Cloud native MFPs

[rthonpm]

It's more of an operational preference as to where data resides. Security is rather strong either way, but it really depends on what you want to be able to access outside of your network or share externally.

For me: my file server contains the files I will only need in the office. Operating system ISO files, installers and license keys for software, etc. SharePoint Online is where all of the little files live: forms, receipts, general documents, even my service manuals.

For some of my customers, their proprietary files live on-prem like design files, blueprints, massive analysis results, etc. SharePoint Online contains their documentation, certification reports, employee training docs, contracts or other documents shared with customers.

For most of my customers, the only real access they have to their SharePoint Online tenant is through Microsoft Teams, which is probably the cleanest front end ever developed for SharePoint as it makes provisioning and assigning permissions easy without any IT interaction.

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[BillyCarpenter]

I think what you are missing is how the big companies got big, and how they use their 'big' money. You cannot blame it on deep pockets. The reason 'Have-Nots' leap at these deals is that they are starving. If they are in a remote area with no competition they have a hard time finding skilled labor.
The reason the deals are offered is because the 'Haves' see how mis-managed these territories are due to not exploiting the deeper and more profitable customer relationship within IT Services.

Professional Services and Network Services have vastly greater profit margins, and continue to be the path that copier dealers should follow for increased opportunities.

This article is about 5 years old now, but shows the level of thinking being applied to this area of the business:

Service Leadership Newsletter - March 2017
State of the Copier IT Industry

Again, I don't disagree. But I think it would be a mistake to make the blanket statement that all (or the majority) of the mom & pop dealerships jump on the buyout offer because they were starving. I personally know several owners that sold because the money was right and it made sense. Also, I think it's a mistake to say "deep pockets" doesn't play a huge role. Not only in the copier business but most technology companies.

Elon Musk just bought Twitter and they weren't starving or hurting. It just made financial sense.

My 2-cents.

[rthonpm]

In terms of the Haves and Have-Nots: a lot of the Have-Nots refused to do the investment in their staff. If you're getting people trained on IT and connectivity skills you can't pay them what you were when it was just paper spitting out of the machine that was part of the sale. That's even assuming that they even looked at trying to give their people the skills instead of relying on them to pick it up on their own.

The dealer I was with before I went off on my own was flush with good contracts and bringing in a tidy profit. As all of the techs started to need to know the intricacies of the IT side of the operation, the compensation didn't keep up. A few techs were able to roll over to first tier (phone level) IT help desk roles for twice what they were making. I bumped up my own IT certs and was all but running the IT side of a few customers and never saw more than a dollar or two increase. Before that, I had worked for Ricoh direct, and to even be considered for a tech position I needed CompTIA's A+ and Network+ certs. Huge mistake when I moved out of the area to go with that dealer.

Copier techs have been underpaid for years, but this move towards connectivity has really drained a lot of the good younger guys out of the field leaving this a greying industry in a lot of places.

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[BillyCarpenter]

In terms of the Haves and Have-Nots: a lot of the Have-Nots refused to do the investment in their staff. If you're getting people trained on IT and connectivity skills you can't pay them what you were when it was just paper spitting out of the machine that was part of the sale. That's even assuming that they even looked at trying to give their people the skills instead of relying on them to pick it up on their own.

The dealer I was with before I went off on my own was flush with good contracts and bringing in a tidy profit. As all of the techs started to need to know the intricacies of the IT side of the operation, the compensation didn't keep up. A few techs were able to roll over to first tier (phone level) IT help desk roles for twice what they were making. I bumped up my own IT certs and was all but running the IT side of a few customers and never saw more than a dollar or two increase. Before that, I had worked for Ricoh direct, and to even be considered for a tech position I needed CompTIA's A+ and Network+ certs. Huge mistake when I moved out of the area to go with that dealer.

Copier techs have been underpaid for years, but this move towards connectivity has really drained a lot of the good younger guys out of the field leaving this a greying industry in a lot of places.

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This is something I've been kicking around.

How much IT training does a copier company want to give to a copier tech? I'm talking about beyond the basics related the the copier?

Personally, I would keep it separate. I think. I would have a separate IT department and just train on the basics for a copier tech.

rthonpm is a rare duck in that he's a pro at both but I don't think that's the norm.

[PrintWhisperer]

This is something I've been kicking around.

How much IT training does a copier company want to give to a copier tech? I'm talking about beyond the basics related the the copier?

Personally, I would keep it separate. I think. I would have a separate IT department and just train on the basics for a copier tech.

NOW you are starting to get the problem. Everything else you said is pretty much anecdotal and doesn't fit with the facts, maybe spend some time in that article I posted. Here's my cool story...what happened to the deep pocket Global money....sold off to Xerox now trying to do the Direct Op thing Ricoh failed at so recently. Big or small, management and vision makes the difference.

"It made sense" covers a lot of ground. As rthonpm identified, these 20th century minded dealers often do not have the savvy or resources to do what you are beginning to identify here...create a separate business group trained to deliver these services.

I am the tech-turned geek and I have been living and watching this equation for over 20 years son.

You must realize it's not a copier anymore....it's a computer wrapped in a print engine with a scanner sitting on top.

Customers who are using it as such need more than a copier dealer who grew from a typewriter repair shop model.

[rthonpm]

While it's good to have specialists for each side of the house, it's certainly a lot cheaper to recruit from within.

I don't have a huge staff, but when I've had interns or other newbies whether they're for the print or IT side of the house they all start with basic troubleshooting of a printer and copier and the theory of a laser printer. It's a good introduction to embedded systems and also gets them thinking about hardware.

