Feature

From Document Manager Magazine Vol 18 No 02 - April 2010

DM Editor Dave Tyler speaks to Martin Tierney, Director of Document & Print Services at Kyocera, about the company's increasing focus on managed document services

Dave Tyler: Lots of vendors are talking about managed print services, but you refer instead to managed document services - is this just semantics or is MDS a distinct offering?

Martin Tierney: It has been one of my main focus areas to develop a managed print offering for our channel. We soon realised that 'Managed Print Services' means different things to different organisations: at one end of the spectrum it can be simply a device and a contract, at the other end it can encompass business transactions, workflow optimisation, and much more - at Kyocera we obviously lean towards that topend definition. As a result we think of it more as Managed Document Services - that is to say, more of an end-to-end solution, looking at putting things like 'pull' print solutions and rulebased print management software into the customers' workflow. Often this allows client organisations to achieve things they had no idea were possible.

DT: Presumably launching a services offering like this involves a great deal of work with your channel partners as well as end users? MT: Managed document services is not just about the traditional managed print argument of reducing costs, but also about delivering a bespoke solution that suits a customer's requirements. We've been building the blocks that comprise this offering for some time now and are ready to start offering these services to the channel on a kind of 'pick'n'mix' basis. Obviously some of our partners are very capable in all areas of managed print, but for those who are less experienced, they now have the opportunity to compete in that environment with a solutions-led managed print consultancy approach. What we've done is build the tools to allow our dealers to deliver an MPS-style contract, while not necessarily having to invest in it themselves: they can 'hook into' our expertise in business services. They're the one with the relationship with the customer, so we work very much behind them. I think Kyocera is unique in this approach - most manufacturers will still tend to try to keep all the services business for themselves and pay a commission. We would rather work closely with our partners to enable them to compete at a higher level. DT: Tell me a little more about the specific tools and solutions that Kyocera offers to differentiate itself from the rest of the market in this area?

MT: One of the key areas of managed print is proactive service delivery, and to do that properly you need some kind of remote monitoring software in place. It sits on the server, monitoring all the networked devices, and reporting back on toner levels, faults, error codes and the like. Our solutions also include optimisation tools, for example 'pull print' software. This sits between the server and the device, so that customers can walk up to any machine that has this enabled and pull their prints off. We also offer rule-based print software which is useful for managing, for instance, colour print, which is still a relatively expensive option - especially if colour isn't actually necessary. For example if you print an email containing a blue hyperlink it would normally be classed as a colour print: with rule-based software you can say that whenever that happens it should be changed to mono and diverted to a mono printer, reducing the customers' costs. Full colour print can be as much as ten times more expensive than mono, even today. DT: What have been the main drivers for this shift towards a consultancy sales model for managed print? Is it in response to customer demand for a different approach?

MT: A lot of customers are initially looking at managed print as a cost reduction exercise. At Kyocera we're trying to move away from the traditional 'box-swapping' approach of removing an old device and putting a new one in its place. Customers' expectations now are that we can talk to them about total cost of ownership (TCO), including costs of services, suppliers etc. We are now trying to look even deeper than that - looking at user workflows, what kind of documents are being printed and are they being routed to the most appropriate device. So customers very rapidly are able to see huge business efficiencies in all sorts of areas.

What this means for us is that the sales process itself is not what it used to be - there is no longer the emphasis on 'feeds and speeds'. We are involved these days much more on a consultancy level. We normally begin with an audit of the current print environment, which allows us to build up a proposal to optimise that environment in a number of ways. It might mean, for instance, consolidating down from lots of individual printers to fewer, multifunctional, devices. This would reduce costs in supplies, of course, as well as headaches for the IT department!

One of the key points in optimising print is our ability to really understand what the user is doing, and what they need to be doing, as well as what the key stakeholders in the business are trying to achieve. This is where our consultancy approach brings rewards for us, our partners and our users.

More info: www.kyoceramita.co.uk

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