I was recently in Atlanta for a canon dealer event and sat through their MDS presentation. They are apparently getting more and more aggressive with their approach and it appears in 2015 they will have network/it support program for dealers to contract with to provide IT services to clients. I tried to pry a little more info from their team but it appears they are still in the planning stages. My best guess is that it may model the Ricoh CHAMPS program.
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interesting, I've already ran into some issue with MDS Champs. Went to register an account that called me. Wanted advanced DMS structure, which I knew how to handle. However, somehow they got register for Champs and I then had a phone call that this was a direct account and I could not quote, even though the customer stated they are going out to bid. How can you stop someone from bidding? They are messed up
I am starting to feel more and more that Ricoh is going back to that mind set that the dealers don't matter. We've been a Ricoh dealer for 20 years.
From a hardware standpoint, I called our Ricoh rep yesterday to discuss a hospital we have had as a client for about 20 years. They were purchased by a larger hospital chain in our area and we have an opportunity to respond to their new RFP when it comes up. The hospital said it would take a bid from us or Ricoh, but not both. I asked him about Ricoh partnering with us on the deal for support/pricing and he told me that it would be very tough for anyone to tell the direct they had to stand down becuase Ricoh was going after all the healthcare accounts they could.
So, from a CHAMPS perspective we don't really have too much trust in Ricoh Corporate and have gone back and forth deciding if we would use the program or not. I am very hesitant to have Ricoh employees in my account even though I know they are not RBS sales/service people. Hopefully Canon's MDS will get up and running sooner than later.
This is interesting, Jason,
Follows similar offerings from Konica and Ricoh, but a good way to evolve dealers and expand their portfolios.
Any additional details on the Canon dealer network/it support program at all?
- jake
Jake,
I haven't heard anything further since we were down there. I did ask the guys in the presentation if they would mirror it like KM and Ricoh's services and they indicated there would be similarities. Of course after being a Canon dealer for a while now they may say something is going to come out in 2015 and we may not actually see it until 2020.
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