The Death of The Copier

The Cloud, the Cylons, and the Return of the Server Room

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 12:35:25 -0500

Ai is consuming business software, rewriting the economics of subscriptions, and raising a question we thought we’d settled thirty years ago: Who should own the computer?

Think about it.

We’ve spent three decades moving our businesses into someone else’s computers. We called it the cloud, celebrated the freedom from server rooms, and gradually accepted monthly subscriptions as the cost of doing business.

Microsoft gets paid every month. So does Salesforce. SAP and ServiceNow have their place in the corporate budget. AWS and Azure collect their share of the infrastructure expense. Even at home, Netflix reminds us that access has become a recurring financial obligation.

We’ve become comfortable renting everything.

Then Ai arrived and started consuming the very applications we’ve spent decades purchasing.

And that changes the calculation.

When Ai Eats the Application

Consider Salesforce.

read the rest...

Keypoint Puts Robotics Questions on the Table. The Continuum Has the Answers.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 6 Oct 2026 11:41:07 -0500

Another great article reflecting the growing opportunity for robots in office technology.

David Sweetnam asks the right questions about how our little niche might take advantage of robotics to increase revenue, reduce costs, grow profits, attract great talent, and secure the legacy. Five of many planks in The Continuum Platform.

They are questions The Cricket Continuum started addressing almost two years ago.

From the article:

“Could you sell it? Who would buy it? What problem would it solve? How well does it actually perform? Can your organization support it? And would you be comfortable putting your company’s reputation behind it?”

We have answers.

“Could you sell it?”

Yes.

We have dealers doing it right now, today. They are taking robots into customer accounts, conducting demonstrations, identifying applications, building proposals, and starting the same conversations they have had around technology for decades.

“Who would buy it?”

The cheeky answer?

Only your customers who have floors.

Cleaning, delivery, internal transport, hospitality, healthcare, education, facilities and light warehousing all give dealers places to start. In many cases, you already have the customer relationship. You simply need to walk farther into the building, including and beyond finding the copiers, printers, and supply room.

“What problem would it solve?”

Save labor hours and make jobs less miserable.

Walking the same route 40 times a day, pushing a cart from one end of a building to another, scrubbing thousands of square feet of floor, moving supplies, delivering food or carrying materials are all necessary jobs.

They do not all require a person to perform every step.

“How well does it actually perform?”

We have seen the answer in the field.

At ECS, two of our robots operated throughout the show, cleaning and moving through crowds while people, tables and carts constantly changed the environment around them.

That is considerably more useful than watching a robot run a perfect route inside a controlled demonstration area.

“Can your organization support it?”

We believe office technology dealers are unusually well suited for this.

You already support complicated electromechanical equipment in customer environments every day. You dispatch technicians, manage parts, handle service calls, maintain contracts and explain problems to customers.

Compared with supporting a device built around the seven-step xerographic process, a machine using LIDAR, cameras, batteries, software and wheels is not an alien concept for a competent service organization.

Your technicians have learned harder things.

“Would you be comfortable putting your company’s reputation behind it?”

You do this everyday, already.

Copiers. Document management. Managed print. Managed IT. Cybersecurity. Water. EV Stations. You’re not afraid of risks, and you KNOW what your clients expect and need.

You’re not going to make a bad decision, especially with office ready robots.

There is not another emerging demand curve that so naturally fits the way we have done business since before the computer, laser printer and fax machine. All the way back to the typewriter - we’ve been solving business problems and prospering.

Robots are next.

Six Questions, Six Answers: Just the Beginning

The Cricket Continuum started building the supporting infrastructure because the questions were obvious early on:

how are the robot manufacturers going to market? The Continuum.

is there a market, can we sell, support and service AND make money? The Continuum.

even with our industry matching and leading the way, what do we need to thrive and secure legacies beyond marks on paper? The Continuum.

Anyone can ask questions and raise doubts. That part is easy.

The Continuum has answers and a path forward.

Join us.

Robotics Is Repeating the MPS Playbook

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 5 Oct 2026 14:24:00 -0500

I’ve said it a million times, “the office ready robot category is just like the early days copier/office technology”, especially Managed print Services, albeit 17 years later.

Very similar to, but not identical with, the way we sell, manage and service fleets of output devices.

Office ready robots are like copiers that move around - usage, supplies, consumables and service SLA’s are part of the model not easily fulfilled by existing OEM ecosystems. That’s our wheelhouse.

“Innovation encroaches from another direction; from the left as we look right, from behind as we look ahead. Few ever see it coming.”

I’ve said it a million times, “the office ready robot category is just like the early days copier/office technology”, especially Managed print Services, albeit 17 years later.

Very similar to, but not identical with, the way we sell, manage and service fleets of output devices.

Office ready robots are like copiers that move around - usage, supplies, consumables and service SLA’s are part of the model not easily fulfilled by existing OEM ecosystems.

That’s our wheelhouse.

Read the article here.

Ask Us Anything CXXVII

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 10:09:00 -0500

End-of-quarter sales pain, robots, Epson, remote surgery, drones and Eddie Van Halen.

Pretty much a normal Friday on Ask Us Anything.

Art Post and I started with something every salesperson recognizes: a deal you did everything right on can still get pulled upstairs to corporate and disappear into somebody else’s purchasing process.

Then we got into what The Cricket Continuum has been building around robotics. The interesting part now is everything surrounding the machine: configuration, proposals, training, service costs, contracts, DCA/r, billing, financing and fleet support.

