Early to Bed and Early to Rise! Not me, I hung around the sports bar Tuesday night and spoke to many P4P members, it was a good time put a face on the member.
I spent most of the morning after breakfast in the Transform Sponsors area.
A few things, in the near future we'll be bring a few new cool apps that I think will help us when we're preparing proposals for fleet replacement of copiers. I'm hoping to have this ready in 90 days or so.
I was able to meet with SmartPrint, they are based in AU and I'm looking forward to working with them to bring some added value for our members also. Can't let the cat out of the bag right now.
Oki with NOC in a box was a really cool spin for dealers that would like to get into MNS, however they lack the resources for a full blown plan.
Muratec, also offering an even better version of MNS at a super price. Their program was extremely interesting and the pricing allows dealers to make excellent margins. If you can click on the Muratec link and contact them to learn more.
Preton, I believe many of us are missing the boat with their exceptional software package. I'm more interested in their tiered billing program which will allow you to implement a tiered program or at the very least save an account that maybe Xerox or Kyocera is calling on. The options could be very interesting especially with the new hi-speed inkjet systems that have come to market or are coming to market from the likes of HP, Memjet and Brother.
Intellinetics, now partnering with Muratec with a zero upfront cost to the customer for document management software.
Global Printer Services.....need rebuilt HP printers for an MPS offering, they have them and much more. I'll be writing about them in an upcoming blog.
I went to three seminars on Wednesday, the first was MFP Price Trends: Results from Photizo's Price Tracking Study... well thank goodness our speaker started off with the US market. Seems discounts were deeper this year than any other year. However, their price tracking only took in the base MFP cost (meaning no accessories were sold), I'm think what? seems to me that more than 70% of my sales have some type of accessory. He then elaborated on the Euro market which was a real snooze, the most I got out of that was that Canon seemed to be the most agressive on price and France had the least amount of discounting going on. I should have taken in Gen Y's seminar from Ricoh.
I had a 3PM appointment with Breezy and I was then off to a panel discussion about document management, this discussion focused on helping dealers answer questions about moving into document management. The Panel had a marketing person from Toshiba, LeeAnn from Applied Imaging in Michigan and Matt Chretian from Intellinetics. It was informative , enjoyable and the 40 minutes flew buy, I just couldn't figure out why they had someone from Toshiba on the panel for document management. My personal thoughts, it's just a matter of time before a light version of Intellinetics, Docuware or Doculex is bundling with new MFP's.
My last and most enjoyable session of the day was a round table event that focused on "The future of Imaging", on the panel was someone from Dell, an MPS reseller from LA, me, marketing guy from Square 9, Managed Print provider from South Africa, Paul from Nubeprint, and a fellow p4p'er from Canada.
What was the final verdict, well at least for now think about taking on new services to prepare for the reduction of print when Gen Y gets ready to take the reigns.
More to come
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