- The three biggest dealer concerns, as ranked by all of our Survey respondents, continue to be competing with manufacturer’s direct branches, declining clicks, and hiring and retention.
- Of the 3% of Survey respondents that identified “other” as a concern, tightening hardware margins and declining service rates were particularly notable.
- After Ricoh transferred its SMB MIF to a select group of dealers last year, effectively eliminating much of the competition with its direct branches, we saw this concern drop significantly among Ricoh dealers in this year’s Survey.
- Dealers’ views of their A3 manufacturers remains consistent with last year’s Survey with the Big Six OEMs averaging 4.36 out of a highest possible score of 5.0. Last year, that figure was slightly higher at 4.40.
- Only two of the Big Six OEMs received “Poor” ratings from their dealers.
- In 2018, Toshiba scored the highest among dealers rating their A3 manufacturer with a rating of 4.6, up from 4.4 in 2017.
- Sharp’s rating improved from 4.2 in 2017 to 4.4 in this year’s Survey, indicating more confidence by dealers in Sharp as a supplier now that they’re starting to see some of the results from the Foxconn acquisition.
- After seeing the percentage of dealers that identified one of the Big Six OEMs as their primary A4 supplier decline from 72% in 2016 to 67% in 2017, that percentage rose to 75% this year, which can be largely attributed to more Kyocera dealers participating in this year’s Survey.
- The average overall rating for A4 suppliers across our Survey’s respondents was 3.98 compared to 4.08 in 2017 out of a highest possible score of 5.0. The biggest decline was by Lexmark, which dropped from 4.57 in 2017 to 3.88 this year.
- For the second consecutive year, the average number of leasing partners was 2.6.
- The top four leasing partners””those identified by 25 or more dealers as a primary leasing partner”” were GreatAmerica Financial Services Corp., De Lage Landen, TIAA (formerly EverBank), U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo.
- The number of dealers handling their own leasing remains low at 5.66%, even though we saw a slight uptick over last year when 5.33% said they had an internal leasing program.
- More than 50 different software providers were identified by dealers as offering the best products and support to allow them to compete effectively. Out of that number, 32 received multiple votes across our Big Six dealer universe.
- The top four software providers in this year’s survey include ACDI, PaperCut, Square 9, and Docuware, the latter replacing FMAudit from last year’s top four.
- For Big Six dealers whose core business is A3 MFPs, 89% are optimistic even as clicks trend downward and pressure is on to diversify beyond A3.
- In A4, Kyocera dealers remain the most optimistic with 96%.
- In the Production Print segment, 62% of dealers reported feeling optimistic, while 22% felt pessimistic, and 16% did not respond to this question. The most optimistic dealers are those who are aligned with manufacturers with strong production print lines, including Canon, Konica Minolta, and Ricoh.
Access Related Content
Visit the www.thecannatareport.com. To become a subscriber, visit www.thecannatareport.com/register or
contact cjcannata@cannatareport.com directly. Bulk subscription rates are also available.