Kevin Fry joined us and took the conversation into Epson. Their work combining inkjet technology with robotic motion caught my attention because print and robotics are starting to occupy the same conversation. Kevin also shared a great firsthand story about the precision of an Epson robotic arm he saw in action.

Somewhere along the way we made it to drones supporting remote medical care, Sharp entering the Ai server business, how quickly original ideas get absorbed and recombined, and why Eddie Van Halen's sound was partly born from messing around with electronics.

You know. Office technology.

Watch Ask Us Anything CXXVII:

Print4Pay Hotel show page

#Robotics #OfficeTechnology #CopierDealers #EmbodiedAi #TheCricketContinuum #Printing #Sales #AMR

📠 Congratulations, You Got the Order. Now Start Worrying.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 07:46:21 -0500

There is a wonderful moment in sales when the customer finally signs the order. You have been prospecting, presenting, demonstrating, revising proposals, answering questions, changing lease terms and following up without becoming the person whose phone number the customer blocks.

Then it happens. The signature arrives. ✍️🎉

For approximately 11 minutes, life is perfect. You lean back in your chair and admire the signed agreement like it's hanging in the Louvre. Maybe you forward it to your manager with a few exclamation points. You update the CRM to, which might be the two most beautiful words in the English language. You start thinking about commission, quota and perhaps what you're having for dinner. Life is goodThen the salesperson's brain wakes up.

😳Read the Rest, here.

9/11/2026 and 250 Years

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 08:06:59 -0500

Since 2012, I've posted this video on DOTC and whatever platform de jour -

It was the song, written for America well before 911, it was the Super Bowl, it was the people, it was the time, and it was the flag on the inside of his jacket.

25 years later, NYC has a mayor who shares beliefs with the group that brought down the towers. Fact.

25 years later we have communities being built exclusively for people who believe the same things as the group that brought down the towers. Fact.

25 years later we have parades in the streets of America celebrating the same beliefs and ideals as those who brought down the towers. Fact.

and

25 years later the United States of America is the largest economic power in the history of mankind. Fact.

25 years later the United States of America is celebrating 250 years of this beautiful, ongoing experiment, the most free society in the history of mankind. Fact.

25 years later the United States of America is leading the Free World, indeed the entire World back to space and into the greatest technological movement in the history of Mankind. Fact.

and of course, The United States of America has the freedom

to be flawed. Fact.

Yes, there is Evil. 911 was not our first brush, that happened in 1801.

Today, 9/11/2026,

Remember the Day.

Remember the Who.

Remember the Why.

tell those who weren't there - in your words.

And most important, most reverent,

remember your responsibility as an American to be optimistic, and fiercely passionate about the next 250 years.

- grw

https://youtu.be/og0V1UtjPt4

What Breaks When Office Technology Dealers Acquire Each Other

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 4 Sep 2026 08:28:07 -0500

Nearly half of office technology dealers say they plan to buy another dealership or service company. The purchase agreement is not the hard part. The hard part starts about 90 days after close: two customer files, two serial histories, two dispatch boards, and two item masters are still running while customers expect the same technician tomorrow.

Not the least of these challenges is the daunting task of integrating two businesses’ systems into a single management point of truth, efficiency, and execution. But there are other obstacles along the way that even the most discerning business executive may overlook.

Office Technology and Equipment Dealer Acquisitions

This isn’t hypothetical. It is happening. Examples include Pacific Office Automation, Datamax, Novatech (from ENX 2025–26 deal coverage), and there are many more. In fact, nearly half of surveyed dealers say they plan to buy another shop. But the deal is usually the easy part. The difficulties typically arise some 90 days after the deal closes. You are now struggling to manage two customer files, differing serial-number histories, two dispatch boards, varied item masters, and customers who still expect the same technician and support they have come to expect.

So whether you are buying a copier dealership, making an office equipment dealer acquisition, or even integrating two service organizations, it is important to understand what to look for to ensure success. Additionally, if your dealer business is potentially considering being acquired in the future, positioning your company to take into account these details will be very helpful.

First, let’s take a look at the current market

Here.

Follow the Cart, Part 1: Your Next Sale May Have Wheels

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 07:00:00 -0500

For most of my career in the office equipment business, I could walk into a building and spot a copier before I found the receptionist. I suspect most experienced copier salespeople can do the same thing. We notice the logo from 50 feet away, whether it has a finisher, and probably wonder who owns the lease before we’ve even been offered a cup of coffee. We take a quick look at the model number and start doing copier math in our heads. Is it three years old? Four? Five? Is that their machine or somebody else’s? What’s the monthly volume, and when does the lease expire? After enough years in this business, it almost becomes a sixth sense.

Here’s the funny part. While we’re staring at the copier, an employee might walk right past us pushing a cart, and we don’t even notice it. Maybe that employee is moving parts from one side of a manufacturing facility to another. Maybe it’s mail, supplies, tools, finished goods, documents, medical supplies, food, linens, components or materials headed from Point A to Point B. The employee disappears down the hallway, comes back 15 minutes later, loads the cart again and repeats the trip. Meanwhile, we’re still staring at the copier.

Welcome to Follow the Cart.

Read Here.

BTA at 200: What the First 100 Years Tell Us About the Next 100

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 1 Sep 2026 18:29:08 -0500

By Mason Bright | Greg Report Ai 2027

In January 1926, independent typewriter dealers met in Kansas City and formed the National Association of Typewriter Dealers. Annual dues cost $10.

