R.J. Stasieczko
Imaging Channel, 2019 the year of DaaS - My suggestions to help you Implement.
Well, it happened some pioneers in the print industry are delivering an as a Service model. The Participates of the Imaging Channel must respond and deliver print equipment, its supplies, it’s parts, and its labor to repair in this as a Service model. 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 timely based on knowledge over desperation caused by waiting.
Some will wait and see as they say. This wait and see approach 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 RFP’s with No-Meter request, 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 still believe saving the old-way is better than learning to create the new way, and 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 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. 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 worlds largest print services metrics company has extensive data, data 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 Imaging 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 4 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 Wes McArtor a call and get the facts to 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.”
Those still believing that the Cost Per Copy model will remain the prominent model. I would suggest searching through your memories to the time, The Cost Per Copy model replaced the service billing model which excluded consumables. Remember the arguments, remember the fears, and now remember the speed in which the Cost Per Copy 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 Cost Per Copy 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?
Ray Stasieczko
I Clicked and Didn’t See You
It’s a digital world, where are you? Today more and more of yesterday’s customers are finding new providers who deliver a digital better experience. I still hear many in sales talking about the need and value of building relationships. The problem is they are using 1990 construction methods.
Today not only buyers but assumed happy customers are clicking their mouses in search of knowledge or, in search of something different, and unfortunately, many current providers are not showing up in their digital windows. Many don’t understand the battlefield where one fights to acquire and keep customers is more and more in a digital landscape.
“Customer experience is weighted heavily in the intersection between the digital and physical worlds.” Abandon customers in this intersection are just a click away from finding a replacement.
So, many believe that customers buy relationships they don’t, customers buy desired outcomes. Relationships are only one of the components to acquiring or keeping a customer, and today many great relationships are being taken away by new providers who deliver a better experience. Those who believe relationships are their greatest value will fall victim to those who provide a more valuable relationship.
The digital world is the birthplace of many of these better experiences and new relationships. Don’t miscalculate the importance of showing up in the digital windows of your customers. When your customers are surfing for information or your replacement make sure they find you not only educating them, but fighting to keep them as well.
The power of the digital world is phenomenal. One can open the windows to the world with their fingertip where opportunities to explore the unknown are endless. So, remember, that when you enter the digital landscape do not limit yourself to only what you know.
“It will be from what you learn in exploration which will spark what else is possible.”
That last quote is also accurate for your customers, proving my point in the necessity to get online and learn quickly how to navigate both prospects and customers through that intersection between the digital and physical worlds.
A tip from Ray
Next time you visit your customer ask them this. Of the products and services, we sell you, what have you discovered online which should concern us? Their answer might provide future directions to keeping all your customers.
See you online
Ray Stasieczko
Value Prop Out of Alignment? Disruptors bet on that
It seems when looking at disrupted industries you see the familiarity of a false sense of comfort. When products decline in need, they also decline in value. Those two things are tied together. Value propositions are hypnotic; they can hijack the common-sense of reality during market shifts causing the disease of Product-Centric Thinking.
The speed of innovation disrupting a deliverables current circumstances continues increasing. Today innovation not only changes the customer’s desired outcome. Innovation also changes the customers means to the desired outcome. These innovative changes to the means are what causes the collapse or, the massive disruption to legacy deliverables.
An example of disruption:
People still hire vehicles to take them from point A to point B. However, many of the traditional means to this achievement were utterly disrupted. The value proposition of the Taxi industry and Car Rental industry is now a whole lot less valuable to the many who left for the better experience provided by the rideshare deliverable.
Don’t let your perception of your value-add become out of alignment with your customer's viewpoint. More importantly, don’t make the mistake your perception is correct. Things continually modify with or without the permissions of those threaten by the results of the modification. Sooner or later the way the customer wants to achieve their desired outcomes will in-fact modify.
Many Innovators are re-inventing the outdated means to those customer desired outcomes. Innovators who focus on the customer’s desired outcome are Customer Centric. They can think backward from the outcome the product provides to the means of its achievement. They understand it’s not the product which has value it’s the desired outcome a product provides which customers value. Those who focus on the product are, A Product-Centric mindset which starts at the product putting the product ahead of the customer. Product-Centric organizations will insist that the product itself has the value and will ignore the realities of their customers.
