Oki Data Unveils New Printers, Consulting Offering

The Mount Laurel, N.J.-based vendor is taking the steps to enter the new, but increasingly competitive consulting space, as a result of customer conversations and what Oki sees as an opportunity for incremental business, said CEO Stewart Krentzman.

"The future of our business is providing individuals [with] something that solves special customer needs," Krentzman said at a New York news conference.

The new offering, Oki Managed Services, combines physical and software-based asset analysis, efficiency consultation and a software-based printer fleet management tool -- called FleetSuperVision -- that can be rolled across the network.

The software application can be rolled out across an enterprise to monitor the activity, performance and usage of an entire inventory of printers, Oki Data executives said, and can provide for immediate dispatch of break-fix service, replacement of consumables or preventative maintenance.

While Oki-badged employees will perform most of the billable work, Krentzman and Christopher Froman, Oki Data's senior vice president for U.S. sales, said the vendor will make some of its tools available to the channel and is even weighing a special, SKU-able consulting offering for its solution providers.

"The reality is, every one of these engagements is going to be unique and customized," Froman said.

Oki Data is not the first printer vendor to offer consulting services. Others, including Hewlett-Packard, Palo Alto, Calif., and Xerox, Stamford, Conn., have provided on-site document, workflow or printer consulting services, and have become more aggressive over the past six months at promoting those offerings.

Oki Data also unveiled a lineup of two digital color printers and five monochrome printers. Krentzman has been particularly focused on growing the company's share of the U.S. color printer market, and noted Oki Data saw a 300 percent market share gain during 2003 -- up to 8.2 percent of the entire market.

The two new color printers - the Oki C5200n and the Oki C5400 -- will each produce color prints at up to 16 pages per minute (or 24 pages per minute in black and white), with an estimated list price of $999.

The C5200n is shipped as a network-ready printer, while the C5400 can provide faster throughput on a wider variety of paper types, Oki Data said.

For now, Krentzman said he believes his company is benefiting from competition with industry heavyweights -- which would include rivals such as HP and Xerox.

"Everybody wants options," Krentzman said. "Right now, we get a lot of attention as the alternative to the Big Guy."