With the advent of more and more consultants in the Office Support Services Outsourcing Providers space and their approach treating traditional outsourcing services like a commodity, it’s resulting in retreating margins for outsourcing providers and potentially harmful effects on the quality of the services that come out of these new contracts.
Some of our consultant competitors are all about dispassionate cost cutting in their outsourcing RFP processes, treating office services outsourcing as a commodity. But the only people being hurt are you the customer, as these companies force suppressed wages on the staff that do the work, resulting in higher turnover, mistakes, low morale and service levels failure.
With the advent of more reliable copier/MFDs (or multi-functional devices), both the actual lease/sale price of the device and its accompanying service and maintenance per click costs have come down markedly in recent years. Service and Maintenance pricing, is usually in the form of a per click or per copy/print (but NOT scan as this should NEVER be chargeable...
There is a large national law firm outsourcing RFP project that is in progress now where the RFP project management vendor is prescribing a Cost Plus Model for the contracted services. Generally, labor costs make up 75-80% of an outsourcing services contract, so this is primarily in an attempt to “reign in” labor costs. The theory behind a cost-plus...
Problems with non-co terminus leases and how it costs money and reduces your flexibility and bargaining power and is a tool of the copier vendor to put you in a disadvantageous bargaining position.
Properly executing a copier/MFD fleet refresh or a new acquisition is a major decision for most firms. Moreover, there are a lot of solid copier equipment choices out there today, with some major factors having recently stirred up the copier manufacturing and distribution world.
The office Support Services outsourcing industry has seen some consolidation in recent years with Ricoh acquiring IKON (which no longer exists as of Jan 2013) as well as Canon’s acquisition of Oce Business Solutions (also, no longer, as of January 2013).
If you’re engaging in a closed bid renewal process for your outsourcing services there are a number of keys to remember and to operate by: In any renewal process, in the current economic environment where all business are trying to cut costs and increase their revenue opportunities, nothing should be off the table.
The Benefits and Results of our RFP/RFQ MFD bidding process will spare you from many pitfalls the vendors may try to navigate you through: Optimized Fleet; copier vendors always strive to oversell or over-specify devices. The higher end the device, generally the more margin for the copier vendor/reseller. We have proven formulas and methods to determine what is a...
There’s been a recent trend in the procurement of Business Process/Office Support Outsourcing Services where to compensate for stagnant growth, Outsourcing vendors are “buying” a client’s business, typically in a competitive displacement. This is achieved by paying a large up front “incentive” or cash disbursement to the client, for a three-four year services contract. This upfront fee, which is...