- The three top concerns continue to be: competing with manufacturer’s direct branches (35%), declining clicks (32%), and hiring and retention (16%).
- When we view those concerns regardless of where the dealer ranked them as a concern (dealers could identify multiple concerns), the top three concerns are declining clicks (54%), hiring and retention (50%), and maintaining profitability (46%).
- Competing with manufacturer’s direct branches may still be a primary concern for many dealers, but when examining concerns regardless of positioning, it has fallen out of the top three into fourth place with 39% of dealers citing this as a concern.
- Dealers representing Canon (50%) are most concerned about competition from direct branches compared to dealers representing the other Big Six OEMs.
- Approximately 10% of respondents identified “Other” (including acquisitions, the rise of mega dealers, and favorable pricing mega dealers receive from OEMs) as a concern.
- Dealers’ overall average rating of their A3 manufacturers experienced a modest uptick over the previous year with the Big Six averaging 4.43 out of a possible score of 5.0. Last year, the rating was 4.36.
- Dealers rate Sharp the top A3 manufacturer with 4.7, up from 4.4 in 2018.
- Canon’s A3 rating is 4.3, a significant improvement over last year’s 3.9 (and the only OEM to score below 4.0).
- Four of the Big Six OEM’s dealer meetings are rated 4.0 or better, while two dealer meetings—Canon and Kyocera—are rated below 4.0.
- We saw one significant improvement and one notable drop in the A4 ratings. Sharp is the highest at 4.4, bettering last year’s 4.0, while Kyocera’s 3.8, a drop from last year’s 4.4, is the lowest rating of any A4 supplier in our Survey.
- Dealers’ overall rating of their primary A4 MFP manufacturer is 4.2, a slight uptick from last year’s 3.98, but still surprisingly low in comparison to the average A3 rating.
- For the third consecutive year, the average number of leasing partners is 2.6.
- The top four leasing partners—identified by 25 or more dealers as a “primary” partner—are GreatAmerica Financial Services Corporation (4.8), U.S. Bank (4.6), TIAA (4.5), and Wells Fargo (4.4).
- The percentage of dealers handling their own leasing increased slightly from 5.66% last year to 5.83% in 2019.
- This year, for the first time, we asked dealers to rank their ECM/document management software provider and their print management provider. The top four ECM/document management providers are Square 9, DocuWare, PaperCut, and MFiles. The top four print management providers are PaperCut, FMAudit, PrintFleet, and Kyocera Fleet Services.
- For Big Six dealers whose core business is A3 MFPs, 90% are optimistic, despite the challenges presented by declining clicks, tighter margins, and pressure to expand product offerings beyond A3.
- The most optimistic dealers in the A3 space are Canon (93%) and Ricoh (91%). The least optimistic dealers are Kyocera (88%) and Sharp (90%).
- Canon (93%) and Ricoh (91%) are the most optimistic dealers concerning A4. Surprisingly, Kyocera’s previously optimistic dealers dropped to 88%, down from 96% last year.
- Overall, 90% of Big Six dealers are optimistic from an A4 perspective, a 3% increase from last year.
- The average percentage of optimism in production print among the Big Six dealers is 63%, up 2% from last year, with 20% saying they are pessimistic, down from 23% last year.
- When we track the ratings of the “haves” (Canon, Konica Minolta, Ricoh) and the “have nots” (Kyocera, Sharp, Toshiba) in the production space, there is a sizeable discrepancy in the degree of optimism. Here, 75% of dealers representing the haves are optimistic, while only 51% of the have nots are optimistic.
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