Three Reasons to Sell ITAM with MpS

IT Asset Management

As our world moves beyond toner and service, managed print services slip into the mundane, boring, and commoditization.    Once there were no providers, today, thousands of practitioners scour the landscape in search of disgruntled MpS clients and new prospects.

MpS drives business as many successful, full-service practices have evolved and thrived.  But the well will run dry, the print will reduce - nobody is copying like it's 1969.

For those who derive a living through MpS, how do we remain relevant, build relationships and keep the revenue flowing on the downside of the curve?

We jump the curve.

We add services, transform our portfolio and stay on the cutting edge of innovation, right?

In this effort, many are looking toward the IT realm. This sounds great but the journey is proving formidable - investing in a NOC or help desk is expensive and retraining existing or hiring new sales talent takes time.

Wouldn't it be nice to find an offering that builds upon your existing tools and processes, requires little sales training, and helps IT departments everywhere?  How about providing service customers naturally recognize as valuable and are willing to pay for, monthly?

I suggest we "Jump the Curve" with IT Asset Management(ITAM).

What is IT Asset Management?

“IT asset management(ITAM) provides an accurate account of technology asset lifecycle costs and risks to maximize the business value of technology strategy, architecture, funding, contractual and sourcing decisions” - Gartner

Sounds complicated, but I believe "If you can sell a copier, you can sell anything.”  I’m not suggesting you become an ITAM expert, complete with certification and 10,000 hours of learning under your belt.  I am proposing you offer services to fulfill one component of a successful ITAM program: inventory mapping.  With the right tool, the process is as simple as a print assessment.

Three reasons to sell IT asset management-

• Relationship
• Relevance
• Revenue

Relationship -

• In the ’70s, we sold the strength of our “Product”.
• In the ’90s, we sold our “Product” bundled with “Services".
• In the 2000s, we sold with a "Customer Centric” spin.
• Today, coming full circle, we're in " Relationship Centric” selling cycles.

The best “relationships” are built on honesty and exceed two dimensions.  Providing toner and service on a monthly bill is the best two-dimensional and more likely one dimension to your client.

Why not open up to a more enriched affinity?  Knowing that ITAM causes heartburn for IT Directors and understanding how to relieve that pain, raises your conversation and advances your relationship beyond the toner cartridge.

When you provide a listing of IT assets alongside your print devices, your IT contact need only review one source - you - when looking to refresh assets.  Map BOTH print and IT assets when performing an assessment and deepen your relationship.

Relevance -

The current battle for the office is not about capturing more ‘clicks’, it's about remaining relevant. You're not the only party struggling for the spotlight - your customers are scrambling as well.  IT departments across the globe are looking for seats at the big table; they want to be part of the decision process helping guide the company.

The days of ‘pulling cable’ are long past.

How can an IT Director be a visionary, when his staff is out counting desktops and tablets?  Toiling over pivot tables and Crystal reports restricts the ability to innovate and evangelize the strategic benefits of IT.  When providing IT asset inventory services, we free up the most valuable resource; time.  More time to dedicate to strategic, relevant, IT issues.

Revenue -

New revenue streams.  Everybody wants some, I want some too.

Our unscientific studies show that for every output device, on average, there are five to ten IT assets. If you’re writing MpS engagements and performing assessments for accounts with 200 or more devices, you are walking past 2,000 revenue-generating assets.

Revenue with one cost component; no toner, shipping, service, or mileage costs.

One More Thing - Don't be a tool, use a tool.

Originally posted, October 26, 2016, at Atlas.

#ManagedPrintServices: "I feel a lot of love in this room..." just not A3&A4

March 8, 2017.

"All Roads Lead to MpS and MpS Leads to All" -  I've been saying it for years.  At first, it was a joke.

I drop phrases like, "You know, copiers were the first devices on the internet of things.(MWAi)"

Or...

"In my world, voice mail is a document..."  In a room full of IT types, the response is silence.  Yes, that is a third eye growing out of the top of my head.

Here we are, March of 2017 and not much has changed since 2007.  Everyone 'does MpS', but few understand the expansive realm.  

Is the Internet the Garden of Eden or God?

For decades, the internet has provided everyone from professors to trivia experts instant access to information.

What once was,

The internet is molded in our likeness...
The internet flows with falsehoods...
The internet is nebulas a formless ghost of the past, present, and future...

In the beginning, there was darkness -

...and then there was light...

Connecting the world's computers offered us access to just about any 'fact' we could imagine - in theory, anyone could connect with the source of research, witness news as it happened, or form an opinion based on available information.


In the days before 'shells', the internet was free-form - we connected at the prompt, bumping around in Mirc rooms, and searching with tools like InfoSeek, AltaVista and WebCrawler. Bulletin boards offered asynchronous, yet informative, relationships.

Then came Prodigy, Compuserve, Delphi, and finally, America On-Line. These communities helped technological neophytes engage in the bold, new world. Overnight, the sparsely populated playground of nerds flooded with teenager angst and desperate housewives: "Cyber-sex" and "troll" hit the lexicon.

It was great.

From oil changes to Russian political history, if you have a question, the answer was out there on the 'net. Raw. Unedited and sometimes, difficult to find. It was a treasure hunt.

Move forward 20 years and there are 60 trillion webpages using an index 95 of petabytes - nearly twice the size of data mankind created, ever.  But what in the world can 60 trillion web pages tell us?

The internet is full of gossip...
The internet is full of dogma...
The internet is filtered...

Generations of adults have grown up with the internet and google. But now the raunchy and raucous cyber-land is settled and gentrified.  Today, proper search engines find what the "collective" wants, not necessarily what we, individually, are searching.  Indeed, even when the "powers that be" utilize "my" unique internet wonderings as my personal baseline, I want what I want right now, not 30 days back.

I am reminded of the time I took a few inner cities (Los Angeles) kids for an off-road trip in the San Bernardino mountains.

Every year, a group of young city-dwellers would venture "up the hill" for an all-volunteer-sponsored trail ride in the forest.  It was our chance to show off the woods and their opportunity to get out of the concrete jungle.

The little girl in my truck was wide-eyed.  It was her first time in the mountains.  Her head on a swivel, she innocently asked, "Where do all those trees come from?"

"What do you mean?" I responded.

"Who planted all those trees!?"

I was stunned.

Every tree, bush, or swath of grass this little girl had ever seen was designed, planned, and planted - her environment was completely man-made.

And that's the point - I fear the internet has an overcrowded and hollow wonderland between what we know, and what we strive to understand.  Seductive in design, the results are not organic.

She lived in somebody else's world.

So it is with the newly connected, brave new world.  The masses do not question the virtual until they have the eyes to see the real.  The internet is Westworld -  fooling us into believing somebody else's vision of reality.

We have willingly removed the distinction between 'virtual reality' and 'reality'. All of our things will be digitally connected.  Someday, we will all be connected through the 'interwebs'.

Is google, God?

The escape, if there is one, resides in the 'old ways'.  The way of the printed, read, and repeated word.  Searching for answers in the real world, along the Path.

Storytelling.

Don't get me wrong, the internet is a wild and entertaining place.

It's a shame we'll need to be connected via technology only to discover we've been connected all along.