The Beginning: PointMan Exchange(TM)
PointManagement began in 2005 with a single customer, Penske Corporation, for whom we provisioned, maintained, and supplied their printer fleet. Our unique system of advance/replacement repairs with “fully refurbished, not just repaired” printers was a hit with customers managing mission-critical printers in hundreds or thousands of locations. We developed custom hard-shell shipping containers to assure all printers make the trip with zero damage. And the cases have simple butterfly clips, so it’s easy for the end user to remove the replacement printer and ship back the defective. No need to reassemble cardboard and foam inserts, which are often damaged in transit.
PointManagement’s service process saved time for the end user and the help desk. New and replacement printers arrived overnight with the IP address, Subnet Mask, and Gateway pre-loaded so the end user can plug and play.
This meant ticket resolution was swift — 99.3% resolved overnight rather than the 3.8 business days Mean Time to Repair for onsite service. As a result, Penske’s help desk call volume decreased by 23%, asset life was extended by 3 years, and CapEx for contract printers decreased 38%
Growth
With results like that, more customers came aboard.
We continued innovating, designing custom cases to enable advance exchange with no damage in transit. To magnify results, we added installation service for the replacement printer to the hot-swap advance replacement model, with the defective units shipping back to us for full refurbishment. One Fortune 500 customer deferred over $9M in CapEx for 6 additional years and named us “IT Partner of the Year.”
Best Practices Managed Print
Printer services were enhanced with PointMan’s own brand of Managed Print Services that includes built-in solutions with best practices solutions:
- Consumables shipments are labeled to the exact printer that ordered them, so they are put into the correct printer. Solves the waste problem from users putting toner in the wrong printer.
- Predictive maintenance addresses issues before the printer is down. This eliminates downtime for maintenance.
Mobility Extension and Full Lifecycle Services
Finally, we extended our services to tablets and smart phones through partnerships with Gartner Magic Quadrant Mobile SaaS and EMM companies.
We further integrated our logistics and field services systems to give our customers superior results behind a single portal, solving some complex problems for enterprises with large fleets of mobile devices along the way, such as:
- A $10B global manufacturer with thousands of field service engineers enabled by phones and tablets needed help with their mobility program. We implemented Gartner MQ SAAS and reduced their wireless carrier expenses by over $5M in year 1. Everything from procurement, policy management, entitlement, logistics, customers service, and carriers were now enabled and automated. We also fulfill mobile device and accessories orders placed through the software.
- An $8B specialty construction retailer connected their mobility teams to automate end-to-end workflow and enable vastly improved interoperability. They saved over $6.5M on wireless carrier expense in the first year following implementation.
- A $92B health insurance provider was having difficulty getting reliable stock and distribution of mobile accessories to their 14,000 end users. The carriers kept ending supplies for phone models when a new model came out with no notice. This left them high and dry. We improved fill rates from 84.6% to 99.7% and never leave them without product for last year’s model. We also reduced mean time to ship from 4.2 days to same day. And they saved money on the direct cost of mobile devices, too.
Our customer base grew as large enterprises continue to seek the ever-changing high-water mark in telecom management. The demand for Fixed and Mobile Telecom managed services on a single portal grew, and PointManagement was there to accommodate both sides of the house in a single, integrated, portal.
Today, PointManagement continues to innovate in both managed print and managed mobility/telecom with best practices logistics processes and systems integrated with Gartner Magic Quadrant SaaS.