A Commercial Success

It has been a close race for printing
solutions honors between HP and Canon, with href="http://www.dqweek.com/Canon-to-open-100-brand-shops-in-2011">Canon
just pipping HP to
the post, thanks to the strong endorsement of solution providers for
Canon's after sales support and commercial terms offered. The two
tie up in terms of overall product quality and marketing support,
though HP surges ahead in relationship management. Canon has really
hit off well in scalability, advertising, allocation of funds for
marketing, geographical reach and its interactive site for resolving
queries. It has held on tightly to its commercial terms with partners
regarding the clarity of the pricing contract, promptness with which
the schemes and incentive programs are organized, credit facility
and flexibility in terms of commercial terms and conditions. HP at
the #2 position seems to be the most responsible when it comes to
responsiveness and availability of service personnel. It has also
impressed solution providers with its richness of online resources
and its dedicated personnel for maintaining relationship with
vendors. But the company can improve its turnaround time for online
support.

Channel partners seem to be a little
less dependent on Xerox, when it comes to security aspects of the
products, presence of online partner portals, effectiveness and
technological leadership of vendor. Still, Xerox has managed to keep
the solution providers happy by acting fair on their claim
settlement. It has also been continuously communicating with system
integrators. Xerox office equipment offers a wide range of printers,
copiers,
scanners, fax machines and all-in-one multifunction printers to suit
personal to high use work groups which have helped them secure good
scores on relationship management with channel partners.