Managed printer services can help make your customer a customer for life

For those of us old enough to remember, the big switch from DOS to Windows computing brought with it an enormous increase in the amount of paper we wasted (er, consumed). As the old adage went, "if you want to look good, use Windows. If you want it today, use DOS."

Windows (and Macintosh) with their WYSIWYG interfaces unfortunately empowered users to tweak, and tweak, and tweak, and then tweak some more. Move that line up just a bit, print a draft, move it down a little, print again --- well, you get the idea. And it hasn't changed all that much over the years.

That's why I like it when printer companies provide document-management and imaging solutions, not merely hardware that lays down toner and churns out mountains of paper that ultimately head for the recycle bin. Printing less is good. Managing the enterprise networked output process is better. And making integrators the centerpiece of such a strategy, well, earns you a spot in this column.

Earlier this week, Lexmark expanded it channel offerings, helping its partners add more value, and "gain more profit." That last word is a real attention-getter.

What the company is doing is bringing two new service offerings online designed to generate revenue for its U.S. channel partners through managed print services.

The first, Lexmark Fleet Manager (LFM), lets channel partners tap into the company's toolbox to "enhance productivity and reduce costs" for customers. The second, ValuePrint, allows partners to bundle service offerings and provide flexible financing options to customers. In this age of microscopic margins on hardware products, being able to play a role in providing financial services to customers is an alluring proposition. There's a reason GE and GM have their GE Capital and GMAC units, after all.

This is a company that has been developing and implementing managed print services for enterprise customers for a long time. It has to, in part because Lexmark simply doesn't have as much name recognition as Hewlett-Packard and Xerox (both of which also have service offerings). LFM allows channel partners (integrators, VARS, etc.) to tap into Lexmark's managed print services universe to deliver a similar scope of services to their customers.

This managed print service offering is built with Lexmark tools but is delivered by channel partners --- a good thing in terms minimizing the evil of channel conflict. As the channel partner, you establish your own contract with the customer, deliver the value-added service, and strengthen that relationship through increased visibility and day-to-day control of their output environments through managed print services.

This would appear to be a heck of a lot better than, say, a giant software company that demands to know everything about your customer, raising the specter of you being cut out of the loop when that customer reaches a certain size.

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