Greg Walters discusses his appliance ArcDrive and what it means to the dealer channel.
In The Cannata Report’s 34th Annual Dealer Survey, Managed Print Services (MPS) and ECM/document management were two of the top five growth opportunities identified by dealers, ranking first and fourth, respectively. Dealers continue to struggle with MPS while the price of some of the ECM/document management solutions on the market today locks out many SMB customers because those solutions are too expensive.
With the introduction in June of ArcDrive from Greg Walters, Inc., the company founded by MPS guru Greg Walters, that may change. Walters, one of the masterminds behind this new product, has been busy taking his message to the dealer channel and signing them up to carry the product.
We saw Walters at the recent BTA Grand Slam in New York City in September and followed up with him a week later to learn more about ArcDrive and his company’s go-to-market strategy.
CR: Pretend I don’t know anything about ArcDrive, and give me your elevator pitch.
Walters: ArcDrive is a simple appliance that addresses four basic functions: managing prints or optimizing your print fleet, scanning documents, routing documents, and archiving documents. Those functions are built into this small 7 1/2″ x 7 1/2″ footprint.
CR: How does it work?
Walters: It’s a computer that connects to either a workstation or network and automatically reads the hardware and finds the devices that are compatible with the scanning.
CR: Who is the target market?
Walters: SMBs with ten printers are a good fit.
CR: What happens with the information collected by ArcDrive?
Walters: It’s a hybrid cloud. We store things on the ArcDrive and in the cloud, but it doesn’t have to be in the cloud. It’s different from a lot of the business models out there. When you pay 50 bucks a month to do your document management up into the cloud, it sounds good, but it’s $50 or X amount a month every single month for the rest of your business life. ArcDrive is yours after the lease or you can buy it outright.
CR: When you talk about SMBs with ten printers, those are typically companies that haven’t been taking advantage of print management or document management because the solutions on the market are geared to larger organizations, right?
Walters: Right. That is the niche we’re going after. ArcDrive is a fit for companies that have enterprise-level document management challenges, but an SMB budget. We are going after dealers who have been walking by these opportunities because you can’t sell [the customer] an $8,000 or $10,000 copier and then try to sell them a $15,000 or even a $12,000 document management solution.
CR: How do you handle support?
Walters: We don’t charge for support. We bundle our support to the dealer in the dealer cost and the dealer can sell support contracts all they want. Our price includes the support, the licensing, and the service/warranty on the hardware for 36 months. We also have a 60-month option. It’s like a line item the dealer can sell and move on, or lease and move on. It’s not recurring revenue. I know that’s anti what everyone’s talking about. Right now, I just want to get ArcDrive in the field and then we’ll come up with a recurring revenue model.
CR: Does the dealer provide any support?
Walters: First-level support goes to the dealer and the dealer can just take the call and then refer over to us. We have our support structure back to the Netherlands where the software is [developed] and phone support in the U.S. during business hours. The three things we wanted was for it to be easy to sell, easy to implement, and easy to support. This solution comes all pre-configured. Changing the workflow is just like drawing lines on a screen with a mouse.
CR: Dealers always ask about margins, what are the margins?
Walters: Our dealer cost is significantly lower than every other comparable offering. We don’t have quotas. When you become a dealer with us, there’s a cost to buy a demo unit and [an additional unit to sell], and then we help you sell that first unit. We’ll do remote demos for them and help them with the needs analysis.
CR: Going back to that magic number of ten printers, can you go higher than that?
Walters: Absolutely. The package price includes ten. There are no blocks or anything like that.
CR: What if I have 20 printers, what do I need?
Walters: We just increase the DCA capacity from ten to 20.
CR: What if I have more than one location?
Walters: If you have more than one location, there are two options. You could put in another ArcDrive SX or we have ArcDrive RTS, which is a smaller version of the ArcDrive and executes our rapid transfer synchronization. The ArcDrive RTS carries the DCA and image capture functionality. The data is encrypted and sent back to the ArcDrive SX for processing and routing.
CR: How are you bringing ArcDrive to the market?
Walters: TonerCycle/InkCycle is our primary distributor. They’ve got a sales team and they’re hitting their existing clients. They get the appointments, do some qualification and we do the demos and the discussion, and then they close it. The dealer does not have to buy toner from TonerCycle/InkCycle to get ArcDrive from them.
CR: It certainly sounds like this is something that addresses a big need in the market.
Walters: I think we’ve got something here that could change the conversation and help a lot of dealers survive or thrive, or maybe move into a different area.
CR: If somebody wants to learn more about ArcDrive, how can they reach you?
Walters: arcdrive.com, obviously that’s the website. And then, Greg@thearcdrive.com.
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