Dealer Survey & The Cannata Dinner

We begin with the three top dealer concerns, which continue to be: competing with manufacturer’s direct branches (35%), declining clicks (32%), and hiring and…

Arguably, some of the more intriguing findings from our Survey are related to dealer concerns. Historically, we have asked dealers to identify their concerns from…

Each year, we ask dealers to rate their primary A3 MFP suppliers as “Excellent,” “Very Good,” “Good,” “Fair,” or “Poor.” We then awarded five points for “Excellent,”…

Long ago and far away, OEM dealer meetings didn’t exist. For most dealers, the opportunities to rub elbows with other dealers and circulate among the various…

In addition to asking dealers to rate their A3 manufacturers, we asked them to rate their primary A4 manufacturer. With companies such as HP, Lexmark,…

For the third consecutive year in our Survey, the average number of leasing partners among the Big Six dealer universe held steady at 2.6. Any way you cut…

This is the sixth year that we have asked dealers to identify the companies—excluding the hardware manufacturers and leasing companies—that…

This is the third year where we have tracked dealer optimism and pessimism in three areas—A3, A4, and production print. Not every dealer responded to…

If you haven’t seen The Cannata Report’s 34th Annual Survey in our October issue yet, you may have missed out on the following five findings…

After 34 years of conducting our Annual Dealer Survey, and closely following the office technology industry day in and day out, one might think there wouldn’t be too…

This year’s Survey had the greatest number of responses in the history of the Survey – 344 with 336 of those representing the Big Six manufacturers – Canon…

Starting with our 2014 Survey, we began separating the A3 and A4 MFP lines. From 2004 through 2013, the number of lines per dealer was impacted by the number…

Whatever resistance dealers had to A4 in the past (primarily the lower margins compared to A3) seems to have dissipated in the wake of a new reality. That reality…

As acquisitions reconfigure the dealer landscape, the era of the single-line dealer should be on the decline. Yet, as we’ve seen since 2016, the percentage of single-line…

For the second consecutive year, the percentage of dealers participating in our Survey went up, as did the percentage of dedicated dealers from 36% last year to…

When analyzing our Survey results, we do not base our findings on profitability and choose to examine revenue. This year, the total dealer revenue of our entire universe…

Prior to our 32nd Annual Dealer Survey in 2017, we tracked dealers with revenues of $5 million or greater, calling this group “The $5 Million-Plus Club.” But times…

If a dealer is going to offer MPS, they”™d better have at least one printer line. Regardless of how dealers define their MPS offerings, printers remain a critical element…

In the wake of declining print volumes, we have been adamant that dealers need to seriously consider production print. We might add that industrial print is…

One of the misconceptions about MPS that we are as guilty of promulgating as others in the industry have, is that almost every dealer (or most dealers are) is…

Last year, 50% of Big Six dealers said they offered managed networked services (MNS). In this year’s Survey, that percentage declined to 46%. We don’t feel this drop…

Service is a critical component of any dealer operation and a huge contributor to maintaining customers. That’s why we examine the makeup of a dealership’s service…

This is the era of acquisitions. News of acquisitions may not be flowing in daily, but hardly a week goes by when an acquisition isn’t announced. Most of those acquisitions…

The flow of private-equity money into the channel continued unabated throughout 2018. Meanwhile, mid-sized and larger, well-funded dealers expanded their…

For years, progressive dealers have been looking for ways to grow their businesses beyond traditional office copying and printing. Call it diversification, if you will. The…