Four years ago, The Cannata Report spoke with Ed McLaughlin and Shawn Cashmark of Predictive InSight about the launch of a new DCA for the dealer channel. At the time, it wasn’t a new DCA because it was available in Europe from a UK-based company named EKM. However, it was new to the U.S., a new EKM market. Not only was the U.S. a new market, it was also a challenging one to penetrate because there were plenty of other DCAs already in use in the U.S. dealer channel, and anyone with intimate knowledge of the channel, like McLaughlin, would know it’s not easy getting the channel to change.
Fast-forward to 2024, and Predictive InSight is growing beyond McLaughlin’s and Cashmark’s wildest expectations. Okay, maybe not McLaughlin’s, who told me when I asked if he was surprised by the growth, “I’m never surprised.”
While Cashmark replied, “I knew all along exactly where we were going to be, but it has exceeded my expectations. I didn’t see us being this deep in the market this quick. The second year, it was like a 250% increase. And we’ve been growing 180% each year since.”
To get an idea of just how fast the company has grown in the U.S., McLaughlin referenced estimates that place the number of printers in the U.S. on DCAs at 15 million. Predictive InSight is responsible for 2 million of those as it has grown from zero to 2 million in four years. “We’re growing at such a pace that we’ve begun to put pressure on EKM support staff,” said McLaughlin. “They’re expanding their support staff to accommodate the growth we’ve thrown at them.” Today, Predictive InSight represents more than one third of EKM’s worldwide population.
In 2020, when we asked McLaughlin and Cashmark if the channel needed another DCA, they obviously answered in the affirmative, and their placements strongly affirmed their earlier response. As many of us who have been working in the industry for years have witnessed, plenty of other products introduced with high expectations never gain a foothold in the channel.
The Predictive InSight DCA Difference
What’s the difference with Predictive InSight? The earliest DCAs were designed for remote meter reads, a capability that resonated with most dealers. The EKM product was different. It was initially designed as an account management tool for managing the IT side of the business before evolving into a tool for managing printers, tracking moves and changes, and other printer issues. Compared to competitive products, it tracked more data and provided the dealer with more information on supply replenishment. The meters were secondary to achieve the account management information. “It was an account management tool that coincidentally did meter readings,” observed McLaughlin, who added that because the tool was IT-based, the goal was to be as invisible on the network as possible. “We are really quiet and very network-friendly. People hardly know we’re there.”
Another benefit of Predictive InSight’s DCA is that it doesn’t place a strain on the imaging device when it starts pulling data from it. It never shuts a machine down like some of the competitive DCAs. “What’s happened is that people begin to realize that they’re getting much more data and can manage their accounts better,” said McLaughlin.
Increasing Sales with Predictive InSight
McLaughlin added that dealers using the tool have also found that they can increase sales and provide more services for their customers. Other reasons for the company’s acceptance by the channel are its support and pricing, and ability to make the transition to the new DCA easy. “We provide loads of training, support, and customization,” said McLaughlin.
Dealers of all sizes, including mega dealers, are transitioning to the product and even branding it as their own. Predictive InSight has also been marketing MPS Monitor in the past year, which it views as an ideal product for smaller dealers. Meanwhile, growth continues as the company onboards new dealers weekly. But it’s not just a DCA for the dealer channel; organizations such as Clover and TD SYNNEX also use it.
The mission remains to help dealers automate more of their business to maintain the highest levels of profitability and productivity. “I don’t think we’ve even hit the tip of the iceberg with respect to this yet,” said McLaughlin.
One of the pleasant surprises that the team at Predictive InSight has discovered since launching the DCA is that it can also be considered a sales tool. “What we’re finding is it helps with account penetration and helps find the low-hanging fruit,” said Cashmark. “It helps protect the base by notifying [the dealer] when a competitive piece of equipment is [in the account].”
As most dealer principals can attest, getting buy-in from sales reps is a challenge, but when they see what they can learn about the account, including the competitive activity they didn’t see before or where volumes are dropping, they have a different attitude. “In one account, we showed someone that they had 70% of the units but only 35% of the volume,” said McLaughlin. “At the end of the day, the dealer wants the volume. And how do you go about getting those pages? We provide the data that they never had before.”
At this point, neither McLaughlin nor Cashmark sees any ceiling to growth. Within the past year, the company announced that the tool is now self-healing, a strong selling point. They also see an opportunity for the tool to do more around predictive maintenance. “I’ve seen examples in other service-related industries where predictive maintenance cuts emergency calls by 50 to 60%,” noted McLaughlin. “And we’re collecting the data that can get us there.” As a result, more enhancements to the tool are in the works.