Our friends in the Taxi Industry continue to be Product-Centric. They refuse to focus on the customers desired outcome so, as Uber celebrates its 10th Birthday. The taxi industry has done nothing to re-invent themselves watching their value continue to decline. The arguments we hear from the taxi industry are all about why the new way sucks. The taxi industry will continue fading into oblivion if they keep focusing on the product instead of the means to the desired outcome the product provides.
Can your deliverable be disrupted? Of course, it will be.
One of the hardest things for any value-added sales and service organization. Is reacting in time when their customers become out of alignment with them regarding their value. They waste time arguing why continuing to deliver the past is better than anything the future could deliver to the present.
A company becomes obsolete when it focuses on delivering the past to the future instead of delivering the future to the present.
The industry I am close to referred to as The Document Imaging Industry is itself in threat of an unknown disruptor welcoming its customers. Many in its ranks focus on the products, not the products desired outcomes, or the means to reach those desired outcomes. This Product-Centric thinking is causing many distractions to real threats. Many in the imaging Channel misunderstand that their product is also how they deliver and service as much as what they deliver.
Those whose delivery mechanism gets disrupted only built a defense against competitors they knew while refusing to imagine new competitors; competitors who don’t follow the battlefield rules of the old way and until now have never been in the old ways landscape. So, when they do come they surprise everyone who was unimaginative and unprepared.
Without the ability to imagine what could be we are limited to what it was or currently is. The unknown competitors are merely unimagined, and it’s better to introduce yourself to them in your imagination before they present themselves to your customers.
When a business limits their beliefs to what ’s possible, they face what the innovator saw as probable.
Ray Stasieczko
A Halloween Tale of an A3 Copier’s Death (Part Two)
Part Two - hashtagA4’s
Murder charges dropped in A3’s death.
Well, a few days ago we all heard of the apparent suicide of an A3 copier. The police report outlined that the A3 copier became so distraught over a new A4 its owners had on demo, it jumped from the office window.
Today there is an update. It seems that a local judge has thrown out all attempted charges leveled by an A3 manufacturer who believes the unfairness of A4’s capabilities and price points should have caused them to realize that A3’s would flee from hallways and could jump out windows.
Here are some points in the Judges 90-page opinion.
“The A3 manufacturer’s ignored customers desired outcomes; it wasn’t printing or coping on 11/17 size paper.”
“The A3 manufacturer’s are too Product-Centric, and must become Customer-Centric.”
“The A3 manufacturer's equipment takes three service calls to one on an A4 at like volumes.”
We reached out to the A4 copier/printer accused of killing the A3, the A4’s legal team replied to our request for comment through its A4’s cloud printing platform.
See comment below.
“A4 is just better, we A4's understand why the A3’s sees no hope. The world of print equipment and its services is quickly changing, and A4 is the better customer experience.”
Ray Stasieczko
A Halloween Tale of an A3 Copier’s Death
A Halloween Tale of an A3 Copier’s Death
As the copier homicide unit arrived, the scene was familiar. The office hallway barely lit the trash can next to the copier was laying on its side, the window was broken from the inside and when looking out one can see an A3 Copier laying smashed on the sidewalk below.
Recognizable by the owners manual still taped to the broken 11/17 paper drawer and the rainbow color on the sidewalk created by splattering CMYK toner. Yes, it appears there was another A3 Copier so humiliated by the A4 machine on demo it appears in leaped from the window.
The A3 rolled over to the window at the end of the hallway ripping its surge protector from the wall, and as it traveled towards the sidewalk below one could hear. “If only they did 11/17 paper I would have had value.”
So, if you wish to protect your obsolete A3 copier from leaping out the window.
Don’t allow it to see an hashtagA4 demo especially a hashtagLexmark hashtagA4 .
Instead replace your A3 machine late one Friday afternoon, and as it's loaded in the hashtagLexmark trade in truck tell it, it’s headed to an 11/17 farm. Unfairly I am sure a law firm will attempt to blame the A4 for being so exceptional it caused the A3’s death. If this happens I will update.
Ray Stasieczko