A dealer in that room sold machines with keys, ribbons, platens, gears, and a carriage moving across the page. His customers needed those machines to run their offices, and his business depended on knowing how to sell them, finance them, repair them, and keep them working.

BTA returns to Kansas City in 2026 for its centennial.

A hundred years gives us enough distance to see what held and what disappeared. The machines changed, the manufacturers changed, and the office changed around them. Dealers kept adjusting their companies to whatever customers were willing to buy next.

That history gives us a sound place to start when we look toward 2126.

The Association Changed Names for a Reason

The typewriter held enough weight in 1926 to sit in the association’s name.

In 1933, the organization became the National Typewriter and Office Machine Dealers Association. In 1943, it became the National Office Machine Dealers Association.

The word “typewriter” was gone because the business had moved beyond it. Dealers had added calculators, duplicators, dictation equipment, copiers, and other office machines.

Electronics pushed the change further. Copiers gained a larger place inside the office. Fax machines arrived. Personal computers appeared on desks. Networks connected equipment that had spent decades working alone.

The copier business grew around placement, financing, supplies, service, and meter revenue. A dealership built trucks, dispatch, parts inventory, leasing relationships, contracts, and account management around that machine.

Then the copier gained a network card and an IP address.

read the rest here

Ray’s BTA Question Leads to Another Question: Why Now?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 16:30:49 -0500

Celeste Dame 🚀🧠 | greg report 2027 Jul 13, 2026

A Seat at the BTA Table

Ray recently reviewed the Business Technology Association’s Form 990 and raised concerns about the amount of money the association holds in reserve.

The figures may be accurate. The argument built around them belongs to Ray.

My first reaction was simpler: Why now?

Become a member. Attend the meetings. Submit a proposal. Work with the committees. Convince other members that a different direction is needed.

The BTA is celebrating its 100th anniversary. The organization has more attention around it than usual, and Ray has found a public filing that gives him a timely subject for the big Sharp board.

The BTA did not accumulate these assets last Tuesday. Its tax filings have been publicly available. If its financial strategy presents such a serious problem for dealers, why did it suddenly become urgent during the centennial?

Ray believes the BTA should use more of its reserves for marketing, education, events, certifications, and membership growth. Those subjects deserve discussion. Every association should regularly examine where its money goes and what members receive in return.

Spending more money, however, does not automatically create progress.

read the rest here

OFFICE TECH & AI – The Buyer Has a Machine Now, Too

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 16:27:05 -0500

In the “olden days,” we walked into an account knowing more than the prospect. We knew the speeds and feeds, the lease ex-dates, the service costs, and the components of the monthly payment.

All the buyer knew was that the old device jammed Friday afternoon, the invoice “never matched” the quote, and the office manager had stopped believing the service promise sometime around the third callback.

That conversation has evolved, especially in this new AI/LLM world.

I wonder how many prospects are using AI now, and how much that changes the sale.

A quick look at the research reveals a few interesting points. Our prospects, especially the SMBs, may not have a corporate AI policy, but the data says employees are already adopting and using LLMs.

The Census Bureau’s Business Trends and Outlook Survey showed U.S. business use of AI was modest in early 2024, rising from 3.7% in fall 2023 to 5.4% in February 2024. By spring 2025, The Washington Post reported that 8.7% of U.S. companies used AI to produce products and services between April 21 and May 4, 2025, up from 4.8% a year earlier. That is formal business use, like AI-driven CRMs or line-of-business applications. That is not the “I asked ChatGPT before the meeting” usage.

Read the rest here.

From Copier Sales to Ai: The Long Journey of the Modern Salesperson

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 17:57:49 -0500

I started writing about the future of selling in 2008, although it did not feel like the future at the time.

The copier business was still built around equipment, territories, quotas, leases, service contracts, and the belief that the salesperson controlled the information. Customers needed us to explain speeds, feeds, finishing options, duty cycles, and cost per page. We carried brochures, made demonstrations, and waited outside offices hoping someone would give us twenty minutes.

The machine sat at the center of the conversation.

Even then, it was becoming clear that the old approach was wearing thin.

I described a new salesperson built around partnership, business acumen, and empathy. Partnership meant moving beyond the transaction. Business acumen meant understanding how the customer operated, made money, processed information, and served its own customers. Empathy meant seeing the business from the other side of the desk.

There was also a fourth quality, one that sales training rarely discussed: emotional control.

A professional salesperson needed to care deeply about the customer’s outcome while remaining capable of hearing no, walking away, and returning the next morning without dragging yesterday’s disappointment behind him.

That early framework became the foundation for nearly everything that followed.

Managed Print Services Exposed the Contradiction

Managed Print Services arrived promising a broader relationship.

The industry began talking about fleet optimization, cost reduction, device management, workflow improvement, and long-term customer outcomes. We were told to study the entire environment instead of replacing one machine at a time.

The language changed quickly. The compensation plans did not.

Salespeople were encouraged to reduce devices while manufacturers still expected more boxes. Dealers promoted optimization while measuring success through equipment revenue. MPS was presented as a business strategy, then shoved through systems built to reward hardware movement.

That contradiction followed the industry for years.

Still, MPS forced salespeople to look beyond the copier. We had to understand print behavior, departmental workflows, service costs, user habits, document movement, security, and infrastructure. The assessment became more valuable than the demonstration. The questions became more valuable than the presentation.

For many salespeople, this was the first real step toward business consulting.

The Copier Began Losing Its Authority

The machine did not disappear. It became one component inside a much larger system.

