The Distractions of HP’s Subscriptions

by ray stasieczko January 31, 2021

Last week, I heard someone suggest that because HP is supposedly approaching 10 million print subscriptions, this validates that the SMB marketplace is ready to explode in the acceptance of managed print services. To this nonsense, I say, Delusional Prognosis.

Let’s explore the reality. HP’s subscriptions are direct to consumer business model. A model that relies on a pull-economy process. A process to sell sub $200.00 print devices and then sell a monthly subscription ink payment plan from .99 cents- 11.99 direct to end-users via a Dot-Com strategy.

This low volume print application is not a Managed Print Services business model for B2B dealers. However, it seems as some are being distracted. Or, worse, petrified of their place in a future they refuse to accept.  

HP owns the market of home printers, and through this pandemic, some of those users bought into the, The Work From Home Hype. Soon as the reality sinks in, the subscribers will cancel those one dollar to 10.00-dollar subscriptions.

After nearly 20 years of failure to deliver print management to the SMB marketplace, the dealers and some consultants are still obsessed with participating in these conversations, which may make some feel good, but lead nowhere.

The dealers should have a mechanism to allow their business customers to buy print equipment and supplies through a digital pull-economy process (e-commerce). However, only as part of a much broader diversified services deliverable.

It’s not 1990 or even 2000. It’s 2021. The document imaging channel must stop chasing the past into the future. Let me say this another way, those getting behind the movement to save the past and then force that past on today’s and tomorrow’s end-users will not succeed.

Dealers must adapt and stop insisting that print is more complicated than its end-users can understand. Dealers must pivot into broader deliverables. For the sake of the channel, I suggest dealers broaden their horizons past the MPS rhetoric attempting to teach twenty-year-old programs long outdated.

Dealers must question the sanity of all those who suggest - delivering print equipment to the SMB based on what HP is delivering direct to SOHO environments is something worth pursuing.

HP’s direct to end-user B2C business model is not something dealers should be emulating; instead, it should be focused on moving upscale with new deliverables and new valuable services. On my inaugural members only, Ray's Cafe! I spoke with Milton Bartley of ImageQuest LLC, one of the best transitions from print services centric to IT services centric in the industry. He spoke of customer monthly recurring services revenue of north of $25,000.00 he spoke of paid assessment north of $50,000.00.

https://www.endofthedaywithray.com/

After you hear our conversation ask this, are one dollar to ten dollar print subscriptions really the direction for your B2B value-added business?

My friends, Managed Print Service programs will not pivot your business to continued relevance. Ending the overselling of A3, the insanity of premature lease upgrades, and broadening into other services is what is needed for continued relevance.

Let's end the status quo conversations of MPS and broaden the deliverable. I look forward to seeing everyone at my new venue, Ray's Cafe! Where conversations break barriers and, I will see you daily on The End Of The Day With Ray!  

"Status Quo is the killer of all that will be invented."

Ray Stasieczko

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