Oki Data Adds Printers, Managed Services

With the new Oki Managed Services offering, the Mount Laurel, N.J.-based vendor is entering the new but increasingly competitive consulting space, as a result of customer conversations and what Oki sees as an opportunity for incremental business, said Oki CEO Stewart Krentzman.

Oki Managed Services combines physical and software-based asset analysis, efficiency consultation and a software-based printer fleet management tool,called FleetSuperVision,that can monitor printer resources across networks.

The software application can be rolled out across an enterprise to monitor the activity, performance and usage of an entire inventory of printers,even competitors' printers,and can provide for immediate dispatch of break-fix service, replacement of consumables or preventative maintenance, Oki executives said.

While Oki employees will perform most of the billable work, Krentzman and Christopher Froman, Oki's senior vice president of U.S. sales, said the vendor will make some of its tools available to the channel and is even weighing a SKU-able consulting offering exclusively for its solution providers.

Oki is not the first printer vendor to offer consulting services. Other vendors, including Hewlett-Packard and Xerox, already provide on-site document, workflow or printer consulting services, and have aggressively promoted the offerings over the past six months.

Some solution providers said they were concerned about possible channel conflict, in absence of detail about how the tool would impact their relationships with their customers. "We have some large accounts in Kansas City where we have Oki equipment installed," said Darrel Ochs, president of LaserEquipment, a Merriam, Kan.-based solution provider. "We actually go to their locations once a week and manage their inventory, replenish the [consumables] inventory they need. In some accounts, it's significant [business]."

LaserEquipment also sells Xerox and HP products, and even though those companies have consulting offerings, Ochs said there have been no noticeable conflicts with his business. Oki, as well, has always been very channel-friendly, and he hopes it will continue to be, he said. "They've been very easy to work with."