Service Program Expands Integrator's Capabilities And Geographical Reach

In today's competitive business environment, VARs and systems integrators are discovering new opportunities to provide value. As in any industry, service is the key to customer loyalty. Resellers can win or lose business based on their ability to respond quickly, especially when equipment needs repair, and customers are at risk of experiencing downtime.

One way to avoid the potential ill will of clients and the expenses associated with emergency service is to offer a proactive service plan. This plan anticipate a customer's need for preventive maintenance and parts/supplies requirements. This is how Ted Kruzan, president of ImageTek Corporation takes care of one of his customers. ImageTek is a document imaging systems integrator from Des Moines, IA. The firm has six employees and had gross sales of over $2 million last year.

County Clerk's Office Inundated By Paper
ImageTek's customer was the County Clerk's Office of Rock Island County, IL. Located in western Illinois on the Mississippi River, the county serves a population base of just under 150,000. The Clerk's Office is responsible for registering court documents and election results and for maintaining vital records and marriage licenses. While many of these documents are simply archived, the court documents are often called for by judges and must be retrieved quickly. This was not an easy task, since the paper documents were stored in file cabinets and paper boxes in the basement. Lisa Bierman, chief deputy clerk of the county, realized that a solution was needed.

Applying A Traditional Solution
ImageTek had worked with Rock Island County in the past, so when Kruzan's company put on a seminar on document imaging to firms in the "Quad" cities area, Bierman went to see him. (The Quad cities area covers the cities of Davenport and Bettendorf in IA and Moline and Rock Island in IL.) The ImageTek experts knew exactly what the County Clerk's Office needed, and after the contracts were signed, ImageTek installed its solution in a week and a half.

The components that ImageTek installed included: a small, 5-user, network-based imaging system running PaperClip Network Edition software from PaperClip Software, Inc., a 20 GB optical 20XT jukebox from Hewlett-Packard, and first one, and eventually three Fujitsu scanners. The first scanner was a Model 3093 and the other two were Models 3096E+. Using the scanners, three staff members routinely scan up to 3,000 pages per day. Up to this point, this is a pretty routine success story. What makes this installation different, however, is what follows.

ImageTek And Fujitsu Offer ScanCare
To ensure the highest level of customer service, ImageTek partnered with Fujitsu Computer Products of America to offer ScanCare, an upgrade to existing scanner warranties. Through this program, the Clerk's Office receives on-site maintenance calls at scheduled intervals, as well as timely delivery of supplies. As Bierman put it, "Before we had this program, we didn't have any local company available to service our equipment. It also seemed that every time we needed parts, they had to be placed on backorder. We needed a solution quickly because of our dependence on the scanners."

ScanCare Gives Benefits To Both ImageTek And County Office
For Kruzan, a preventive maintenance approach eliminates the need and expense of maintaining a parts inventory and spares him from having to send service technicians to the site, which is about 125 miles away. "The biggest benefit to me of this type of program is logistics," said Kruzan. "Service is provided by the manufacturer before it is needed. This saves me time and the hassle of ordering parts and managing repair. Most importantly, my customers are confident that the scanners will always be at full capacity because of the regular care they receive."

Bierman agrees, "Since we've implemented ScanCare, we've experienced tremendous productivity increases. We appreciate the level of service we get from both ImageTek and Fujitsu to ensure that our equipment is operating at peak performance."

Fujitsu's ScanCare program is available to users of its M-series departmental- and production-level scanners. As an upgrade to existing standard warranties, ScanCare provides for timely deliveries of scanner consumables and provides on-site preventive maintenance calls at scheduled intervals. Fujitsu partners with Access Corporation, a premier service provider, to support the ScanCare programs throughout the United States.