Volumes Shrinking? Is There an Echo in Here?
We’ve all heard it — volumes are shrinking. Is this industry concerned?
I think that’s the wrong question. I might ask, is this industry concerned enough?
Before you roll your eyes, my suggestion is not angling towards this the so-called ‘paperless office’ either. What I am suggesting is an evident pattern of erosion quickened by the cross section of maturing (mature) markets in document output and the continued highly accessibility to information brought on by high adoption rates of mobile technology, standardization and adoption of Web-based technologies and increased shift towards services-led economies.
What does that last paragraph mean? Well, you can really just about do anything from anywhere, prices continue to drop and customers have higher expectations for delivery and execution than ever before.
When all things are perceived as equal in a transaction (sales or support), what differentiates you?
That’s a loaded question, and you can answer a lot of different ways. (I actually encourage you too, in fact!) The point I want you to take away is that having a piece of your customer’s business is no longer good enough… you have to increase the share of revenue you collect from your customer; this generally comes at the expense of current competitors, and can most certainly mean adjacent competitors as well.
My esteemed colleague, Rob Sethre, offered a great example of how you grab a bigger piece of the pie — by wrapping in the CRD or print center into your MPS engagement. I can tell you that my own field experiences with customers is spot on.
In one of my own examples, I was part of the sales and professional services team supporting a large, multi-state bank. After we took a beachhead position in a headquarters area, we immediately began looking at the central print room. We found a huge number of pages!
Here’s the catch… this organization was project a 50 percent decrease over 4 years. That all of a sudden makes it a lot less attractive, but strategically suicidal to ignore. We came up with some interesting options, but it required us not only taking wallet share away from our immediate competitor but reaching out and attacking or aligning with adjacent competitors..
Ken Stewart offers observations from the field of managed print services in his weekly column on MPS Insights every Wednesday. As a senior consultant with the Photizo Group, he comes from and works directly with channel providers in the managed services space, developing educational tools and resources to promote lasting business transformation.
Ken Stewart’s website, ChangeForge, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology in an information-centric world. Get the latest industry news, and follow ChangeForge on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook.
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