Cape Office Machines first in SA to get new Xerox Managed Print Services accreditation

Stellenbosch-based Cape Office Machines will be the first authorised Bytes Document Solutions Partner to receive Xerox's recently launched Xerox Partner Print Services Partner (XPPS) Accreditation, and is one of the first MPS service providers in SA to use the XPPS solution in conjunction with its own service helpdesk.

Marco Ortelee, director at Cape Office Machines, says the company's business is completely aligned to Xerox and has been since 1982, when it was the first authorised Xerox dealer in the country.

“Our office equipment business is about solutions and extends from digital office equipment to business solutions like identifying business processes to hosted services.

“Our largest customer in Stellenbosch is British American Tobacco, along with a number of other large nationwide organisations and many SMEs,” Ortelee says. “The XPPS sales coaching programme ensures success in our sales people and provides the Xerox XPPS methodology in the most effective and efficient way.”

Ortelee was keen to have MPS as part of his service offering. “I'd been watching how managed print globally has become one of the biggest revenue factors in our type of business today and ensured that I was on the first training session that was conducted in South Africa. We signed up our first MPS client 23 months ago and the business has been growing steadily since then,” Ortelee says.

Cape Office Machines had to ramp up its IT staff complement and implement a helpdesk to gain the accreditation because, says Ortelee, “managed print works best when you use it in its entirety, with proactive and reactive monitoring”.

He says the MPS process “changes the mindset” of dealing with the break/call/repair cycle. “The conventional break/fix was that a customer with a Xerox machine would call and someone would come and fix the machine. Now, with MPS, about 90% of our tickets are proactive rather than reactive.”

Ortelee says since implementing the MPS solution in the business, Cape Office Machines has increased its revenue by about 30%.

“The most important thing is to gain customer trust, because to implement an MPS solution effectively, you have to gain insight into their business, which allows you to offer customised service.”

Ortelee credits his IT manager, Jacques Burger, with much of the success of Cape Office Machines' MPS rollout. “IT is the backbone of MPS,” he says.