A few years back, the nephew of a friend of mine wanted to get some experience in IT so I took him on for a summer before he started college. He'd never had to troubleshoot hardware before, so we started with a few old printers and went through all of the things to look at: feed rollers, media, fusing, imaging. He got pretty good at knowing what to do and also got up to speed with computer issues beyond just how to install Windows. When he got a job while in school he moved up pretty quickly since he actually knew how to troubleshoot. All of those things a copier tech takes for granted like reading a service log, looking at sensor output, or even putting a machine into a free run are all the things his coworkers didn't do.

It took him a few weeks with me to see that the process to diagnose an issue is the same no matter what it is, and while those first few weeks of printers bored him some, he later told me it showed him how to think about an issue and what could cause it.

Last I knew he was the IT manager for a company out in Nevada.

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[BillyCarpenter]

While it's good to have specialists for each side of the house, it's certainly a lot cheaper to recruit from within.

I don't have a huge staff, but when I've had interns or other newbies whether they're for the print or IT side of the house they all start with basic troubleshooting of a printer and copier and the theory of a laser printer. It's a good introduction to embedded systems and also gets them thinking about hardware.

A few years back, the nephew of a friend of mine wanted to get some experience in IT so I took him on for a summer before he started college. He'd never had to troubleshoot hardware before, so we started with a few old printers and went through all of the things to look at: feed rollers, media, fusing, imaging. He got pretty good at knowing what to do and also got up to speed with computer issues beyond just how to install Windows. When he got a job while in school he moved up pretty quickly since he actually knew how to troubleshoot. All of those things a copier tech takes for granted like reading a service log, looking at sensor output, or even putting a machine into a free run are all the things his coworkers didn't do.

It took him a few weeks with me to see that the process to diagnose an issue is the same no matter what it is, and while those first few weeks of printers bored him some, he later told me it showed him how to think about an issue and what could cause it.

Last I knew he was the IT manager for a company out in Nevada.

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I guess my question isn't so much about promoting within the organization but how far into the world of IT does a copier tech need to go and do all the techs receive this training?

At the end of the day, someone needs to be turning a screwdriver and if everyone is an IT expert, does it make sense? Sure, it would be great if every tech was an IT pro but I don't if that is feasible.

[SalesServiceGuy]

For most of the businesses I support, the purpose of an MFP has completely flipped. Instead of being a device to replicate paper, it's being used to convert paper and deliver electronic files. It's now a factor of what the device is connected to as opposed to how fast it spits out paper.

Most printing is from the Document Server function for forms and checklists that rarely change and are only needed for a short time. Printing is more of a convenience than a necessity, while scanning is the more urgent need.

Anyone still stuck in the idea of seeing an MFP primarily as a paper output device is already about a decade back in thinking. Now there are exceptions, but for many customers now a hard copy is just something to get lost or thrown out: it's not a primary part of their operations. It's their data on their servers and storage systems that are of crucial operations to their business. To paraphrase one of my customers: if it isn't in SharePoint, it doesn't exist.



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... I think you are more than a little overboard on pronouncing the death of print. I have lots of customers printing month after month 4k black and 1k colour. They upgrade their copiers every 60 months to have the peace of mind that they do not have to worry about an unreliable copier and are use to paying $125.00 month lease plus cpc .

I have some customers printing 600k a year and making folded stapled booklets.

The need for reliable print devices is not going away anytime soon.

[SalesServiceGuy]

I salute you for the summary but these are the same questions we were asking 20 years ago, only the details have changed.

What you see now is that full separation of the 'Haves' and the 'Have Nots' from the revenue stream of Professional/Managed Network Services.

Haves: Began a program of funding Network Trained personnel and Sales Training for migrating their Dealership into one capable of meeting advanced connectivity needs. They have realized the profitability, won more deals, and grown with technology.

Have Nots: Gave away their (lowly trained and limited) connectivity services to win a deal, failing to establish a revenue stream and increasing the 'race-to-the-bottom' of service pricing. They lose opportunity in every deal to another company doing their customer's IT work.

Due to this downward spiral, the average screw-turner salary does not attract an Associates level education in electronics (as it once was) and the candidate likely to take said salary is not very apt to engage in advanced network study. The 'Have Nots' will NEVER break out of this cycle, and only survive in the remotest of locations with no competition, never realizing the profit level of the 'Haves'.

What you are pointing out is that both the Cloud Providers and the Manufacturers have found a way around this weak link in the middle. Networks still need administration, but the machine specific knowledge of a break fix tech in connecting a device is something neither of them can count on anymore.

For the last 10 years I have watched the 'Haves' buy-out the 'Have-Nots'.

The "have-nots" as you call them now have the opportunity to partner with their OEM for remote Professional services. NextGen MFPS are designed with remote service and diagnostics in mind. The one thing COVID taught the industry is that while we still very much need technicians who can drive up onsite, a technicians does not have to be onsite for every little service call.

Just last week I completely installed a MFP 800 km away from my home office including scan to folder at a busy medical clinic. The local tech had to be onsite but I performed 95% of the work.

[SalesServiceGuy]

I know Cloud Native MFPs begin shipping next month.

The 1st Generation was the arrival of copiers with LCD panels similar to a smartphone.

The next generation enabled these "smartphone" like copiers to install lots of apps.

This latest new generation of copiers are designed from the motherboard up to be Cloud enabled not just in the sense that you can simply add an app. Cloud, Security and remote assistance are top of design philosophy.