Printers

Protecting sensitive, proprietary, or classified information is more critical than ever. As more information is being created, distributed, and archived digitally, the risk that this data could be intercepted or corrupted increases.

Without the proper protection, hackers, disgruntled employees, or even spies can gain access to you or your customers’ sensitive business information and make it public record with the click of a mouse.

And as if matters weren’t complicated enough, many industries must now comply with government and state regulations, not to mention satisfy a customer base with deep privacy concerns.

Thankfully, Xerox has the security capabilities to help. For the last 20 years, Xerox has been a leader in providing secure document solutions to a variety of industries across the globe. In fact, every Xerox product and service we offer was designed with security in mind and to seamlessly integrate into existing security frameworks—giving you and your customers more protection and peace of mind.

By Craig Faczan

Many VARs neglect imaging supplies in their product portfolios, and for good reason: There is very little margin on printers and OEM cartridges. With high-quality aftermarket products, however, you can develop a good source of recurring profits.

According to market research firm InfoTrends, OEMs own 73 percent of the market in monochrome cartridges and 93 percent in color cartridges—statistics that are lost on many solution providers. Generally speaking, competing with aftermarket cartridges is a losing battle: The market is small, price-driven, and saturated with competition. Why compete with thousands of companies fighting for a small percentage of the business when you can strategically convert customers from high-priced OEM cartridges and reap the rewards?

In the life of a typical laser printer, 80 to 90 percent of its total cost of ownership (TCO) is from cartridges. A high-end network laser printer that outputs a million pages may cost $1,000. Over its life, the printer will probably use about $8,000 in cartridges and require about $1,000 worth of service. To compete with local providers, the Internet, and even the OEMs, you likely would need to sell at 10 percent margins to reap about $1,000 of profit over the life of the printer. Clearly, that is not a compelling business model.

HP has released a new eBook for assisting companies with marketing. They are releasing a chapter per month and Chapter 2 has recently been released. You might find it interesting.

From the HP landing page:

This book provides actionable marketing and sales information for business owners and marketing managers. Sponsored by HP, all chapters can be downloaded for free six months before the official publishing date (regular retail value is $39.95). Beautifully illustrated and chock full of check lists, worksheets, tips and tricks, the book provides you with updated information on

• Finding your business focus
• Getting more client appointments
• Optimizing your web activities for search engines
• Creating word of mouth through new media tools like blogs, wikis, optimized landing pages and much, much, more

You can click through to the HP Landing Page and download the second chapter now. If you subscribe to this feed, we’ll let you know when the next chapter is available.