Scanning, document management, mobile devices, cloud platforms, workflow automation, cybersecurity, remote work, and software subscriptions changed the environment around the copier. Print volumes declined. Documents moved electronically. Employees worked from kitchens, airports, branch offices, and hotel rooms.

The equipment remained useful, but it stopped defining the entire relationship.

This created an uncomfortable problem for the traditional salesperson. Product knowledge had once created credibility. Eventually, anyone could find product information online before the first appointment.

The customer no longer needed a walking brochure.

The customer needed someone who could explain what the technology meant inside the business.

That required a different kind of preparation. Salespeople had to learn how orders moved through a company, how invoices were approved, where delays occurred, which processes frustrated employees, and how management measured performance.

A salesperson who understood only the machine was becoming less useful with every software release.

Business Acumen Became the Real Sales Advantage

Over time, my writing moved further into business acumen because the gap was impossible to ignore.

Many salespeople knew the product line and very little about the customer’s business. They could explain finishing options but could not explain how a construction company billed a project, how a law firm managed case files, how a medical office handled protected information, or how a distributor processed orders.

That weakness showed up in discovery.

The questions were often shallow:

How many machines do you have?

What is your monthly volume?

When does your lease expire?

Who is your current provider?

Those questions gather information for a quote. They do not reveal the business.

Better questions explored consequences, delays, responsibilities, customer expectations, bottlenecks, and risk. They helped the prospect describe the problem in his own language.

This was where the Socratic approach became useful. Ask. Listen. Clarify. Test the assumption. Follow the answer instead of rushing toward the next scripted question.

The best sales conversations began to feel less like sales presentations and more like two businesspeople examining a situation together.

Customers Took Control of the Buying Process

The internet shifted power toward the buyer long before many sales organizations admitted it.

Customers could research products, compare vendors, read reviews, watch demonstrations, and speak with peers without contacting a salesperson. By the time a rep entered the conversation, the prospect might already have a preferred direction.

Cold calling became harder. Email became noisier. Generic messaging disappeared into crowded inboxes.

The salesperson had to earn attention earlier and in different ways.

That meant writing, sharing ideas, participating on LinkedIn, developing a recognizable point of view, and contributing something useful before asking for a meeting.

Salespeople slowly became their own marketing departments.

This did not require becoming an online celebrity. It required being visible, credible, and relevant. A thoughtful article, a practical observation, or a useful explanation could create familiarity long before the first conversation.

The rep who waited for corporate marketing to create all the demand was giving away control of his own career.

Virtual Selling Changed the Personality of Sales

COVID accelerated changes already underway.

Meetings moved to video. Offices emptied. Travel stopped. Buyers became comfortable making decisions without shaking hands. Salespeople who relied heavily on physical presence, entertainment, and conference-room charisma had to learn a new rhythm.

Virtual selling rewarded preparation.

The rep needed to be concise, organized, technically competent, and respectful of time. Listening became easier to measure because there was nowhere to hide. Poor questions sounded worse over video. Long presentations felt even longer.

Some introverted salespeople adapted quickly. They researched deeply, prepared carefully, and communicated without performing for the room.

The screen exposed habits the conference table had concealed.

Virtual selling also made empathy more visible. Buyers were dealing with uncertainty, illness, childcare, isolation, supply shortages, and constant disruption. The salesperson who ignored the human situation sounded mechanical.

Technology had made the interaction more efficient. Human understanding became more important inside that efficiency.

The Salesperson Became Responsible for His Own Education

Traditional sales training could not keep pace with the market.

Products changed. Platforms changed. customer expectations changed. Industries changed. Buying committees expanded. New competitors appeared from outside the traditional channel.

A yearly kickoff meeting and a product certification course were no longer enough.

The salesperson had to become self-directed.

That meant reading outside the industry, studying customer markets, riding with technicians, spending time with service, learning leasing, understanding contracts, observing installations, and asking how each department contributed to the customer experience.

The first ninety days of a sales career became less about memorizing the catalog and more about building a working model of the entire business.

The same principle applied to experienced reps. Learning could not stop once the territory became familiar.

Familiarity is dangerous in sales. It creates the illusion that the customer is still buying the way customers bought five years ago.

Ai Arrived as the Next Sales Tool

Large language models accelerated the self-directed salesperson.

Ai could help research accounts, study industries, prepare questions, rehearse objections, summarize documents, examine proposals, draft outreach, compare competitors, and simulate conversations.

A salesperson could build a private coaching environment and practice without waiting for a manager, trainer, or scheduled workshop.

This changed the economics of learning.

The rep with curiosity and discipline gained access to research and practice capabilities once reserved for larger organizations. A new salesperson could explore an industry before the first call. An experienced rep could test messaging, review a stalled deal, or examine a compensation plan.

The technology rewarded people who already knew how to think.

Weak questions still produced weak results. Poor judgment still produced poor decisions. Ai amplified the user’s habits, preparation, and understanding.

For the salesperson willing to learn, it became a force multiplier.

The Journey

Across these years, the role kept expanding.

The product seller learned to sell solutions.

The solution seller learned to understand the business.

The business advisor learned to communicate as a peer.

The peer learned to build a personal brand and create his own opportunities.

The independent professional learned to use Ai for research, preparation, role-play, analysis, and continuous education.

The thread running through the entire journey is not a particular machine, service plan, software platform, or sales methodology.

It is adaptation.

