Lexmark Aims To Boost Partner Profit With MSP Program

Jim Webb, director of channel solutions and industry partners at Lexington, Ky.-based Lexmark, said it also is talking with other managed services software vendors.

Solution providers can see 4.7 times more revenue and 3.5 times more profitability managing an output device over a three-year period compared with just selling the device, Webb said.

“The key is increasing profitability and increasing their trusted advisor status with their end users,” Webb said. “All that comes together around managing end-user environments.”

Lexmark made the announcement at Ingram Micro’s VentureTech Network show in Montreal last week, but Webb said the offering is available to any partners of N-Able or Level Platforms, which are both based in Ottawa.

Managing output devices has been a missing element for managed services offerings, Webb said. “There’s a lot of money to be made. They break more frequently than desktops. There is maintenance money to be made, extended warranties, supplies,” he said.

The initiative was borne out of Lexmark’s Impressions program, a cost-per-page program that helped solution providers track an end user’s printing expenses and ways to cut those costs.

“The feedback we got was, ‘This is cool.’ But [solution providers] have another set of tools to manage servers, phones and desktops. They want that to come together. They want to manage the entire landscape. A lightbulb went off, and then we started talking to N-Able and LPI,” Webb said.

The result: Impressions has been integrated into the vendors’ platforms, which allows solution providers to manage output devices along with other hardware.

“If you think of [LPI’s and N-Able’s] dashboard views of end users’ environments, solution providers can have blinking lights that a printer is offline. They can track page counts. They can know there’s a paper jam at access point No. 2 of Drawer 3,” Webb said.

Solution providers, especially those now reselling managed services, were receptive to the program.

“Printing has been the bastard stepchild [of managed services]. What’s great is this allows you to displace printers with new equipment and plan a printing environment,” said Adam Eiseman, CEO of Lloyd Group, a New York-based solution provider. “The only thing more I’d like to see is it based on cost per user as opposed to cost per page.”