Bill meant to convey to Larry is that ESP with the eCommandCenter, users can track their real-time, plug-level energy consumption across their entire company and all connected equipment, including copiers, computers, water coolers, coffee makers, printers and vending machines. It’s the perfect solution to identify specific employees and equipment that consume higher than average energy, eliminate misused energy costs or vampire power, proactively set up automated programs to manage power consumption, and incorporate tangible green business practices.

Larry having calmed down a little exclaimed "really", then put his finger to his bottom lip, you could tell the wheels were churning and stated to Joe and Bill "you mean I can turn every piece of electric hardware on & off at will from a remote location?" "Yup, that's what Bill is talking about" claimed Joe.  Larry being the ever so clever business owner told Joe and Bill, "I can't thank you guys enough, not only did you solve my theft (vampire) of power, but I'm thinking I can present this to all of my clients to add additional value for the copiers that we sell!" 

Both Joe & Bill tipped their hats and told Larry "we'll been seeing you around town, our job is done here"!

Joe and Bill left Atlantic Office Solutions that evening with an understanding that there were no vampires, just a savvy business owner that was being sucked dry by his employees and power company.

"Joe whadda think, what kinda report are we gonna file tonight" stated Bill. "People who saw it happen - but really didn't. People who insist they did it - but really didn't. People who don't remember - those who try to forget. Those who tell the truth - those who lie. You'll run the files until your eyes ache, it's just another case of some business owner who wants to stay in business and needs technology to keep him ahead of the curve" stated Joe.

Of course this is a fictional story, yes the names were changed to protect the innocent. Need to know more about ESP and Command Center?  Go here!

-=Good Selling=-

When reviewing these threads I noticed a thread that I posted 10 years ago that referenced the loss of my brother.  Ten years....just want to thank all of the P4P'ers that expressed their condolences. It was and still is appreciated.

I did some research on some of news stories from the 4th week of October and I have tell you that BIGFOOT was the top on my list.

It's been the subject of campfire stories for decades. A camera-elusive, grooming-challenged, bipedal ape-man that roams the mountain regions of North America. Some call it Sasquatch. Others know it as Bigfoot.

Below on the threads from the Print4Pay Hotel forums 10 years ago this week!

RE: Aficio 2022/27

RE: When did Ikon start selling RMAP?

October 27, 2003 5:54 PM

Reply by Darren ....

Do you suppose I could run Savin through Ricoh Leasing?  I miss RMAP, Savin, as far as I can tell, doesn't have a program like that.

  

RE: Aficio 2022/27

October 23, 2003 12:56 PM

Reply by Darren ....

I have Savin pricing if you are interested. Email me ..... if you are a Ricoh family dealer.[This message was edited by dalsteen on Thu October 23 2003 at 11:09 AM.]

 

How excited can you get about new copiers aka multifunctional copiers that can print, scan in color, copy and fax (LAN Fax, walkup fax)? 

I for one am pretty exciting about new offering of the MP2501SP. It's been a few years since the passing the of the MP2550SP and the MP 2501SP seems to be the perfect fit for users that occasionally need to print up to 10,000 pages per month. 

This system was bred to win bids, and packed with some excellent features for a low end A3 (up to 11x17) monochrome system.

Thus here's my top 12 likes for this system:

• The Automatic Reversing Document Feeder will hold up to 100 pages
• Compact, takes up less than 4 square feet of floor space, which is pretty awesome for an A3 MFP
• Black scanning speed of get this...50 images per minute @ 300DPI!  Color will scan at 25 image per minute @ 300DPI.  Awesome scanning speed which presents excellent value.
• Ricoh ICE compatible, all you need to do is buy the browser option and you're off to the races to scan to your fav cloud service.  Of course you'll also need to purchase the ICE option @ at annual cost of $240.  Talk to your rep about how ICE works and the additional benefits.
• Optional 250GB Hard Drive enables many additional functions for the system, but best of all when you get the hard drive unit it also comes with DOSS. Data Encryption and enables you to use the Document Library (allows you to scan or print documents to the hard drive of the copier so you can print them at a later time).
• Print and Scan from USB Drive and SD card, along with the ability to preview the image before it is printed, keep in mind that you'll need the optional Hard Drive to enable printing from USB Drive or SD Card.
• ID Card Copy, we've mentioned this before in previous 03 models from Ricoh. Allows you to place the ID Card on the glass, copy the first side and then flip the card and copy the back side and the both sides of the ID card are printed on the same page.  There was actually a question raised about if the ID Card Mode could work with scanning.  I haven't had the time to test this, hoping someone else has.
• Fax Connection Unit is a excellent option on this system, let's say you have a fleet of four systems.  You'll only need to purchase one fax option and then 3 Fax Connection Units.
• Mobile Print from Android or Apple, these apps are available on either the Google Play Store or Apple Store.
• Batch Scanning, got more than 100 originals to scan, no worries here, select the batch mode before scanning and when the first 100 pages are scanned in two minutes you'll be prompted to set the next batch of pages in the document feeder.
• Import/Export preference settings, love it, sell it, great for large fleets of these units. Basically what this means is that once you have one system programmed with system settings, application settings and shortcuts you can save these on an SD card and then import those setting to the rest of the fleet!
• Device Manager NX Lite is a free desktop application that allows IT administer and manage up to 250 devices.

That's 12 right?  It's getting late and I could have added another 12 features that make the Ricoh MP 2501SP and exceptional value. If you are looking for an excellent A3 device at an affordable price then you can either contact me or contact your local Ricoh Dealer and tell them that Art from the Print4Pay Hotel stated that this is the MFP that they need!!!

-=Good Selling=-

I have a funny story to tell, my wife had to report for jury duty today, and if course she was not happy about it.

Thus at dinner tonight I asked how what the jury selection process was like since I've never been called.

Questions, questions and more question my wife stated, I then asked if there was anything funny that happened during the questioning?  My wife replied, "well the one attorney asked one of the prospective jurors (male) where he got his news from", the prospective jury replied with "ESPN", with that the prospective juror was done for the day! On with #11~

11.      Build in Free Pages to Close:  This seems to be very common nowadays, but it’s worth keeping in your arsenal of closing tools.  Build in “x” amount of FREE pages to see if they will close.  Mr. Customer if we were able to give you 100,000 pages at no cost you would you move forward with the sale?

-=Good Selling=-