I entered an industry where the machine carried most of the authority. The brochure held the information. The salesperson delivered it. The customer listened.

That world faded slowly, then all at once.

Today, information is abundant. Products are temporary. Technology changes before the lease expires. Customers arrive informed, skeptical, and impatient. They have little interest in another rehearsed presentation.

They are looking for someone who can understand the business in front of them, recognize what is changing, ask intelligent questions, and explain the consequences without hiding behind jargon.

After decades of selling technology, the lesson is almost irritatingly clear.

The machine was never the most valuable part of the sale.

The valuable part was learning how to see the business around it.

Where are you in the progression?

Product seller, solution seller, business advisor, executive peer, independent professional, or Ai-assisted business interpreter?

The answer may reveal how prepared you are for the next version of selling.

Sales-side Ai use cases that mirror buyer-side purchasing agents

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 10:15:39 -0500

Sales-side Ai becomes powerful when it helps the rep validate demand, pressure-test the proposal, and prepare for a buyer whose purchasing machine may already be reading the deal.

Yes, sales already has use cases that operate in a similar manner to buyer-side purchasing Ai.

The strongest version goes far beyond “write me a better email.” That is table stakes now.

The real seller-side use case is this:

Use Ai to understand the buyer’s world before the buyer’s Ai reviews the seller’s proposal.

Purchasing Ai will inspect proposals, compare pricing, study vendor behavior, and question demand. Sales Ai can perform similar work from the seller’s side, helping the rep validate need, stress-test assumptions, prepare for procurement scrutiny, and build a proposal that survives a sharper buying process.

The seller-side counterpart;

Read the rest, Here.

How Copier Reps Book the First Robot Appointment

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 12:26:19 -0500

Robotics is moving into the same buildings copier dealers already know.

Not someday. Now.

Offices, schools, healthcare facilities, restaurants, hotels, campuses, light warehousing operations, and service-heavy customer environments are all looking for ways to reduce repetitive movement, improve workflow, and protect staff from work that drains time without adding much judgment.

That creates a real opening for the dealer channel. But there is a catch.

A robot sale does not begin with a product lecture. It begins with an appointment.

On Thursday, June 25, The Cricket Continuum will host How Copier Reps Book the First Robot Appointment, a Zoom webinar featuring Kate Kingston and the launch of Continuum Training, Powered by Kingston.

This session is built for copier dealers, office technology providers, MSPs, robotics partners, OEMs, affiliates, and sales leaders who see the robotics opportunity but need a practical way to start the customer conversation.

Kate Kingston will focus on the first sales move: how to get a customer to agree to a short route walkthrough. That is where Office Ready Robot selling starts. A rep does not need to explain every sensor, payload, software layer, or feature on the first call. The rep needs to secure enough time to walk the customer’s space, identify one repeatable route, and determine whether a robot fits the environment.

The Cricket Continuum will connect that appointment motion to CORR, the Cricket Office-Ready Robot path for dealer sales, discovery, demo, ROI, service readiness, and support.

Dealers already understand machine placement, leasing, field service, dispatch, contracts, renewals, and customer trust. Office Ready Robots extend that operating model into physical automation.

The June 25 session gives attendees one useful appointment structure they can take back to the sales floor. It also introduces the larger membership path inside The Cricket Continuum, including CORR certification, Continuum Training, Powered by Kingston, affiliate participation, TWAIN and twAIn Robotics relationship opportunities, and DCA/r development around usage-based robotics billing.

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/fR0IAQYlROKhW8qq6bSnyw#/registration

Marco. The Next IKON?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 4 Jun 2026 21:30:49 -0500

Executive summary

Marco Technologies is building the kind of platform the office technology channel has seen before.

The comparison to IKON is not exact. IKON was larger, public, multi-vendor, and eventually acquired by Ricoh. Marco is privately held under Norwest Equity Partners ownership and operates as a broad business technology provider across print, managed IT, security, voice, video, document management, and managed services.

The comparison still deserves attention.

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Over the last decade, Marco has followed a recognizable path: private-equity backing, acquisition-led expansion, regional stitching, broader technology services, national account capability, and now centralized logistics infrastructure designed to support customers across the United States.

That is the platform-dealer model.

The question for independent dealers is direct: if OEMs continue to reward coverage, scale, operational consistency, and service capability over protected geography, companies like Marco gain leverage. Local relationships still count, but local strength alone faces a harder test when a scaled dealer can offer multi-state service, centralized reporting, national logistics, and a broader technology stack.

IKON showed one possible outcome. A dealer platform became large enough and strategically useful enough that an OEM bought it. Marco has not reached that point. Public evidence does not prove that Marco will be acquired by an OEM or become the next IKON in size or structure. It does show a familiar model taking shape.

This report examines the alignment.

The IKON precedent

IKON became the office technology industry’s defining national dealer platform.

Its model was built through aggregation. Local and regional copier businesses brought accounts, technicians, sales territory, service history, vendor relationships, and local credibility. IKON combined those pieces into a national footprint capable of serving larger accounts and supporting multiple manufacturers.

The operating logic was clear. A national dealer platform gave major customers one broader provider relationship. It gave OEMs a large channel capable of selling, servicing, and managing customers across markets. It gave IKON leverage because it controlled customer access, field capacity, and account execution at scale.

By the time Ricoh acquired IKON in 2008, the platform had become strategically valuable. Ricoh did not buy a normal dealership. It bought distribution, service coverage, customer relationships, professional services capacity, and a North American and Western European operating footprint.

That is the lesson.

