The software has a growing ecosystem and a promising future across multiple channels.
Many dealers recognize ACDI as the leading distributor of PaperCut print management software in the U.S. However, of late, it’s been honing its reputation as a provider of electric vehicle (EV) chargers through its ACDI Energy Services division. Somewhat overlooked because of PaperCut’s high profile in the dealer channel and the conversation-starting EV chargers is the KPAX fleet management solution, which it has been distributing since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. KPAX is a France-based software company that has a global network of distributors, including its largest, ACDI.
According to its website, KPAX is a centralized management solution for multi-brand office printing devices. With its unique interface, it can provide access to information from all of those printing devices. No matter how many locations, clients, or devices, the software enables the implementation of MPS. Since 2009 KPAX’s servers have been managing more than 700,000 machines for 100,000 end customers, more than 15 brands, and over 6,000 printer models.
Thanks to ACDI, KPAX has already been embraced by a growing number of dealers who have replaced their aging legacy fleet management solutions with it. The opportunities to date have been with dealerships of all sizes.
Diversifying with KPAX
Adding KPAX is another way that ACDI is diversifying its offerings. The decision to offer a fleet management solution was also inspired by dealers who were encouraging the company to provide a data collection agent in the device management space.
After exploring various options, ACDI settled on KPAX because it offered a variety of capabilities for managing environments in today’s IT world. “Most fleet management tools were developed in the early 2000s,” explained David Brown, senior product manager at ACDI. “Everybody had workstations, everybody had computers, and there was no remote work. The reality of 2023 is that most workstations are mobile.
“Most DCA tools are equipped to go on a workstation or a server. If you’re trying to put it into a serverless environment with mobile workstations, how do you deploy managed print? How do you deploy a DCA? You don’t do it very effectively. That’s where KPAX has options like the Liberty box, which can double as a host and be secure from an IT perspective, where you don’t run the risk of virus susceptibility. KPAX just provides a different strategy, a strategy that’s more equipped for 2023 and beyond, not 2009.”
According to KPAX, the Liberty box reduces the time technicians spend managing collection agents, optimizing operational costs of the technical services. It also limits disconnections caused by the idiosyncrasies of customer infrastructures and reduces the need to travel to customer sites, which in turn reduces the dealership’s carbon footprint.
Launching a product during a pandemic was one challenge, but what about convincing dealers already using a legacy fleet management solution that there was a better alternative and that it was worth the pain of making a switch? Here is where the relationship with dealers that were already using PaperCut made a difference because those dealers knew that ACDI had the resources to support the solution. Many of the legacy fleet management solutions that KPAX was replacing hadn’t changed much in the past 10-plus years. For some dealers, making the change was worth the pain because of the gains. KPAX has even allowed ACDI to acquire net new customers as well as add value to its existing customer base.
ACDI’s professional services team has been a huge asset to dealers making the switch. “If we get all the dealer’s information, we can have KPAX prepopulated with all of their accounts, have the software agents set up, and put a process in place to get all or most of those installed for them in a very short amount of time,” said Brown. “It takes it off their team’s plate, and they can do business as usual.”
KPAX Koins
KPAX is available in modules called Koins. Dealers can select the appropriate module based on the information they want—for example, meters, supplies, technical alerts—scaling the price they pay for a device. With one Koin, a dealer gets meter reads, with a second, tracking of supplies, and with the third, maintenance information. Dealers can get a combination of any of those three Koins, which makes KPAX an extremely flexible solution. There’s also an option that doesn’t include data.
Asked if there’s a sweet spot among the four modules, Brown identified meter reads, which are critical for billing and supply levels so that the device keeps printing and supplies arrive as needed as the two capabilities most in demand by dealers. The maintenance component is another popular feature. KPAX shows the dealer if a device goes offline so they can proactively reach out to the customer about scheduling a service call.
The KPAX Koins are different from other fleet management tools, which give dealers a block of devices, say 10,000, for example. If they go over that, they must pay for another block of 1,000, 2,500, etc. “KPAX doesn’t limit you,” emphasized Brown. “You can add devices and apply Koins as much as you like. It’s a true SaaS [software-as-a-service] consumption model versus the old-style licensing block that’s very limiting. Not to mimic the Liberty Mutual commercial, but you really just pay for what you use. And our pricing is very competitive and, in many cases, lower than some of the traditional players in our market.”
Meanwhile, the software continues to improve with age. Brown reported that it is more customizable and easier to use than when ACDI started distributing it in 2020. “The KPAX team in France added a ton of customization with custom fields and rules engines and logic that you can build into your workflows,” said Brown.
This, he said, is especially important because the DCA space is a mature market. Everybody has their own workflow and their own way of doing things. “There’s nothing that KPAX can’t mirror or improve through the customization that the team has built into it,” said Brown. “It’s become very feature-rich in a short amount of time.”
Feedback from dealers and the team at ACDI, including Brown, has been instrumental in improving the product. “One of the things that we’re getting ready to launch is Time to Empty,” he said. “If you’re looking at your supply cartridge and it says 20%, for some users that may be two weeks, for others that may be two months. Most competitors look at that as a mathematical linear regression equation; it’s decreased this much over this time, so we’ll extrapolate that.’”
According to Brown, KPAX has gone above and beyond; it looks at cyclical data, and if it sees that somebody prints 3,000 pages on the 14th of every month, it will take that into consideration when looking at Time to Empty seasonality. “It has multiple logic engines built into that, not just, ‘Here’s how much it’s declined over time,’ and then it figures out where the lines meet,” explained Brown.
“Being an early adopter of KPAX has truly helped our service department to be successful,” said Andrew Butts, service operations specialist at Document Strategies, Inc. (DSI) in Alpharetta, Georgia. “Having the Liberty box option for our copiers has been a game changer and truly separated KPAX from the crowd. ACDI’s development team is constantly updating their software and truly listens to their clients’ needs. I am glad our company made the move to KPAX.”
ACDI continues to onboard new dealers like DSI every week, but Brown maintains there’s a lot more runway. He conducts virtual demos almost every day, and you’ll often find the ACDI team at industry events conducting demos as well. When people see a demo, it’s familiar to them because KPAX looks like the consumer software they are currently using. “But it’s starkly different from existing fleet management solutions,” said Brown. “It actually looks like it was developed in the last two to three years, not like it was developed in 2008.”
Dealers aren’t the only ones who have embraced KPAX. It’s also been embraced by the IT and supply communities. KPAX integrates with some of the biggest distributors in the office technology dealer channel, including TD SYNNEX, Distribution Management, and Ingram Micro. “We’ve been able to build an ecosystem, and we just continue to grow,” said Brown. “We feel like its best days are in front of us.”
