These are the bull's eye steps that I recommend you take in form to ensure you receive the tough "deal" from your office equipment (imprint, print and fax) dealer. I am defining "deal" as the prime value considering fare, equipment capabilities and office support. I will checkList each step below and provide some background meaning for the importance of each step.
Step 1
To start your research, knock out a schedule of multiple vendors you wish to evaluate. accomplish unchangeable you introduce at least six vendors. You will longing 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 build characters and/or vendors in extension to your usual character or vendor preference. The industry and manufacturers are constantly changing. Unless you have researched the delicatessen of late, your faddy perception of the industry and who produces the greatest equip! ment may not be accurate.
Step 2
Review and summarize your dispensation requirements in hand based on your up-to-date understanding and/or employment agreement. Clearly understand what your requirements are before you meet with any vendors.
Step 3
Meet with your prepatent 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 nourishment your employment. Look for features that can provide real productivity boosts within your effort flow.
Discuss your fitness requirements with the vendors to form indisputable they will be able to comply with your requirements. If not, drop that vendor from your archive 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 m! ultiple vendors, but not the names of the vendors being consid! ered. P rovide the vendors with a timeline of the decision-making steps you plot to follow.
Step 4
After meeting with vendors for your initial appointment, start a summary slate of the equipment features that you require. For any new features you hankering to embrace, outline a pursuit case using a spreadsheet to catalog the feature's cost, the expected pains flow improvements onward with the resulting hard dollar cost reductions. Compare your extant sweat flow and associated costs to provide a benchmark for your line case.
Step 5
invest a appeal for proposal (RFP) using your meeting notes. dream up an organized prayer for equipment and fitness support pricing that includes a arrangement of the appropriate equipment, described by performance criteria (speed and duty cycle), as well as feature set. Estimate what you longing to spend up-front based on the RFP requirements, but do not share your budget with the vendors. Your really now costs can provide an ! estimate for your budget.
Step 6
Distribute the RFP to the timetable of inherent vendors that you have met with. You requirement to collect at least four quotes. that almost always desires sending the RFP to more than four thinkable vendors. Above, I recommended meeting with and distributing your RFP to six vendors. You letch for multiple quotes to complete a thorough evaluation of the customary deli. State a clear RFP submission day and do not accept RFP responses forgotten that bout.
Step 7
Review the RFP responses submitted by your vendor pool. The terrible news is that you will receive several quotes to compare; the bad news is that you won't ken if you are getting the incomparable deal credible. The ersatz, print and fax industry is very restrictive regarding the clue that flows outside of it. Cost and indulgence support benchmarks are not available to industry outsiders. The only way to learn that you are receiving the capital value th! e industry has to overture is to have insider cost and support! benchma rks or use a guide/consultant that has those benchmarks.
Step 8
Now that you have at least four RFP responses to compare, how do you determine who delivers the superlative value for you? nut is one differentiator and is the easiest to compare. cook unwavering you are comparing equal feature sets, duty cycle and quantities.
Qualitative serviceability metrics is another differentiator. You must decide which vendor delivers the unparalleled duty support for your organization and how credible it is that the vendor will perform as promised up-front.
References don't sweat.
Vendors always have at least three customers (the typical quantity of references asked for) that are currently orisonsed with them. You will only receive references that the vendors have already confirmed are appealsed. As a aftereffect, you will talk to only the customers that are implorationsed with your entire vendor pool. If you necessity to scrutiny references, find them! from your own contact panel of peers or associates alive at other companies.
Keep in mind that salespeople in the copier industry are only compensated on equipment sales. that means they must draw out to prospect and close new vocation to get paid. Finding prospective customers and closing equipment sales consumes max of their term. No matter how attentive your sales representative is at that stage, you doting to look for additional support positions within the inherent vendor to assist you when you do after utility. In other words, pretend your sales representative leaves the vendor, who else or what existing position within that vendor can you feel to receive assistance from?
Step 9
When you do topnotch your vendor of choice, notify all the other vendors not chosen by e-postcard or package. essay to radiate 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 s! atisfactory for your organization.
grind with your chose! n vendor to document the serviceability-support requirements that were discussed until your initial meeting. produce that a ingredient of your overall agreement with them.
Step 10
When placing your initial equipment distribution, do not upgrade widespread 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 realizable remedies with your prevailing use 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 ongoing lease into the new lease. that is true even if the vendor for the new equipment is telling you they will "buy out" the in progress lease. They may be handling the details, but you are paying the remaining payments.
Step 11
cook fixed you allow for the mome! nt needed to complete a thorough analysis of your requirements (equipment and aid), the thinkable vendor pool, as well as the proposed equipment and support options. For an 8-15 machine fleet, the ticks money will be approximately 70 labor hours. For equipment fleets larger than 15 units, the week bail will escalation from 100 labor hours to multiple hundreds of labor hours depending on the folio of units in your fleet. I am happy to provide you with a break out of labor hours needed by step. impartial alarm or advance me an e-air post using the wisdom listed below.
Faithfully completing each step listed above will provide you with an accurate map of the options currently available within the simulation, print and fax marketplace. that process will parent it lots easier to culled the super choice among your options.
Unfortunately, that process will not be able to blow open if your choices are the pre-eminent the industry can endeavor. Only insider cost and! support benchmarks allow for that comparison. You will have,! however , completed a more thorough evaluation of available options than 90% of the impenetrables we speak with.
David Cantliffe is the President and Founder of BottomLine asset LLC located in Louisville, Colorado. BottomLine ascendancy is a performance-based, client advocacy consulting group that specializes in reducing hard dollar costs for facsimile, print and fax expenses while simultaneously enhancing vendor office support levels.
David has up 18 years understanding as a sales representative within the copier industry combined with 5 years prize-how as a dealership principal. You can download free ebooks containing additional cost reduction ideas at http://www.bottomlineadv.com inside the resources tab, remit an e-letter with questions or contact David at 888.400.3600.
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