A dealer platform that becomes large enough changes its position in the channel. It stops functioning as one more reseller. It becomes infrastructure.

OEMs then face a limited set of choices. They depend on the platform, compete around it, reduce exposure to it, or buy it.

Marco’s decade of expansion

Marco entered its current growth phase in 2015, when Norwest Equity Partners acquired the company. At the time, Marco was already a sizable regional technology services provider with roots dating back to 1973, when it began as The Typewriter Shop in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

The ownership change gave Marco capital for a broader strategy. NEP identified several uses for that capital: penetrating new customer channels, expanding geographically through acquisitions, strengthening market position, and adding technology capabilities.

That strategy has played out in public.

Marco’s acquisition activity shows a pattern of regional expansion rather than isolated opportunism. In 2018, Marco bought Phillips Office Solutions, giving it a significant East Coast hub in Pennsylvania and Maryland. In 2023, Marco acquired Laser Tone Business Systems in Delaware and Hunter Business Systems in New Jersey, extending coverage into the Mid-Atlantic corridor. Later in 2023, it added INNOVEX, expanding into Rhode Island and Massachusetts. In 2024, Marco acquired Lang Company, extending into Kentucky and southern Indiana.

The public acquisition list also shows earlier moves in Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania, shredding, and other print-adjacent or service-adjacent lines. Marco now says it has completed 31 strategic acquisitions as part of its growth strategy.

The pattern is visible: build market reach, absorb local service organizations, keep regional customer bases, and widen the platform.

That is how national coverage gets built in this channel. Rarely all at once. Usually market by market, route by route, customer file by customer file.

The Iowa logistics center

Marco’s Des Moines-area logistics center is the clearest current marker of platform intent.

A 100,000-square-foot logistics facility does not exist merely to support a handful of local branches. It exists to support scale. Marco says the facility strengthens its national footprint, provides two-day nationwide shipping, supports print clients that rely on rapid response, and serves a managed print base of roughly 190,000 devices.

That changes the meaning of coverage.

A branch network gives local presence. A logistics backbone gives operational reach. The combination allows a provider to support larger customers across wider territories with more predictable parts flow, equipment staging, replenishment, and service support.

That is where the IKON comparison becomes sharper.

IKON aggregated local service businesses into a national operating model. Marco appears to be building a modern version of the same platform logic: acquisitions create customer access and field presence, while centralized logistics creates national execution capacity.

The Iowa facility also points to future intent. Marco says additional logistics locations are planned for 2026 and 2027. That suggests the Des Moines facility is not a one-off investment. It is part of a broader distribution architecture.

For independent dealers, this is the pressure point. A local dealer may know the customer better, respond with more personal urgency, and maintain stronger community trust. A platform dealer can increasingly answer enterprise demands with standardized service, reporting, logistics, purchasing leverage, national account handling, and a single-provider structure.

Large customers understand that math. OEMs understand it even better.

Konica Minolta and the timing problem

Konica Minolta’s 2025 dealer-agreement changes create a timely backdrop for the Marco question.

IDC reported that Konica Minolta moved away from territory authorization toward company authorization. Dealers may sell outside prior territorial limits if they can prove authorized service capability in the target area. IDC also reported a new 90-day cancellation policy and an inter-territorial program designed to create a more structured framework for service and installation across territories.

Public reporting frames these changes as modernization. Konica Minolta faces the same pressures as the rest of the print channel: declining clicks, margin compression, customer shifts toward digital processes, and the need for net-new growth. In that context, a service-capability model has logic.

The model also favors dealers with scale.

A dealer with certified technicians, broader service coverage, centralized logistics, and multi-state account management gains new room to grow. A smaller dealer with a narrower footprint faces a more difficult competitive field. Protected geography weakens. Service capability becomes the gating factor. Operational reach becomes strategic.

The public record does not prove that Konica Minolta changed its dealer structure for Marco. It does show that the new structure benefits dealers with wider coverage, stronger logistics, and national-account capability.

Marco has been building those capabilities.

That is the alignment this report flags.

Pressure on independent dealers

Independent dealers are not being forced into a larger structure by formal mandate.

The pressure is economic.

It arrives when an enterprise customer wants one provider across multiple sites. It arrives when an OEM wants partners with wider service capability. It arrives when national accounts require consistent reporting, centralized dispatch, rapid parts availability, and predictable billing. It arrives when dealer agreements reduce the value of traditional territory protection and reward broader execution.

At that point, independent dealers face a narrower set of strategic choices.

Sell to a platform. Join a platform. Partner with a platform. Specialize in a defensible niche. Build enough scale to compete. Or defend local relationships against larger operators with deeper resources and wider coverage.

None of those choices are theoretical. They already define the consolidation path across managed print, managed IT, cybersecurity, voice, and office technology services.

This is where the Marco model becomes serious. Marco is not merely buying copier dealers. It is building a broader business technology provider around the customer account. Print remains part of the base, but the platform expands into IT, voice, video, security, cloud, document management, and managed services.

That matters because the customer relationship gets wider. The more services a platform controls, the harder it becomes for a smaller dealer to defend the account on copier service alone.

OEM leverage

A scaled dealer platform creates a two-way dependency.

OEMs gain from a company like Marco because the platform simplifies coverage. A manufacturer can work with fewer partners across more territory, push national or enterprise account programs through a more capable service network, and reduce the friction of coordinating installations or service across separate local dealers.

That is useful.

It also creates leverage for the platform.

