Managed print Services: Choking on Our Own Words...

Unknown source: "I'm glad this happened..."

January 2013, edited 2016

Think about it - in terms of the imaging, printing, and copying industry...and now throw in the Information Technology (IT) industry...

How many technology webinars...are you invited to?  Do 1900 dealers need 500 webinars?

How many managed print services training classes...even come close to connecting with your reality in the field?

How many managed print services programs...teach their views, contradicting or repeating what you already know and may even do already? 

How many conferences, shows...Blah, blah to the blah....does the industry need?  Check out the VAR Guys' top 100 shows for 2013:  Technology Event Calendar: Top 100 Channel Partner Conferences

Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.  - Plato

Leaders are able to discern what's sustainable and valuable from the past and what's not.  It is the will of leaders to align, focus, and build cadence while releasing expectations, and tendencies to copy, compare and compete with others.  Those behaviors are survival, reptilian and short-term ways of the past; weak and unsustainable in an increasingly innovative world.

True story.  There is a guy in the industry that serves as a leader by copying others.  He copies ideas, conversations, presentations, websites, and even locations for training with hopes of being more than he is.  We'd like to thank him for being so ostentatious in his copying.  He's helped us in some sort of backward way.

Have you ever seen a copy come out better than the original?  No.

It's time for the death of copiers all around.  Not just the machines, but how we behave, lead, act, and do.  We're tasting a bit of our own medicine, and becoming uncomfortable.  It's time to kill and experience the death of the...mundane.  No more webinars, training classes, programs, conferences, and shows pushed out to the masses.  We'll work one to one or one to a few.

Intimate.  Creative.  Productive.

Here's the rub -

If you are a company that hosts trade shows, your revenue streams may include charging attendees and presenters - all fine and dandy.  But how transparent, let alone honest, are you if you sell tickets to an 'educational' session, that ends up being nothing more than a paid 90-minute commercial?

 "That's the way it's always been done..." is not your core value, is it?

If you're a research company, one would think you would make a living conducting research and presenting findings.  Then why host trade shows and train salespeople?  Aren't you selling content and hosting symposiums?

Associations should derive revenue in an effort to support the improvement of their members, not chase big OEM "sponsorship".

If you're an industry publication, should you pay for content, charge for the opportunity to submit content, or take all the content you can, for free, and charge for advertising?

There's nothing unusual about any of these models, but they've become mundane; tedious, and fatiguing.

Think deeply -  trades shows,  white papers, copier training, MpS Seminars, and buzz are examples of us talking to ourselves.

Focus.

I've been working with end-users, and IT departments in various industries, helping them reign in costs, evaluate vendors and enhance the productivity of their IT services.

This gives us a great view of ourselves through the eyes of your customers.  We've reviewed proposals from large MpS/MDS providers as well as some of the best-known IT/VARs.

We're not only listening to the presentations, but we're also hearing the "backstory".  And they're not pretty.  It's embarrassing.

Our industry is in a "turnaround" period, reversing, backpedaling, and on a downward turn - if anyone tells you differently, they're lying not only to you but to themselves as well.

People made this niche great.

You do know teaching people how to increase a 'share of wallet' is not sustainable, right?

Join us.

HP is Not IBM

This isn't to say that Gerstner couldn't save HP - what he accomplished back in the 90's is a case study in turnarounds.  It's simply not the same environment today as it was in 1993.

There are, however, some spooky similarities between HP of today, and the IBM Gerstner inherited.

When Gerstner took over, IBM had just experienced an 8 Billion dollar loss - at that point, this was the largest corporate loss in history - their stock was down 6%.  Many pundits strongly recommended breaking IBM up into  "Baby Blues" - the breaking up of Big Blue, into little divisions and selling them off - being the only way IBM could survive.

IBM was the largest, most profitable computer hardware manufacturer of the day enjoying 40% margin on hardware. At the time, selling services was completely alien and new not just to IBM, but to an industry.

And that industry was dying.   These words from Business Week, 1992 -

"As the monolithic mainframe gives way, the industry breaks into leaner, faster, smaller parts...

It sure looks like an industry on the skids. The signs are everywhere and grow more painful every day: Worldwide leader IBM Corp. is shedding 40,000 workers this year, for a total of 100,000 since 1985. No. 2 Digital Equipment Corp. ousts its founder, after taking $3.1 billion in charges over two years to cut 18,000 jobs and vacate 165 facilities. Wang Laboratories Inc. files for Chapter 11 protection. France's Groupe Bull lays off 8,000 workers and closes 8 of 13 factories; Italy's Olivetti downsizes by 20%; Siemens Nixdorf plans to lose 6,000 workers. And the list goes on."

Gerstner incorporated a great deal of strategies, most remember and point to a few key unusual approaches that, today, are part of every company's 'come-back plan':

Get the rest on Walters & Shutwell...

Arnold.  1993 Movie -

Tips on starting your Consultancy.

Those once vaulted 'cruise ships' of our industry are shedding employees by the ten's of thousands. Indeed, the channel is shrinking as well.

Some think of this as a sad occurrence. Indeed, the passing of any institution is a time for reflection.  But we look at this as a great emancipation: the release of so many from bondage.

A great majority, will head back into the nearest stockade in search of comfort and "stability" others will venture out, adventurous and filled with wonderlust.  Nationally, one of every 15 employees, or 6.5 percent of the nation's work force, are self-employed.

So here you are - anxious, excited and ready to call all your ex-clients.

But what now?  Do you use the old laptop or spring for a new device?  What about a CRM, presentation tools or web presentations?  Email?

In the old days, all one needed was business cards, a phone number and some shoe leather - not today.

Never before have there...read the rest here.