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www.printitreseller.co.uk Print.IT Reseller
cloud
The challenge printer resellers have
always faced is how to develop
longer lasting relationships with
customers. One possibility is to use
one of the new breed of cloud-
based printer management portals
to provide customers with the sort
of management information and
remote support typically provided as
part of a fully fedged managed print
service.
A growing number of these are now
being made available both to resellers
and end users, including the channel-only
Kanban supplies portal (see overleaf) and
Cortado’s Printer Dashboard.
Available as a Premium service or a free
consumer download, Printer Dashboard
is a web-based printer monitoring tool
that provides the information a small or
medium-sized business needs to control
and manage its printer feet, including
toner levels, paper jams and printer
availability for all makes and model of
printer in a Windows environment.
On top of that, it includes the ability
for customers to order new supplies at
the click of a mouse – a major attraction
for resellers – and integrated accounting
that records the toner/ink and paper
consumption of each printer and related
costs. To gain as accurate a picture of costs
as possible, users can input the prices they
paid for their consumables.
The Premium version also includes
tracking reports showing who's printed
what, where and at what cost; and alerts
to notify an administrator if there is a
problem – with the free version a user has
to have logged-on to discover if a printer
has gone offine or run out of paper.
Hosted service
Based on Microsoft Azure and hosted in
Microsoft datacentres, Printer Dashboard
has all the advantages of other cloud
services: it is very easy to install (an agent
discovers network and local printers
and sends usage data back to the cloud
database); it has no impact on a business’s
existing infrastructure; and it can be
accessed remotely from any web-enabled
device.
Another advantage of a cloud-based
tool is scale. This brings enormous
possibilities, such as the ability for Cortado
to analyse usage data from free users
(while maintaining their anonymity and
privacy) – it currently monitors more than
80,000 print devices. In time, this could be
used to provide benchmark fgures for print
costs, so that users could see whether their
costs were above or below average.
It could also be used to compare the
running costs and reliability of OEM
supplies versus compatibles and re-
manufactured cartridges.
Cortado COO/CIO Charlotte Kunzell
told PrintIT Reseller’s sister publication
PrintIT that in time, such features could
be made available to Premium customers.
“We want to give Premium users the
opportunity to compare their costs against
everyone else’s. We have a lot of data
from free users which we can use for
benchmarking purposes to show premium
users where they are cost-wise,” she said.
Clearly this is a useful tool for end
users, but it is equally so for a reseller who
can set up Printer Dashboard accounts for
customers and then manage them himself
as a managed print service with his own
fxed cost per page pricing. Alternatively,
he could provide it as a free service as a
way of ensuring that future supplies orders
are automatically routed to him.
Ms Kunzell points out that because
Printer Dashboard works with any print
device, resellers are not restricted to
a single vendor solution or to devices
that may be beyond the means of their
customers.
“Big manufacturers want to sell
big expensive MPS machines into their
accounts, but sometimes a mono laser
printer would do the job just as well. We
want to give the channel the opportunity
to play in the MPS area and not just
with one manufacturer. The reseller can
decide what printer product is best for
the customer and he can bill on a Pay
Per Page system because we provide all
the necessary data, or he can choose to
manage the print environment for a fat
rate fee,” she said.
Ms Kunzell added that Printer
Dashboard had already been well received
by resellers. “The feedback we have
had is that they welcome the chance to
participate in managed services and think
benchmarking could be a differentiator
with other solutions. They also like the fact
that it is easy to install: they don't need a
database server and another server at the
customer company.”
For resellers and small and medium-
sized businesses with 5, 10 or 20 devices,
solutions such as Printer Dashboard
provide many of the benefts of a vendor
MPS, but with greater choice and fexibility
and without the need to invest in new
hardware. In these times, that makes them
a very appealing proposition.
www.thinprint.com
25
The view
from above
Cortado’s cloud-based Printer Dashboard enables resellers
to provide managed services to small and medium-sized
businesses on a cost per page basis or for a
fxed management fee. James Goulding reports
Charlotte Kunzell, Cortado COO/CIO
...resellers
are not
restricted
to a single
vendor
solution...