Maintenance, service, support as important as purchase price, cost of consumables, says Printacom MD

Research conducted as recently as last year continues to show that printers and printing are as important to the modern business as they`ve ever been.

And while the vast majority of companies are scrambling to drive down the maintenance price and consumables costs of the printers in their IT environment, they often forget about the importance of ensuring the service, support and maintenance of their printing solution that is geared up for cost efficiency, a quick turnaround time and most importantly, covers a lifetime of use.

"Aside from the severe inconvenience of not having a printer at one`s disposal, for many companies a printer malfunction can be a catastrophic occurrence, hampering their accounting, marketing and sales departments` ability to remain productive," says Neil Rom, managing director of Printacom, importer and sole brand representative for OKI and TallyGenicom printers in sub-Saharan Africa.

"That`s the reason, apart from ensuring our solutions are price competitive - both on the acquisition cost and total cost of ownership - we`ve dedicated a great deal of effort to ensuring they benefit from a comprehensive three-year warranty and an extensive channel of service partners that are adept and have ready access to spare parts," Rom adds.

"Our efforts are continuously geared towards convenient and efficient services and solutions. We`re expanding on this all the time. So far, we have 18 Authorised Service Partners (ASPs) in South Africa and a further six across Namibia, Zambia, Botswana, Mozambique, Swaziland and Mauritius and plan to have another eight rolled out in eight new sub-Saharan countries during the course of 2010," he says. These ASP`s combined have over 1 000 trained OKI engineers dedicated to providing the type of quality repairs and maintenance that supports our dedication to meeting our customers` high service expectations."