The Following Appears on TheImagingChannel.com
by Luke Goldberg – Stop me if you’ve heard this before — our product is becoming commoditized. We need to find a new way to sell; a way to package our goods and services to create value and differentiate ourselves from the competition.
You didn’t stop me, but I’ll assume that’s because this is a blog and not because none of that sounded familiar. If you’ve been in the office imaging industry for any length of time you’ve heard it, particularly those of us who have spent many of those years in the supplies business.
“Commoditization” became a familiar refrain in that business more than a decade ago when sellers began to compete on price and the need for differentiation became crucial. Cost-per-page and print management models were seen as a disruptive force as providers began to bundle together services, hardware and supplies. Managed print solutions injected new blood into the industry.
And yet here we are again with a commoditized product — only now it’s MPS that is becoming a business driven on price. With a successful program so often defined by pages under contract or machines in field, providers frequently seek to lower costs to compete. Another inherent problem with the MPS model is the fact that reduced printing is often cited as a benefit of MPS — and volume decreases aren’t good for the typical MPS program provider. Reducing print not only removes top line revenue but bottom line profits as well. There must be a better way.
The SBB Model
And of course, there is a better way — seat-based billing (SBB), also known as cost-per-seat or per-user billing. What is it? In the IT world, it is defined this way:
“The per-user pricing model is similar to the per-device model, with the difference being that the flat fee is billed per end user per month, and covers support for all devices used by each end user. …” (SearchITChannel)
