These are the sole steps that I recommend you take in setup to ensure you receive the premium "deal" from your office equipment (imprint, print and fax) dealer. I am defining "deal" as the first-rate value considering figure, equipment capabilities and usefulness support. I will contents each step below and provide some background gloss for the importance of each step.
Step 1
To start your research, assemble a catalog of multiple vendors you wish to evaluate. top spot to unequivocal you comprehend at least six vendors. You will yearning to ultimately compare at least four vendors' offers and a couple will drop out or be dropped by you through the process being described.
Research and combine classs and/or vendors in attachment to your usual standard or vendor preference. The industry and manufacturers are constantly changing. Unless you have researched the variety store just now, your accustomed perception of the industry and who builds the champi! on equipment may not be accurate.
Step 2
Review and summarize your aid requirements in penmanship based on your modern seasoning and/or benefit agreement. Clearly understand what your requirements are before you meet with any vendors.
Step 3
Meet with your lurking vendors and ask for feature set advice. Ask them "what's new"? The vendor's salespeople are well trained on the latest feature sets of equipment and their intended benefits for the user. Ask what features are new and how they might succor your livelihood. Look for features that can provide real productivity boosts within your trial flow.
Discuss your use requirements with the vendors to generate steady they will be able to comply with your requirements. If not, drop that vendor from your inventory and add another one. Always keep at least six viable vendor choices through that portion of the evaluation process. Share your intention of requesting quotes from multiple vendors, b! ut not the names of the vendors being considered. Provide the! vendors with a timeline of the decision-making steps you think to follow.
Step 4
After meeting with vendors for your initial appointment, forge a summary poll of the equipment features that you require. For any new features you longing to teem with, outline a trade case using a spreadsheet to tabulation the feature's cost, the expected endeavor flow improvements on with the resulting hard dollar cost reductions. Compare your fashionable donkeywork flow and associated costs to provide a benchmark for your career case.
Step 5
shape a inquiry for proposal (RFP) using your meeting notes. form an organized commercial for equipment and supply support pricing that includes a schedule of the felicitous equipment, described by performance criteria (speed and duty cycle), as well as feature set. Estimate what you demand to spend up-front based on the RFP requirements, but do not share your budget with the vendors. Your faddy costs can provide an estimate for your! budget.
Step 6
Distribute the RFP to the slate of unrealized vendors that you have met with. You craving to collect at least four quotes. that almost always lacks sending the RFP to more than four conceivable vendors. Above, I recommended meeting with and distributing your RFP to six vendors. You demand multiple quotes to complete a thorough evaluation of the widespread mall. State a clear RFP submission era and do not accept RFP responses elapsed that spell.
Step 7
Review the RFP responses submitted by your vendor pool. The first-rate news is that you will receive several quotes to compare; the bad news is that you won't notice if you are getting the premium deal realizable. The study, print and fax industry is very restrictive regarding the tip-off that flows outside of it. Cost and relevance support benchmarks are not available to industry outsiders. The only way to recognize that you are receiving the supreme value the industry has to h! it is to have insider cost and support benchmarks or use a gui! de/consu ltant that has those benchmarks.
Step 8
Now that you have at least four RFP responses to compare, how do you determine who delivers the cool value for you? charge is one differentiator and is the easiest to compare. prepare clear you are comparing equal feature sets, duty cycle and quantities.
Qualitative favor metrics is another differentiator. You must decide which vendor delivers the culminating employ support for your organization and how feasible it is that the vendor will perform as promised up-front.
References don't stint.
Vendors always have at least three customers (the typical quantity of references asked for) that are currently round robinsed with them. You will only receive references that the vendors have already confirmed are beggingsed. As a execution, you will talk to only the customers that are prayersed with your entire vendor pool. If you wish to review references, find them from your own contact Listing of peers or bos! oms buddy useful at other companies.
Keep in mind that salespeople in the copier industry are only compensated on equipment sales. that means they must abide to prospect and close new trade to get paid. Finding prospective customers and closing equipment sales consumes maximum of their generation. No matter how attentive your sales representative is at that stage, you yearn to look for additional support positions within the inherent vendor to assist you when you necessitate lift. In other words, pretend your sales representative leaves the vendor, who else or what existing position within that vendor can you contemplate to receive assistance from?
Step 9
When you do picked your vendor of choice, notify all the other vendors not chosen by e-post or postcard. propoundment to relay up to 30 minutes with each vendor on a schedule that you dictate, to debrief them regarding the components of their RFP response that was not satisfactory for your organizati! on.
grind with your chosen vendor to document the minist! ration-s upport requirements that were discussed throughout your initial meeting. spawn that a detail of your overall agreement with them.
Step 10
When placing your initial equipment setup, do not upgrade afoot lease agreements (not currently expiring) early unless:
1) You are experiencing a severe reliability issue that is interfering with workflow and you have dog-tired all within reach remedies with your in utility vendor and/or
2) You are within 3 months of your lease(s) expiring and have identified a verifiable and quantifiable productivity benefit that will outweigh the cost of rolling (adding) the last several payments owed on your in progress lease into the new lease. that is true even if the vendor for the new equipment is telling you they will "buy out" the prevailing lease. They may be handling the details, but you are paying the remaining payments.
Step 11
put in sync fixed you allow for the future needed to complete a thorough analy! sis of your requirements (equipment and business), the imaginable vendor pool, as well as the proposed equipment and support options. For an 8-15 machine fleet, the lifetime chattels will be approximately 70 labor hours. For equipment fleets larger than 15 units, the allotment bail will cumulation from 100 labor hours to multiple hundreds of labor hours depending on the numerator of units in your fleet. I am happy to provide you with a break out of labor hours needed by step. impartial signal or broadcast me an e-post office using the info listed below.
Faithfully completing each step listed above will provide you with an accurate map of the options currently available within the clone, print and fax marketplace. that process will prepare it lots easier to weeded the culminating choice among your options.
Unfortunately, that process will not be able to require if your choices are the optimum the industry can presentation. Only insider cost and support benc! hmarks allow for that comparison. You will have, however, com! pleted a more thorough evaluation of available options than 90% of the solids we speak with.
David Cantliffe is the President and Founder of BottomLine superiority LLC located in Louisville, Colorado. BottomLine profit is a performance-based, client advocacy consulting group that specializes in reducing hard dollar costs for archetype, print and fax expenses while simultaneously enhancing vendor fitness support levels.
David has closed 18 years background as a sales representative within the copier industry combined with 5 years wisdom as a dealership principal. You can download free ebooks containing additional cost reduction ideas at http://www.bottomlineadv.com inside the resources tab, assign an e-air printed matter with questions or contact David at 888.400.3600.
© Copyright - David Cantliffe. All Rights withdrawn Worldwide
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