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MPS
A document called the Systems Assurance
Form flows all the way through the
process, from the first stage of gathering
requirements, through the design stage,
through implementation and sign-off, and
on to on-going support. We have a lot of
flexibility; we are quite happy to train people
up to do parts of the work that they want to
take on. We have our standard set of roles
and responsibilities that we assume at the
starting point, but people can flex that up or
down. Some customers want to take more
responsibility, some want to take less.
“The same is true for our post-sales
support. We have lots of different service
levels. Some partners just want to take
the manufacturer’s maintenance package,
which typically has no SLA and requires
them to be certified to be able to log
tickets, and others want us to supply
an SLA to the customer using our own
technical expertise, which we are happy
to do. We have support levels ranging
from next day up to 24-hour, one-hour
response. And we also have arrangements
in the middle where partners do their own
support but want to be able to call on us
in a crisis. For them, we sell a service pack,
which gives you a pack of credits that you
can use as and when you need them, for
support calls or for unplanned pieces of
implementation work.”
This flexibility extends to the
relationship NewField IT has with the
reseller, which can be overt or covert,
depending on the reseller’s preference.
“We are very happy to work as a
seamless part of the reseller’s team,
white-labelled, or as our own standalone
entity,” explained Enthoven. “We have
a good reputation in the market that we
have fought hard to achieve and many
partners are happy to benefit from that
reputation, reassuring customers that they
are bringing in top industry experts for
their software deployment. Other partners
want to take more control themselves and
be seen as the sole delivery partner for
their customers, in which case we act as if
we were part of them.”
Impartial and secure
Where there is no flexibility, says Enthoven,
is in NewField IT’s impartiality, which
it safeguards assiduously to allay any
concerns a reseller might have about
working with a Xerox company. Although
it does a lot of work with Xerox resellers, it
also works with resellers for other vendors,
such as HP and Konica Minolta, and vendor
agnostic IT service providers.
“We are trusted to work with non-
Xerox parties,” said Enthoven. “We are
still held as a separate entity. We have our
own separate IT systems. And we are very
careful about security. We are ISO 27001
certified on our security policies. We have
a very strict code of conduct on how we
behave and how we treat our partners
and their data, because we do regularly
get into competitive situations where
multiple partners approach us about the
same opportunity. When that happens we
still have to serve both partners, because
we are their supplier for software, but we
flag it as a potential conflict of interest
to both parties. We treat them absolutely
fairly; we keep their data separate and no
information flows across that barrier.”
Another line Enthoven says he won’t
cross is competition with the channel. “We
are not an MPS provider. We don’t sell
hardware; we don’t sell click; we don't sell
break-fix support, supplies or any of those
things. We just sell software solutions and
hardware associated with them e.g. card
readers and terminals or cash-loading
kiosks.”
NewField IT is not an MPS provider. But
with its help you can be.
...continued
The next step
As their MPS expertise grows,
Enthoven says resellers can
take the next step and use
NewField IT solutions, notably
its CompleteView business
intelligence platform, to gain
greater insight into data captured
by print management solutions.
“One of the applications within our
CompleteView business intelligence
platform is called User Analytics. This
hooks into print management systems
that gather all kinds of information
about what's going on in a business –
who’s printing what, how much is being
released vs. deleted, and where all the
costs are. Information tends to get a bit
trapped in these systems; each one has
its own reporting mechanism; they are
very static; and it’s hard to get really
useful information out,” he said.
“User Analytics pulls data out
of those system and presents it in a
really intuitive way so you can see
immediately who your worst offending
users or departments are and where the
costs are going in terms of devices and
users and processes. You can click and
drill down into these areas very quickly
to identify exactly where things are
going wrong and where you can put
them right. That's very, very powerful
and quite unique to us.”
Enthoven adds that User Analytics
is very useful not just for delivering
the continuous improvements
that customers expect but also for
demonstrating innovation. “Many
MPS contracts have clauses that relate
to innovation. Innovation is quite a
difficult thing to pin down, but User
Analytics fits the bill for that very
nicely,” he said.
“It has a real Wow factor when
you show it to an end customer. They
have often not seen anything like it
before and are very keen to work with a
partner who can offer them that.”
Nuance eCopy ShareScan is one of
the software solutions distributed by
NewField IT.
We have a
very strict
code of
conduct
on how we
behave and
how we treat
our partners
and their
data.
