Data-driven decision-making and printers. Is that even a thing?
In the fast paced world, it's safe to say that what worked last time, might not work again as technology develops rapidly.
From the printing perspective, it means the digitalization of new workflows resulting in different needs for printers. But how to quickly identify needs for changes, procurement, and optimizations without spending days in Excel spreadsheets and asking various people for data?
We keep referring to this image as it clearly shows the need to stop once in a while and look at new/optimized technology before continuing doing what we "normally do."
What made sense once centralizing might be the opposite situation now. A printer with a high cost per page but with a low procurement cost might be the right choice now than the bigger printer with low page cost but high procurement costs.
It all depends on your need and where you are heading. How to decide? This is where your data comes into the picture. Where are you heading? What are your trends?
In this article, we will be focusing a bit on the data you can use to make better decisions when it comes to making decisions based on data. This is also referred to as DDDM, which is short for Data-Driven Decision Making.
Where can you use DDDM? This could apply to all industries, but in this article, we will focus on both: printing industry and using 3manager.
FINANCIAL DECISIONS
Should you buy new printers or wait? what is the cost-benefit? Answering that question is not an easy task, and the more printers you have, the more time-demanding it gets.
Today all businesses have tons of data, but they are seldom processed in a way, making it easy for a person with a busy schedule to quickly create a decision based on data and facts rather than a prioritization on where time is best spent.
Imagine the scenario where you could estimate the future savings by replacing existing devices with new ones? You already have a big part of the data, and it's all about utilizing it in the best way without massive time consumption.
Why use software for this? The answer is easy. The CPU works faster than the human brain, and it doesn't need any breaks; it can do this daily and let you know when it's time to look at the printers again. It will do all the analytical work so you only need to make the final decisions based on various scenarios.
BUSINESS PERFORMANCE
How are the clients and partners performing? Would you use it more frequently if you could create a birds-eye view on all your clients or channel partners with a click?
Again, this is a question that would take so long to answer. This should be calculated daily, making it possible for you at any time to have a glance at how things are going. Who should you book a status meeting with?
Use data to quickly identify and visualize the trends and key performance indicators (KPI's) for your channel or customers. Which direction are they heading to?
For example, in the 3manager business performance dashboard, you can quickly follow your channel or customer's trend and, using the trend indicators, understand if they are following your plans or not.
The time spent manually creating such indicators would take forever, and the minute it's done, the result starts getting useless fast as it's not updated.
MARKETING
Use data to target your marketing activities better and send relevant content to people.
Having the correct data at hand makes it possible for you to do what we call intelligent marketing planning, using data to create the targets that are changing. In a rapidly changing world, you need to plan and execute fast.
Marketing and sales can join forces on this by utilizing the power of data and combining the skills from marketing with the customer relationship management from sales.
SALES
Imagine a world where the go-to list for account managers showed only clients with actual problems that you can solve? What would be your criteria for such a list? Imagine that you could easily create that view/filter, and every Monday morning, a list is sent to all account managers, with clients matching those criteria.
It's almost like you get a list of all people with headaches, and you are selling the pills.
Not to mention the data-driven status meetings. The list goes on how you could deploy a data-driven approach into your daily work.
Conclusion:
Implementing a more data-driven approach in your daily work in the printing industry will require a change of work habits.
This is not something happening overnight, and it requires the right software for the job. In the printing industry and managed print services (MPS), traditional meter reading and supplies alert a history. Today we need business intelligence and software advisory based on data.
It's a collaboration between end customers, dealers, and the entire team. If all agree on the situation and problem, the next step is solving them and adding value.
About 3manager:
3manager helps companies, printer dealers, distributors, and consultants with innovative MPS software, taking managed print services (MPS) to the next level with business intelligence and automation.
Want to know more? Contact sales