Amerx Office Solutions

Background

Located in Austin, TX, Amerx Office Solutions opened in 2001 with the goal of offering customers more than just purchasing copiers. Amerx is “committed to providing solutions that make [a customer’s] business run efficiently and increase productivity.”

Amerx is recognized as one of Konica Minolta’s top 50 dealers of 700 total in the US. One of the keys to their success is in offering customers Integrated Output Management (IOM). IOM focuses on optimizing printer fleets through efficient meter reads, technical support, streamlined billing, and optimal equipment utilization.

Amerx ensures customer satisfaction with a well-trained support staff. Their technicians earned Konica Minolta’s prestigious Pro-Tech Service Award in 2004. This award is only honored to dealers who’s technicians consistently exceed service level requirements, up time standards, and maximize skill and accuracy.

Challenge

Amerx’s Integration Specialist, Ryan Stebbing states, “Billing is the number one challenge in this industry, and the resulting lost revenue is substantial.” Several customers added printers to their networks unbeknownst to Amerx, resulting in inaccurate usage reports, and misidentified and duplicate serial numbers. This duplicity caused confusion for both the customer and Amerx when reordering supplies.

A key challenge births from customers reordering supplies for noncontracted devices under an all-inclusive agreement. Because they rarely require a service call and are typically common devices, customers provided duplicate serial numbers to quickly order supplies. Amerx unwittingly fulfills. “The customer simply uses a serial number from another printer that’s the same model number, and refers to it when ordering supplies,” states Ryan. “It results in a lot of lost revenue.”

Mr. Stebbing’s research for one of Amerx’s smaller customers exposed lost revenues of $2,200 per quarter due to unread clicks. Such a substantial loss of revenue for a small account necessitated an immediate company-wide solution, especially considering the loss is higher with larger accounts.

It was clear. Amerx needed to quickly fix the unfortunate oversight through leveraging metering software. Ryan states “[Amerx has] spent thousands of dollars, in exploring various solutions.” Unfortunately, the solutions were found to have convoluted and confusing network installations, inaccurate reporting, and poor technical support; the revenue losses continued.

In fact, during the evaluation process, one solution overlooked 32,000 pages in one quarter. Ryan adds, “The challenge was further exasperated because the solution could not identify printers that were added to the customers’ networks.” Consequently, Amerx’s ability to recover lost revenues continued as various software solutions could not deliver.

Solution and Results

Due to its ease of use and precise reporting FMAudit OnSite began helping Amerx solve their lost revenue issues immediately. “It is accurate and very quick and painless,” says Ryan Stebbing. “And when [customers] disconnect their printers and put them in a closet, I have the last known meter read!”

Using OnSite, Mr. Stebbing quickly and easily uncovered another client’s unaccounted meters and consumable replacements resulting in a quarterly revenue loss of $2,170; nearly $8,700 annually.

A truly entrepreneurial company, Amerx has learned from meter capture related challenges, and in fact, capitalized on them. FMAudit allows Amerx to provide new levels of customer service, enabling the expansion to launch a new fleet focused services company. Ryan Stebbing confirms, “FMAudit is a key reason we’ve been able to launch Insight Managed Services, a new output fleet services based business.” Ryan further explains, “without the [FMAudit] technology, the [new] company would be unable to expand beyond our current operational limitations.”

Insight Managed Services offers customers a turn-key output fleet managed solution. They deliver help desk, account services, contract consolidation and remittance and procurement services all designed to reduce or remove customers’ print fleet support burden. In effect, Insight Managed Services truly provides customers a one-stop print management solution.