Konica Minolta Business Solutions

When Jochen Stieber, at that time Manager Output Consulting, heard about the FMAudit sales tool, he immediately saw the added value for the sales teams. He recognised the challenges sales teams are faced with when pursuing new business opportunities.“In Germany we found that a key problem for many sales people is to identify the customer’s printing environment” says Jochen.“In addition to knowledge of our own devices, they also should have a good indication which other printing devices are in use, and what that print volume is — without knowing the problem it is hard to start even thinking about a solution.”

At Konica Minolta Business Solutions in Germany, business consultants and large account managers are using iDOC, a professional office environment consulting strategy which helps companies to optimise their complete paper output in terms of cost reduction, productivity and efficiency. Konica Minolta was looking for an additional quick-scan tool that could be used by sales representatives so that snap-shot type reports could be created easily and provided to clients and prospects free of charge.

“In the early stages of customer engagement it is not always easy to convince customers to pay for assessment programs. Particularly in the SMB market, this is very sensitive” says Jochen.“The FMAudit USB Viewer has helped us to convince existing clients for the need of our professional iDOC consultancy. For new prospects it has helped the sales force to better educate about the prospect’s own printing environment and volume.With the quick-scan report of the FMAudit USB key on the table, we show our professional approach. Very often this then leads into more fruitful business discussions”.

Ease of use and speed are very important requirements for a sales tool. Konica Minolta did not want sales people to spend too much time on costly hours with clients to generate information about their machine park. Also it was important to limit time at the office processing that same data. It was important to select a tool that would not distract the sales force from their objective: the selling process.

“The FMAudit USB Viewer is easy to use for sales representatives, it delivers results very quickly, and depending on market conditions, we do not need to charge our clients. That is what we found most attractive of the solution.”

The German market for professional output consulting is a highly competitive one. Konica Minolta’s iDOC is as very professional concept based on detailed, thorough analyses processes.Within iDOC, a wide variety of other auditing and monitoring tools can be used to generate more detailed information like for example toner coverage of machines and user behaviour. The FMAudit USB key also helped those teams working with the advanced iDOC strategy on a higher customer level.“Our business consultants and large account managers, who use our professional iDOC approach, also started to use the FMAudit USB key. Data can be exported from the FMAudit report and then imported into for example iDOC integrated calculation and back-office software. These specialists tell me they find it a nice and useful tool”.

The sales teams were not provided with the tool right away. Instead Jochen tested it out first. “I was very curious to see how it would work. During the testing period we learned more about what the product could do and also what it was not capable of. In general it recovers more than 85% of the machine data, which we found is sufficient for the quick-scan level we wanted to use it for. The testing helped us to brief the sales teams better and set the right expectations”.

The FMAudit USB Viewer has been deployed for all sales teams in Germany and has been in use for more than a year. Jochen continues:“We find it important that sales representatives use it to discuss our iDOC approach with existing clients. And for new prospects, it certainly brings value to those early engagements and discussions.The FMAudit USB Viewer helps our sales force to build that unique prospect knowledge that sets us apart from the competition”.