Document showdown

Printers are such mechanical beasts it comes as a surprise that one of the biggest developments has come in software.

A large amount of guesswork often goes into estimating print or copy costs, particularly with copier vendors. However these predictions are rarely accurate and the customer usually ends up overpaying, but cannot prove otherwise.

In the last couple of years reviews have gone from manual assessments conducted by printing a status report from each device to a server-based program that automatically populates a database with usage data emitted by all network-connected devices.

The information includes device make and model, serial number, pages printed per day, toner levels and system alerts.

However most vendors’ applications require access to a customer’s network, which means a reseller has to visit the premises or convince the IT department to grant access through the firewall.

With corporate espionage, identity theft and virus transmissions in the foremost of CIOs’ minds, letting in a printer reseller to keep an eye on toner is a big ask.

Resellers often set programs on their clients’ print server to email toner requests once levels run low. However new software released last month avoids the need to cross firewalls and provides much more information than an email-operated flag system.

Global Print Management is a program under exclusive licence from the US, where it is known as Printfleet. Its greatest improvement over other products is that it doesn’t require a reseller to have access to a customer’s network.

IPL is setting itself up as an ASP where resellers can log into the application, look up their customer and view a complete rollcall of devices on its network.

The customer doesn’t need to open any ports in its firewall, as the program acts like a Trojan horse on a customer’s PC and broadcasts MIB data to the IPL server.

Any imaging device connected to the customer’s network can be measured, even if the devices are sitting in a different building or another state or country.

Another bonus is that the software is vendor independent. Device information is represented with a colour picture, a link to the manufacturer site, usage statistics and a bar graph representing the toner level. Page counts are calculated separately for colour and black and white. “This is the biggest paradigm change in printing in the last five or 10 years,” says Stead Denton, CEO of IPL Group.

The implications for resellers in the print game are important. Instead of sitting by the phone waiting for requests for more toner, a reseller can monitor customers’ machines and call when toner hits a set percentage.

It also means customers no longer need to stock toner on their premises in case a device runs out of ink in the middle of a critical job. Companies which run 100 printers can have as much as $15,000 worth of toner sitting under desks, capital which could otherwise be freed up and used elsewhere.

The performance of customers’ machines can also be monitored from the reseller’s office. A printer running at 10 percent can be replaced with a cheaper model; a bunch of five machines over seven years old may have too many service calls, and several newer devices could lower per page print costs.

A good software tool can provide the reseller with insight on when to make a pitch as well as the data to back up a consultative sell.

Accordingly, IPL is assessing how it can integrate its software into CRM packages to help its resellers plan their sales.

IDL is hoping to sign up 30 of its 250-strong reseller base over the next 12 months.

One IDL reseller, Queensland-based Network Office Supplies, has been trialling the software since July with three customers.

Within half an hour of loading the software, one customer, the government-funded society Cerebral Palsy League, discovered it had 42 printers and not the 35 it thought it had. “Straight away they were 15 percent out, so they had no way of knowing what their printing costs were,” says Mark Tuuta, account manager of Network Office Supplies, which is the largest OKI dealer in Australia.

The society estimated it was printing 276,000 pages a month at a cost of $3000-3500. The actual cost was $4500 per month, says Tuuta.

Another trial customer, a regulatory body, discovered it had 166 machines, and not 144. Tuuta used the software in his office to set the machines to email him only for critical alerts and received 162 in the first month.

IDL is charging its resellers $1000 a month to use the software for up to 500 devices, which resellers are expected to pass onto consumers as an optional service at $2-3 a device.

However Tuuta plans to use the software even for customers that don’t want to pay for the service because it allows the reseller to trap the lucrative consumables business by making a call before the toner runs out.

Also the software gives the reseller an idea of which machines are over-utilised and potentially be replaced with a newer model. The guesswork is over, says Tuuta.

“Now you can start making recommendations based on fact.”