During last week’s panel discussion about the scanning and archiving market for reprographics shops, our panelists offered a mountain of advice on succeeding in this market, ranging from what some of the best markets are to tips on marketing to them. Below are five key take-aways.
The panelists were TJ Hurckes of BHFX, Carter Crisp of Crisp Imaging, Sean Eikenberry from ScanWide, and Doyle Cryer and Andrew Brockhaus from National/AZON. You can watch a recording of the entire event and/or read a transcript of it by logging into the Member Portal and clicking on the “Reports and Recorded Webinars” tab on the left.
Tap the School Market
Several of the panelists discussed the value of the school market for scanning/archiving.
“We have really focused on the school district arena,” Hurckes of BHFX said. “In 2014 we launched a database solution for facility managers…and we just added our 106th school district. We scan their entire archive and then, moving forward, we scan and digitize and organize all their closeouts moving forward.”
Hurckes explained that a key element to his success in the area is the on-going service he provides. Whenever one of his school district clients renovates a building or adds a new structure, they send him the documents and he updates their archive.
Crisp from Crisp Imaging said his firm also profits from school scanning. His sales staff pays attention to school funding issues, and when it looks like a school district may have extra money, they suggest that some of it be used to scan their documents. Hurckes echoed that idea, and added that when a multi-million dollar school construction project is announced, it’s not difficult to convince the leadership that spending a few thousand on a well-designed scanning/archiving project is worthwhile.
An attendee to the online panel asked what school leadership titles Hurckes and Crisp pursue when selling the services. Their replies differed:
Carter: “We try to be really connected at the top, so we would try to know all the superintendents for all the school districts. …USC's education program has created a lot of the superintendents in Southern California, so we're really well-connected in there.”
Hurckes: “Your larger districts, they're going to have a buildings and ground director, or facility manager. Those are the guys you want to talk to. Your smaller districts, and when I say smaller, five buildings or less, that may be the business manager maybe wearing multiple hats.”
Even Digital Prints Can Be Scanned
Do your clients have CAD documents on floppy discs or tape drives? If so, those documents are not accessible – nobody has a computer that can access old media like that. But they probably have hard copies of those documents….and if they need them to be digital again, you can scan them for them.
“I figured, 30 years ago when I started at this, that I'd have a job for about four years and we would have everything scanned,” noted Azon’s Cryer. “I would say 60 percent of what's being scanned today are digital prints that people don't have electronic copies of. … I'm stunned at how many electronic files turn into paper and get scanned again to become digital files.”
Be the Custodian
Scanning old documents and creating an archive is one source of revenue, but creating a living archive and being the custodian of that archive can create a regular revenue stream.
“Carter and TJ really have the right idea of keeping the customers' documents, keeping custody of them, being custodians or the librarians for them,” said ScanWide’s Eikenberry. “And that really drives recurring revenue. You make a lot more money on that than you will for the original scanning job, if you can capture their drawings and keep them for them, and keep in the loop while they're using the drawings. And right now, the prevalent solution for storing those documents …. is very burdensome to the municipalities, the state and local governments, to pay those fees, and they're always looking for alternatives.”
Quality Control is a Key Step
Naturally, your scanning service will be more successful if customers return, and giving them scans that are clean, readable and accurately indexed will bring them back. To do that, you need to include a quality control step in your process.
“It’s very important to have quality control separate from your operator,” noted Brockhaus from Azon. “Not separate, but on top of. You have your operator who runs things, gets things done, but you absolutely positively have to have somebody who’s running quality control on the other side.”
Cryer added to that idea. He explained that when a repro house takes in a small job, the quality control check may be 100 percent – every drawing is examined to make sure it was done right. That changes with a big job: “When somebody's taken on a quarter of a million drawings to scan, generally part of the negotiation is the quality control is going to be 20% of the documents are verified or 50%, and there's pricing accordingly as to how that goes higher.”
Market at Trade Shows
The panelists discussed several ways to market their scanning services, ranging from asking for word-of-mouth to using Constant Contact. Eikenberry suggested getting a booth at trade shows attended by facilities managers, healthcare engineers or other people with lots of old drawings.
“I had one customer that's a scanning service bureau,” he said. “What they do is they just get a 10 by 10 booth and they have their popup banner in the back, and then some literature in the front and some giveaways. And the rest of their booth, they just throw trash in it, rolled up drawings, nasty blueprints…. And the attendees all come up and say, ‘Yeah, I have a room that looks like that.’ And they put them on the couch and interview them and tell them, ‘It's going to be okay. We'll be your librarians. We'll organize everything for you when we leave. You'll still have your paper documents….but we're going to take care of them and we're going to put them in a database and software that you can use and always find your documents and your pain's going go away.’"
You can watch a recording of the entire event and/or read a transcript of it by logging into the Member Portal and clicking on the “Reports and Recorded Webinars” tab on the left.