Editorials

By: Antonio Sanchez Navarro, Nubeprint

When looking for an MPS tool you must be clear on first determining what problems do you anticipate or what problems do you want to solve. It is appropriate to involve your organization at this stage. In general, companies may take one of the following two approaches: commission the order fulfillment and account billing organization, or commission the IT team. 6 out of 9 take the second approach. But this reveals as an error over time due to the nature of the MPS business. In this article we will help you to identify how to use your team when evaluating an MPS tool in order to ensure the success of your MPS business medium and long term.

When evaluating an MPS tool it all starts by answering to the core question: what are you looking for? It seems that nowadays there is a consensus on the following three aspects: accuracy for an automated order fulfillment, ease to bill pages and vendor agnostic to manage any device from any vendor.

While we do encourage being environmentally friendly by using green printing habits we also know how important print is to any business and we encourage using print to advertise and market your company and products.

Your company should use print advertisement along with electronic forms of advertising to see the best results.

According to recent research, campaigns combining direct mail and Internet yield up to an additional 25 percent response rate and nearly 80 percent of households read or scan advertising mail sent to their household and were directly influenced to purchase an item or service.

By Carl Schell, Associate Editor, December 23, 2013

For the past four years, Senior Vice President of Business Intelligence Services for Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A. (KMBS) Sam Errigo has spearheaded the company’s vertical market-based solutions initiative. At “Shape the Future,” he noted that the strategy has differentiated Konica Minolta from the competition: “The days of simply selling hardware are diminishing at a rapid pace, and customers’ expectations will continue to challenge the industry. We need to think differently about how we service our customers and the services they value most. This requires a new business perspective in order to shape the future of your organization.”

KMBS estimates that, currently, 30 percent of its hardware sales include software and services, and it’s hoping that the figure will jump to 50 percent by the end of the fiscal year. To reach that goal, Errigo urged dealers to engage with the company so a joint business plan can be developed on a one-by-one basis, then implemented to achieve complete customer satisfaction. The five-step approach advises dealers to define customers; organize a solutions portfolio—less is oftentimes more; design the plan so it’s something that can actually be executed; train engineers and sales associates; and select partners that will foster growth.

By Carl Schell, Associate Editor, December 12, 2013

While Konica Minolta continues to call hardware its “core business,” devices clearly took a backseat to software at “Shape the Future”—and have for the past few shows. Regardless, as Senior Vice President of Marketing for Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A. (KMBS) Kevin Kern said, “We still need to sell hardware, otherwise there won’t be any software.”

Though Kern spent more time discussing production print, an area in which the company has invested heavily and, based on its market share uptick, obviously played a key role in Konica Minolta’s growth since Rick Taylor was hired to lead the organization, the underlying theme as it pertains to office equipment was, without a doubt, portfolio uniformity.