The perform IT Expert on the Future of Managed Print Services
I still remember when I met Armin Alt for the first time a couple of years ago during a Photizo Transform conference in London. I got a quick product demo of MySalesDrive and then filed his product away under “Managed Print Services,” tagged “Assessment Tool, Green Button, Current/Future State Reports.” A few years later, MySalesDrive has taken over the old tool and has turned its predecessor into a sophisticated sales management tool, not only for MPS deals.
Alt started in the mid-90s as a copier and printer sales guy—a sales guy with a certain instinct. He soon understood that just selling a box wouldn’t earn him the salary he was hoping for, never mind pave the way for a long-lasting and prosperous career. The magic word was “consultative sales,” as well as adding services, maintenance, and consumables to contracts.
It didn’t take long for Alt to see the potential in offering his know-how as a service. In 2000, he started out on his own and perform IT GmbH was born. Initially, all services offered, including sales training, consulting, and assessments were almost 100% analog; information collection, analysis, management, spreadsheet applications could only offer so much support. Naturally, the balance between the cost of services and revenue was completely off.
Alt and perform IT had an idea. And they hired Alexander Kushnir as head of software development to help develop a tool that could handle the vast and diverse amount of information gathered in an intelligent and timely manner, reducing manual work, time to results (i.e. reports) and making their consulting work profitable. The company was on the right track with their tool.
Alt dates the first baby-steps of Managed Print Services in Germany to 2006 with fleet management tools losing their insider and somewhat spooky status to gradually becoming mainstream. By then perform IT’s software was ready to integrate with these new tools. Any information a fleet management tool would retrieve could be imported into their system to create reports, support assessments, and more informed sales meetings.
Armin is very critical when it comes to the future-readiness of his team and the market.
“I can’t understand why so many dealers aren’t better prepared for what’s lying ahead of us. All OEMs go through quite some effort to ready their devices, solutions, services and partner education for future.”
The holistic approach perform IT took when releasing mySalesDrive a few years ago reflects the many years of sales, and sales support experience, and the vision, that at some point in the not too distant future, Managed Print Services will be part of, or maybe even disappear into Managed Services.
“And then you’ll have to make a decision, you have to ask yourself, who do I want to be?” questioned Alt. “Do I want to run a business with a future, offer the whole range from hardware, software, services, document management, workflow optimization, workflow automation, security and so on, or am I content to sell the box, stop by for some maintenance every now and then, and run out of business sooner rather than later.”
It’s not that he wants to scare clients but let’s be honest if you’re nowhere near retirement you have to get ready now.
“We are doing the best we can with MySalesDrive to support dealers and OEMs,” maintained Alt. “The system is ready to handle assessments, current state, future state, processes, contracts beyond office imaging. And we are partnering up with industry leaders to soon deliver even more features, including intelligent automation for even better consulting, planning, and sales management.”
But where does he see Managed Print Services in Germany now?
“It’s a very complex business,” responded Alt. “People are looking into how they can print less; an MPS provider needs to understand digital processes and a workflow analysis. In Europe, we have strict privacy laws; security, data protection are a significant part of any office printing and IT strategy. And then there’s the environment. We always had a green calculator in MySalesDrive but now customers are actively asking their dealers and OEMs how they can reduce their carbon footprint and for more environmentally friendly offices, hardware, and processes.”
This demand, he adds, will only increase.
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