Production Accessories Do dealers add costs for these additions?

Production Accessories

Do dealers add costs for these additions?

Compiled by: Brent Hoskins, Office Technology Magazine

Following is another of the questions submitted by a dealer member as part of BTA’s Dealers Helping Dealers resource, and several of the answers received. Six dealer respondents simply responded “no,” while two simply responded “yes.” These answers and many others can be found in the members-only section of the BTA website. Visit www.bta.org/DealersHelpingDealers. You will need your username and password to access this member resource.

When selling maintenance for production machines, do you add additional costs for any accessories (i.e., Fierys, GBCs and Plockmatic options)?

“We try to, but we do not do it all the time. Not so much for Fierys, but we do for GBCs and Plocks.” Juan Maldonado, vice president of service UBEO Business Services, Austin, Texas

“We add in $75 per month for Fiery. We have not sold the GBC or Plockmatic, but we would charge something for those; we haven’t figured out a price.” Mick Dean, managing partner SaraMana Business Products Inc., Sarasota, Florida maintenance agreements will include the additional costs.”

Richard Hermann, president TC Technologies Inc., Tonawanda, New York

“For non-metered devices, I calculate the annual amount of the maintenance is 12% to 15% of the sales price or MSRP of the actual item. For example, say a GBC has a $10,000 sales price. Twelve percent of the sales price would be $1,200 per year or $100 per month.” Matt Halsrud, director of service & operations Koch Office Group, Des Moines, Iowa

“Fierys no, but yes on all GBCs and Plockmatics. We generally charge 10% of the cost as a flat monthly service fee.” Kevin Laury, COO SumnerOne, St. Louis, Missouri

“These options (as well as computers and HDDs) are not included in regular maintenance contracts. We do not add additional costs to contracts because these items are expensive and may not be covered, if needed, to be replaced by the regular copy rates.”

Dan Castaneda, general manager International Copy Machine Center, El Paso, Texas

“Currently we do not have additional charges for production accessories. These can be difficult to introduce in the light production arena. I have experienced these fees in a previous life, though these were sales from a few $100,000s to $1 million. “We are relatively new to this space. As we develop this vertical, I foresee additional charges to not only hardware, but also to analyst services.”

Dan Bowie, vice president of sales Corporate Business Systems, Madison, Wisconsin

“Yes, you have to. Especially the Fiery, as it takes an IT guy to fix that product.” Chip Miceli, president Pulse Technology, Elk Grove Village, Illinois

“We are new to production machines and have found that manufacturer guidance on cost of maintenance is often lacking or not included in suggested pricing models. Future “We would like to add service base fees for production accessories ($25 to $45 per month), but the competition does not charge for it.”

Jeffrey Ford, vice president of client experience Impact Networking, Lake Forest, Illinois

“At this point we do not charge separately for accessories or Fierys, but we are looking into that.”

Mike Ardry, general manager, Connecticut Automated Business Solutions, Southington, Connecticut

Do you have a question for your fellow dealers? If so, email it to brent@bta.org with the subject line: “Dealers Helping Dealers.” BTA will then share your question with the full dealer membership with a request for guidance from your fellow dealers. n Brent Hoskins, executive director of the Business Technology Association, is editor of Office Technology magazine. He can be reached at brent@bta.org or (816) 303-4040.

Empower 2020

Laserfiche hosts provider, end-user event Feb. 11-14

by: Elizabeth Marvel, Office Technology Magazine

With a focus on using its software for humancentered digital transformation, Laserfiche hosted its Empower 2020 conference Feb. 11- 14 at the Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center in Long Beach, California. The event gathered more than 4,000 solution-provider and end-user attendees from more than 30 countries to Long Beach to discuss new additions to the company’s software solutions; to train users on its products; and to show how customers could “go beyond” simple optimization and create true digital transformation in their companies.

On Feb. 11, Laserfiche executives and employees held a keynote specifically for solution providers that focused on the company’s growth in 2019 and its plans for the future. Taylor Grosso, director of channel sales at Laserfiche, kicked off the solution provider keynote by telling attendees that the company added new midsize and enterprise organizations in 2019. He noted that Laserfiche Cloud was an integral reason for this growth. “ ... We’re getting some really good traction here, and Laserfiche Cloud has been one of the avenues that has provided many of our solution providers the tools and alternative options to sell to the enterprise customers,” Grosso said. “Cloud opens up new opportunities to sell to the mid-size enterprise market because the SaaS model appeals to a variety of unique circumstances.”

He went on to explain the benefits of Laserfiche Cloud for solution providers, and encouraged them to leverage cloud packaging to help drive professional services; exceed a oneto-one software-to-services ratio; and maximize training opportunities. “We need to take advantage of all of the benefits the Laserfiche Cloud package offers and increase our capture process automation and integration services that are required to roll out Laserfiche across departments. We also need to maximize the amount of training with each implementation Taylor Grosso Justin Pava

to guarantee the best user experience to get to the next phase of the process as soon as possible.”

Justin Pava, director of product management, laid out the company’s long-term product goals during the solution provider keynote. He focused on three trends the company has been seeing in the marketplace: interoperability, artificial intelligence [AI] and machine learning, and flexibility in hosting. “So I’ve seen a lot of trends this past year but they all really come under the same umbrella of expecting things to just work,” Pava said. “ ... It’s very important to be able to say, ‘Hey, here is where we are and we’re going to get started.’ There are a lot of places where this theme comes into place. One of them has to do with integrations and interoperability. The industry expects that things will just work together.

“Another element of this is the realm of AI and machine learning,” Pava continued. “ ... A place where AI can really help out is in the realm of your initial configuration. Instead of having to go in and manually configure how everything works, AI and machine learning can dynamically understand what it is you’re trying to do.

“The last element I want to talk about is the idea that the environments where your systems are located really stop mattering as much,” he concluded. “ ... So, for example, AI scenarios make a lot of sense to be in cloud environments. Other scenarios may make sense to be in self-hosted environments. The idea really just comes down to, in most situations, it simply doesn’t matter and items just need to be where they make the most sense for them so that things just work.”

Addressing these three trends, the company announced some recent releases at Empower: workflow bots that use robotic process automation are a no-code way to automate repeatable clicks and time-consuming data entry across applications; smart invoice capture allows machine learning to automatically capture information from any invoice; and direct share offers a secure way for users to share files stored in the Laserfiche system to people outside of their organizations. Additional segments of the solution provider keynote covered Laserfiche’s growth in subscription products; two solution-provider panel discussions looking at the cloud and upselling, as well as marketing; and the Laserfiche Solution Provider Awards. n Elizabeth Marvel is associate editor of Office Technology magazine. She can be reached at elizabeth@bta.org or (816) 303-4060.