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.

In addition, Lexmark plans to provide channel partners with in-depth sales and operations training, operational support, and customized sales tools and collateral to assure success. How much that will cost you remains to be seen.

But here's the key for me:

You'll be able to offer a full range of value-added services by providing comprehensive visibility and management of assets, billing information, consumables status and delivery, device availability, and fleet operational trends. It's you, not Lexmark, who manages all of your customers' fleets. You do it from your location using a single, consolidated online tool.

This fulfills something I've preached to integrators for years, the perfect world in which you "make a customer a customer for life." It's straight from Marketing 101.

Any idiot can sell a printer. And many do, never hearing from the customer again, at least not about that particular printer. But manage that printer --- and its networked brethren --- and you get into service plans, analyzing usage patterns, automatic replenishment of consumables, and more. You position yourself to make recommendations for new hardware solutions based on usage patterns, and even how to save the company money by moving into the world of electronic document capture, routing, and archiving. In this scenario, the printer is not the end of the document-flow, but merely midpoint in a larger strategy.

Lexmark's second channel program, ValuePrint program, builds on this premise. It allows partners to offer cost-per-page financing programs for leasing printers and multifunction products (MFPs) that merge printer, fax, copier, and scanner into a single unit. MFP devices are magical; pitch device consolidation or scan-to-email services to your customers and their eyes begin to well up at the savings. One unit instead of four, one toner cartridge model, less real estate consumed, faxing through the network to eliminate all those otherwise good-for-nothing expensive analog telephone lines, etc.

This ValuePrint initiative gives you a way to bundle device and supplies costs with partner-led device-management and break-fix services into a single monthly customer payment. Translation: a predictable and ongoing revenue stream for you long after the initial sale is completed and the hardware is delivered.

Sign me up.