Talk to any salesperson and they will gladly tell you all that they can do to fix ‘your problems’… even ones you didn’t know you had or don’t consider very problematic. Regardless of how enthusiastically they describe their solutions’ benefits and results, if it doesn’t resonate with the recipient, the discussion becomes more like a monologue than a conversation. Salespeople walk the fine line between wanting to tell too much, not knowing when they are ahead, or understanding when they have lost the battle.
Perhaps salespeople should start the day resolving to, in the words of the serenity prayer, “accept the things they cannot change, have courage to change the things they can, and have the wisdom to know the difference.” The part about knowing when to attempt change and when to leave well alone is especially important now, in this time when so much is out of our control. Knowing what we can reasonably accomplish and focusing on that goal gives us control over what we do in our personal and professional lives.
These words have lots of value on any given day, to know when you can change something and when you can’t. Everyone likes to focus on the things we can change, and the sales teams at LRS are no different. So here are five areas of change where LRS solutions can truly have an impact.
We can help secure printing and scanning
For years, LRS has had such solutions in place with MFPsecure/Print and MFPsecure/Scan, but they were always tied to an office or corporate network. Recently, we released the Personal Print Manager Local Delivery solution that enables users to print documents from backend business applications on non-managed printers. It also lets organizations track end user printing at any location outside of the corporate network. A record of each printed file is stored for auditing purposes.
Just as with our other secure printing solutions, data is encrypted until it gets released to a printer. Roaming users are still able to access and print materials, except they can do so from home, a train station, etc. even without having a VPN infrastructure in place. Upcoming releases offer other secure ways to print and scan documents whilst not on a corporate network. Since these all allow for transmission of data across the public Internet, we have grouped the new features under the name ‘Internet Printing.’ You can learn more about it on our website.
We can help migration to the Cloud
LRS customers have been running our solutions in the Cloud for a long time. Even before the majority of SaaS offerings came to market for managing printing from the Cloud, LRS customers had successfully migrated their applications into their own private Cloud architectures. Since then, Cloud computing has grown exponentially. To address this growing demand, LRS more recently introduced its own SaaS offering called LRS CloudPrint®. This easy-to-use and easy-to-manage printing solution has enough functionality to accommodate most basic printing needs. We say basic, because when more advanced features are required, such as critical printing from SAP applications, we always direct customers to our VPSX Enterprise solution… which of course customers have also proven can be hosted in the Cloud.
We can help remove specialized applications and dedicated hardware
Organizations that need to print labels, barcodes, and special characters (such as Unicode) often invest in DIMM cards and printers that are designed specifically for that purpose. These can be quite costly. LRS eliminates the need for these expensive add-on hardware features, so you can print this specialized output on regular printers and multifunction devices.
The same technology can be used to apply watermarks on hardcopy output generated by SAP applications. In fact, companies using SAP have significant cost saving potential as they often have implemented many of the costly items described above. LRS software enables them to remove excess applications and hardware previously needed to support printing documents generated by SAP applications, resulting in lower TCO and simplified IT (one solution versus many).
We can help reduce printing volume and costs
Digitalization is gaining ground, but printing is still a key requirement in many enterprises. For some, it is a necessity that business processes depend on heavily. We help those organizations optimize printing to reduce overall costs. We have implemented solutions to optimize paper intensive processes. Take for example our ‘view not print’ functionality that allows people to share, view, comment and store digital documents. This takes some paper-based processes out of the equation. For regular environments, we have support for print policies, print rules, and user quotas. These policies help to not just lower cost, but also to create awareness and support environmental goals for a reduced carbon footprint.
We can help eliminate print servers
So many Blog articles on this topic are already available. With good reason… the opportunity to remove print servers directly impacts the bottom line of a company. Those companies that chose to standardize on LRS to manage company-wide printing have been able to eliminate countless Windows print servers. The result? Printing became more accessible and reliable. Projects that involve the elimination of multiple print servers have always shown impressive cost savings, especially when it comes to printing from business-critical applications. The ability to manage printing from a single point of control, regardless of document origin, results in fewer delays for finding and resolving potential problems.
Of course, there are scenarios where we need to accept that we cannot help a customer change their IT infrastructure. Not necessarily because we are unable to, but because a customer always has options. These include the “option to do nothing” because they are content with the status quo or don’t want to change what is working (reasonably) well. This ‘do nothing’ scenario is a serious challenge when we enter into customer conversation, as my colleague Austen described in a recent Blog article. Luckily, in most cases, our help and insights are welcomed, as they add value, impact the bottom line and contribute to an overall more efficient IT infrastructure.
So maybe my colleagues in sales should start each by simply saying: we know what we can change and hope our customers have the wisdom to see what difference LRS can bring. A small but meaningful variation on a famous expression!