Salesquestion, BW against color, what to do?

[Hansoon]

A long time rental customer of mine is having a 45 cpm and a 35 cpm MFP both BW and both machines are used for copying, printing and scanning. They do 25K/month in total, 15K on the 45 cpm and 5K on the 35cpm machine. Further there are around 5 laserprinters, one of them color, sitting on employees desks for an occasional print without having to go the long way to the central machines. These printers do together another 5K/month.

This is a lawyers office, until now they where very happy with the situation as it is but unfortunately a new associate lawyer came to them having a very different view of things.

The guy is not very well informed because he suggested getting rid of all the small desktop printers. His argument: Too many machines, each is emitting poisonous gas, dust and toner particles at the workplaces so better put the whole load on two large central machines. Those should be located in a separate room.

I told him that the emittance is related to the total number of prints and that it doesn't matter, more or less, by how many machines they are made. However, since its in my interest to get rid of the desktop printers, cause I do not service them, I told him that it might be a good idea to centralize printing and copying. I asked him if the employees would accept that they have to go a long way to collect the prints but he said that it will be good for them to move a bit more "so they will not get lazy".

He wants me to make an offer for two color machines (rebuild Bizhub C450 or similar) carrying the whole workload.
My problem, I stopped with color several years ago since revenues from color are much less favorable for me so I would have to refresh and gather new experience with it. I would be glad to continue with my BW machines (perhaps replacing them with newer versions of them) without having this challenge so I am looking for arguments against this color idea.

The guy informed me that a competitor of mine told him that color nowadays is "so cheap" that he can print his own letterhead in color instead of BW as it is now and that there is only a very small amount of color (estimated 2%) on the letterhead so it will "not be costly"

I told him that a color copy is a color copy and is always more expensive than BW even if only one single pixel is in color.

To be able to prepare an offer, following information would be very helpful:

A) Is it nowadays with the more modern color machines, such as the BizhubC450, a good idea to make 25K color prints containing 98%BW and 2%color on each print?

B) Any drawbacks or technical problems to expect in this scenario?

C) How to calculate the price per copy provided that there is only a very minor amount of color in each print?

D) Can one put up roughly a general percentage regarding costs increase for the color hardware against the BW ?

E) Can one put up roughly a general percentage regarding costs increase for the color copies against the BW ?

F) Since I strongly prefer a BW only solution, any arguments for me to convince the guy that plain BW is better for them?

G) The guy is planning to use scrap paper from drafts laying around to make another drafts on it to save money. I told him that this will not improve reliability especially when talking about color machines. What's your idea here?

Many thanks in advance for any input in this matter.

Hans

[blackcat4866]

Hans,
I don't have the background to answer the bizhub specific questions, but I can help you avoid some of the pitfalls.

A) You will have exactly the same amount of mechanical wear, regardless if it is 2% color fill or 100% color fill. The only difference will be much lower toner usage. If the bizhub is a dual component system the developer should last fine.

B) I had to cringe when I read about your customer printing their own letterhead. There are a lot of potential pitfalls here:
So lets say your customer pre-prints their letterhead, then adds the text later. When the pre-printed letterhead is re-printed the earlier image will be loosened and leave shadows of the letterhead image down the page. But you say "This machine can duplex color. Why can't I overlay?" When the second side is printed, the lower fuser roller temperature is reduced to avoid loosening the image.
Next, the secretary down the hall wants to use some of this nice letterhead on her HP desktop printer down the hall. The HP will shadow even worse, since the letterhead (fused @ ~175C) is now printed on a machine fusing at ~190C.
Your lawyer will probably want to get fancy, and use a nice 24lb linen paper stock, requiring a heavy paper setting, and further complicating the problem.
If this was a Copystar MFP, you could conceivably set up an overlay macro, in which the overlay is performed in image processing, in one single step. Konica Minolta may have such a feature available.

C) The cost per copy remains the same at 2% to 6% fill. Over 6% the cost difference is only toner usage. Mechanically the same amount of wear occurs, regardless of fill%.

D) ?

E) A factor of 15x more expensive for service on color, than monochrome.

F) For reliability, I have to side with you. Press printed letterhead fed through a monochrome MFP will require 1/3 or less the amount of service than a color MFP.

G) I have to increase the service contracts on customers that use scrap paper. You'll have continual problems with proper drum and transfer belt cleaning. I guarantee 3x to 4x the amount of paper jamming, and the resulting damage from a pissed off customer removing the umpteenth paper jam, slamming covers. All it takes is one missed staple to take out (4) drums and a transfer belt (now who's saving money?). Any cost savings they achieve by using the crap paper will not cover the service agreement increases.

If you make this sale, I would not count on this customer remaining a long-time customer. =^..^=

[10871087]

D) Can one put up roughly a general percentage regarding costs increase for the color hardware against the BW ?

As usual, Blackcat has given a great answer. As for Item D on your list there is now way of knowing since it depends on the type of color machine you are looking to place. Kyocera has some color machines that are about 10% higher in price then the B/W machine at the same speed. Konica Minolta has a machine that costs about 15% higher for color. but the quality of the output is different so for lack of a better word, you get what you pay for. And since you mentioned used equipment all bets are off.

This customer seems to have been sold an idea that probably will not work out like he thinks it will. Personally I would't go with this solution.

[Mr Spock]

First where I work I do not have access to the sales cost of the machines. On the service side the base contract on color is ~$45.00 a month (USA dollars) more then the same speed black and white. Plus there is 3k-5k "free" B/W copies per month and 0 "free" color. The key is the overage on the b/w is $0.015 and $0.11 on color. And these are all inclusive contracts. We sell the newer bizhub c451 and c550 (and the rest of the K/M line) and so far most of the issues are the initial setup and training issue. They have an overlay and variable print mode that allows the "letter head" to be put on the page on the fly so it does not need to printed first and run through a second time And if you save the overlay to the machine hard drive I believe you can also copy onto it). They are good machines but I would recommend factory training on these. As to the other issue I will say that I would agree with what blackcat stated.

[fixthecopier]

Blackcat gave all the good specs and facts. One of the things that I would not like about putting all of the printing into 2 machines in copy rooms will be the user issues that factory training will not overcome, made worse by the fact that the operation will be in the office of attorneys. If they are like many that we deal with here, they will expect you to jump through rings of fire when one of the machines goes down, because they will see it as 3 machines not working. They will not like the cost of printing all of that b/w on a color machine and that will make them want even better service. How smart are they? When they switch to color and see you a lot more for all of the PM items and IU changes, will they understand that it is normal and not think the machine is broke? If all you are replacing is 1 color printer, I would make the offer of 2 Bizhub 500's with a new C31px beside each one in the copy rooms. Show the cost difference between that and printing everything on color machines. That other salesman will get more pay from moving those color boxes than B/W machines. As a tech, and the guy the customer will see after the deal, you want them to know they got a good deal. I get to sell to my customer's so I always tell them that as a tech, I would not sell something that I would have to come back and apoligize for or cause me more work. If they trust you and like you then you can use that to help them make a good decision.

[Hansoon]

Thanks very much for your interesting input gentlemen. Great you took so much time to make a valuable reply.

Hans

[gwalters]

Did your client move forward with a decision yet?