Collecting remote counters software

[Labsy]

Hi,

I am looking for ideas how to collect counters (and possibly supply status) from 200+ KM machines, which we rent to 100+ customers. MAchines are majority A3 entry levels, from C224 to C300, and few dozens of A4 MFPs like C3320i and 4020i. Now we have configured them to send e-mails at the end of the month, but it is not reliable and it is a lot of manual work to sort out all those counters every month.
Machines would need to send info about counters (and supplies) from inside customer's network towards our server/software, because we simply cannot expect from customers to dig holes into their firewalls for us to query printer status.

What are your experience? Which software to use, and most of all, we do not want it to be costly. I know there are solutions for many 1000 euros, but we are not in that budget.
Maybe some SNMP collector, but honestly would not like to start from scratch, but would rather take something partialy prepared already.
Ideas welcome!

[Synthohol]

Re: Collecting remote counters software

i highly recommend ECI FMaudit.
meter collection is a nice feature of the software as well as relaying consumable levels across a fleet.

[Labsy]

Re: Collecting remote counters software

i highly recommend ECI FMaudit.
meter collection is a nice feature of the software as well as relaying consumable levels across a fleet.

thanx! I see this is PRO solution and as price is not listed anywhere, I guess it must be expensive as hell. I wrote them for a quote, will see.

[Synthohol]

Re: Collecting remote counters software

with that many machines to manage the labor savings and time saved it really can pay for itself.
and honestly if you run it on your own laptop you can go from site to site and run it at any location if you have multi mfp accounts to poll.
just a suggestion as i used it as a tool to show a bunch of customers all their printers and all the consumable/pm messages they ignore costing them more in the long run than sharing the burden on a couple MFPs instead.

[kingarthur]

Re: Collecting remote counters software

We use KMs CSRC - we have over 95% of our devices connected, you can see their toner levels, you get a daily meter, we've set them to "report" every 30 minutes, so we get update breakdown/misfeed notifications, also toner low. We know there's a problem before the customer does. it's up to you how you react to it. RADF misfeeds we tend to ignore, as it's normally down to the originals, other misfeeds - it depends on how many & how often. but the joy of it is, you get the misfeed codes, you get error codes, you can also see the life of drums/dv units/fusers etc. it's also on my phone, so if I get a call, and I'm out of the office, I can check on my phone what the problem is.

[Labsy]

Re: Collecting remote counters software

We use KMs CSRC...

That's one of my goals, too. But dunno what means "bi-directional one way communication"? Does it mean machine communicates oitwards to CSRC portal, so no firewall rules need to be modified at the customer?

[tsbservice]

Re: Collecting remote counters software

@Labsy, we are in your situation and believe me there's no easy and cheap solution.
If it's good you have to pay the money you don't have and free solutions are almost useless.
CSRC is for KM direct at least here so probably forget about it too. We use a mix of PrintFleet (paid and good) and email notifications.
As a side note PrintFleet and FMaudit are bought now from ECI and they offer now their product called Printanista(which is mixture of both PrintFleet and FMaudit). Prices are high.

[Labsy]

Re: Collecting remote counters software

@tsbservice, so, as I was afraid, all it is left is going free with aome SNMP collector and elbow grease, or pay big bucks for tailor made solution.
Will still try with KM as we are dedicated partners, maybe principal will have sometging acceptable for us.

[rrrohan]

Re: Collecting remote counters software

CSRC is my vote. I dont know how we integrated it into our internal system or how hard that process was mind you.

[kingarthur]

Re: Collecting remote counters software

That's one of my goals, too. But dunno what means "bi-directional one way communication"? Does it mean machine communicates oitwards to CSRC portal, so no firewall rules need to be modified at the customer?

Not entirely sure how it works, it connects with a remote server, using HTTP1 on port 443

[Adamano1]

Re: Collecting remote counters software

We have around 150 machines which are a mixture of owned, leased and rented. We use a company called 3manager and have their program installed on a clients server or computer. It has a nice and easy interface and numerous features. We use it mainly for collecting meter readings and supply status reports. Also have customers contracts and lease end reminders uploaded to their individual accounts. We pay on a per machine basis, there are 3 different levels of reporting, we mainly use the Pro features which is about 0.40 per machine per month. They originally gave us a month trial and a walkthrough free of charge a few years back. Not sure if they still do that.

[shinchan]

Re: Collecting remote counters software

Hi,

I am looking for ideas how to collect counters (and possibly supply status) from 200+ KM machines, which we rent to 100+ customers. MAchines are majority A3 entry levels, from C224 to C300, and few dozens of A4 MFPs like C3320i and 4020i. Now we have configured them to send e-mails at the end of the month, but it is not reliable and it is a lot of manual work to sort out all those counters every month.
Machines would need to send info about counters (and supplies) from inside customer's network towards our server/software, because we simply cannot expect from customers to dig holes into their firewalls for us to query printer status.

What are your experience? Which software to use, and most of all, we do not want it to be costly. I know there are solutions for many 1000 euros, but we are not in that budget.
Maybe some SNMP collector, but honestly would not like to start from scratch, but would rather take something partialy prepared already.
Ideas welcome!

I'm a Small business owner, renting around 40+ fuji xerox machine. I'm using print tracker and fuji xerox built in reporting.

Print tracker offers free trial.

[rrrohan]

Re: Collecting remote counters software

i think HP SDS uses a modified version of 3Manager