If Marco controls enough customer access, service capacity, installed devices, regional coverage, and managed-service relationships, OEMs must account for Marco’s position. Pricing, incentives, account assignment, product support, and program design all become part of a larger negotiation.

The dealer becomes more than a reseller. It becomes a route to market.

IKON proved the strategic significance of that route. Once a dealer platform becomes large enough, an OEM has to decide whether the platform is partner, competitor, dependency, or acquisition target.

Marco is not IKON today. The scale is different. The ownership structure is different. The market is different. The print economics are weaker. The technology stack is broader.

The strategic logic is familiar.

What the public record proves

The public record supports several conclusions.

Marco has been owned by Norwest Equity Partners since 2015.

Marco’s growth strategy has included acquisition-led geographic expansion and broader technology capabilities.

Marco has completed 31 strategic acquisitions under its current growth strategy.

Marco has expanded through notable recent acquisitions in Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Kentucky, and southern Indiana.

Marco now operates a 100,000-square-foot logistics center in the Des Moines area, with two-day nationwide shipping and more logistics locations planned.

Marco serves a large national print base, including approximately 190,000 print devices under management.

IKON built a national dealer platform through aggregation, broad service capability, and major-account reach.

Ricoh acquired IKON in 2008 because the platform had strategic channel value.

Konica Minolta’s 2025 dealer-agreement changes favor service capability and broader coverage over strict territorial authorization.

That is enough to support the Marco-IKON comparison as a serious industry question.

What remains unproven

Several claims require more evidence before publication as fact.

There is no public documentation in the sources reviewed proving that Konica Minolta reassigned national accounts from existing dealers to Marco.

There is no public documentation in the sources reviewed proving that Marco received a preferred national-account role from Konica Minolta.

There is no public documentation in the sources reviewed proving that Konica Minolta’s dealer-agreement changes were designed for Marco’s benefit.

There is no public documentation in the sources reviewed proving that an OEM acquisition of Marco is planned, discussed, or likely.

Those points remain outside the verified record.

The verified record is still strong enough to support the larger question. Marco is expanding through acquisition, investing in national logistics, supporting a large managed print base, and positioning itself as a broader business technology platform. Konica Minolta’s dealer-agreement shift rewards service capability and coverage over traditional territorial boundaries. IKON’s history shows how a scaled dealer platform can become strategically valuable to an OEM.

That is the basis for the comparison.

Working conclusion

Marco is building a platform.

That platform has several IKON-like traits: acquisition-led growth, geographic expansion, national account readiness, broader service offerings, centralized logistics, and increasing value to OEMs seeking scale.

The comparison is not perfect, but it is useful. IKON showed what happens when local dealer power consolidates into a national operating structure. Marco’s current path reflects a modern version of that same channel logic, updated for managed IT, security, cloud, voice, analytics, and a print market under pressure.

For independent dealers, the warning is practical.

A market built around territory protection rewards local presence. A market built around service capability, national logistics, and enterprise account coverage rewards scale. Konica Minolta’s dealer-agreement shift points toward the second model. Marco is investing for that model.

The likely end state has only a few forms.

Marco continues consolidating and becomes a stronger national platform.

An OEM grows dependent on Marco’s reach.

Marco gains leverage in pricing, service strategy, and account coverage.

Smaller dealers are pushed toward specialization, merger, acquisition, or partnership.

At some point, a strategic buyer may decide the platform is too important to leave independent.

That was the IKON lesson.

Marco is not IKON

yet.

The channel needs to watch whether it is becoming the next one.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 30 May 2026 14:39:47 -0500

Click For More Information

The Webinar: Robots Move Into the Dealer Conversation By Mason Bright | Greg Report Ai 2027

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 26 May 2026 09:48:00 -0500

Office-ready robots are entering the channel. The dealers who learn the service model early get the better shot.

It wasn’t our first rodeo. It was our second.

The May 13 webinar with Keith Garrett from Pudu Robotics, Greg Walters with The Continuum hosted by the lovely Queen of the Webinar, Patricia Ames of The Imaging Channel, gave copier dealers a clearer view of where office-ready robots fit inside the channel.

In this channel, in this market here, it’s perfect for us, realistically,” Garrett said. He added, “You have trained sales forces, and you’re highly focused on new technology in the market.”

The discussion stayed close to familiar ground: service, sales training, customer relationships, billing, logistics, support, and the stubborn reality that a machine in the field still needs someone accountable when it stops doing its job.

Here.

The End of Org the Chart - By Mason Bright | Greg Report Ai 2027

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 25 May 2026 09:40:23 -0500

A new framework for designing Ai organizations around capability, context, and clear decision movement.

Companies are spending heavily on Ai, then jamming it into the same old bureaucracy.

Why would one imprison an LLM/Ai inside a spreadsheet?

That is the trap.

The first wave of enterprise Ai is already taking a familiar shape: sales agents, marketing agents, finance agents, legal agents, HR agents, manager agents.

They are creating Ai in their own image: failure

Each box on the org chart gets a digital helper. Each department protects its lane. Each workflow keeps its handoffs, approvals, dashboards, and meetings. The machine gets faster. The company remains slow, because the current Ai business model is a copy of a copy of a copy of an old fashioned, Tayloristic, structure.

This is “architectural mimicry”, the habit of copying human organizational structures into software.

How about a new “frame"?

Gregorian Liquidity.

Gregorian Liquidity is the where capability moves freely through people, tools, data, decisions, and Ai systems without being trapped by departments, apps, titles, or approval chains. Its core property is Gregorian Lucidity: the clarity inside that movement. Effectiveness is measured against deliverables, not adherence to the process.

The distinction can be seen in everyday business moments.

A “sale” rarely belongs to one department. It involves contract terms, payment history, service tickets, margin rules, product availability, legal limits, the manutia that is workflow.

In a traditional company, the decision/approval question(s) travels across desks and systems. Sales waits on finance. Finance waits on legal. Legal waits on missing context. This was the Way.

Everyone who has been involved with a ‘digital transformation’, AKA, digital document workflow, has seen the cool flowcharts and slide decks.

The customer waits.

In a liquid organization, the work gathers the capability it needs. The Ai layer pulls the relevant context, and brings human judgment to the point where judgment actually belongs. The company stops routing work through inherited structure and starts moving it through current reality.

Lucidity keeps that movement disciplined. Speed alone creates new risk. A lucid system knows what changed, which rule applies, what evidence supports a recommendation, who holds authority, and when a human must step in. It leaves a trail

- it’s lucid.

Tomorrow’s Enterprise advantage is the result of total redesigning how work moves.

The org chart was built around human limits: memory, attention, specialization, fatigue, politics. Ai does not erase accountability or trust it makes every unnecessary wall visible.

Gregorian Liquidity, to go with the 20 or so “gregorian predictions”, reflects the path ahead:

No digital silos, no red tape, stalled decision process, popularity promotions, no HR issues.

The dynamic, amorphous, liquid and lucid business structure is the Shape of Things to Come.

-grw

Xerox, Aston Martin, and the Dealer’s Long Walk Back Into the Room

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 May 2026 12:28:41 -0500

By Celeste Dame | Celestial Sales Singularity

Xerox beside Aston Martin Aramco Formula One makes for an easy photograph. Racing green. Carbon fiber. Clean lighting. Expensive shoes on polished floors. The kind of place where nobody admits they once jammed a copier by feeding letterhead upside down.

Still, the partnership deserves more than a quick eye roll from the copier channel.

There is something useful happening under the shine.

Xerox is trying to change the room it gets invited into.

That sounds simple until you remember how long a name can drag its own history behind it. Xerox is one of the rare brands that escaped the product category and became common language. That kind of fame helped build the company, but fame ages strangely. It hardens. It turns into a museum tag if nobody refreshes the meaning behind it.

For older buyers, Xerox still carries the smell of paper, toner, leases, meter reads, service calls, and that one machine near accounting that sounded like it was digesting gravel. For younger buyers, the name may not carry much of anything. One group remembers the old world too clearly. The other barely hears the echo.

That is a rough place to begin a recovery.

The Aston Martin article gives us the official story: Xerox wants modern buyers to connect the brand with technology, precision, performance, digital services, and global execution. Formula One helps because the sport already carries those ideas without needing a 42-slide deck and a sales VP saying "innovation" until everyone’s coffee gets cold.

The smarter part is the setting. Aston Martin’s Technology Campus is not a random logo board at a golf outing. It gives Xerox a place to bring clients, start executive conversations, and attach the company to an environment where speed and systems are visible. You can see the machines. You can hear the language of performance. You can feel the discipline in the building.

That matters.

The copier channel should not read this as a sponsorship story. Read it as a permission story.

Xerox is asking the market for permission to be considered again, in a different category, under different expectations. That permission will not be granted because of the Aston Martin badge. It will be granted only if the business behind the badge keeps improving: cash flow, margins, debt, Lexmark integration, services growth, and enough operational discipline to make the story believable.

A good brand partnership opens the door. It does not carry the furniture.

Dealer owners know a smaller version of this fight. They walk into customer buildings with decades of practical knowledge: service history, lease timing, device behavior, network weirdness, billing patterns, department politics, and the quiet ways paperwork gums up a company. Then the buyer still pushes the conversation back toward the familiar pile: price, clicks, toner, lease terms.

That old drawer is hard to escape.

The dealer version of Xerox’s recovery does not happen beside an F1 car. It happens in a conference room with bad chairs and a speakerphone from 2011. It happens when a controller admits AP spends too much time chasing invoice errors. It happens when HR still walks signed forms across the office because the shared folder feels like a junk drawer with a password. It happens when the IT manager inherits a print fleet nobody wants to own but everybody blames.

That is where the next dealer story lives.

Not in a new tagline. Not in a website refresh with stock photos of smiling people pointing at glass walls. Not in another claim about being a solutions provider. Buyers have heard that music. The band is tired.

The proof is already inside the customer’s building.

A dealer earns a different conversation by finding the friction customers have learned to work around. The AP clerk who loses a morning every month to billing cleanup. The office manager who keeps a handwritten list because the system cannot be trusted. The warehouse supervisor who sends people across the building for routine movement because nobody has mapped the task. The service dispatcher who knows which accounts are held together by memory, duct tape, and one technician named Mike.

That kind of proof does not feel glamorous. Good. Glamour is usually expensive and bad at follow-up.

Xerox is using Aston Martin to place its name near speed, engineering, and modern execution. Dealers have to do the same work account by account, with less spectacle and more fingerprints. The market will believe the new story when customers can see it in their own mess: fewer delays, cleaner handoffs, better billing, tighter service escalation, fewer security gaps, less walking, less rework, less Friday afternoon chaos.

The Xerox recovery remains unfinished. The partnership is interesting, but the financial work still has to hold. The channel has seen plenty of companies dress up decline in better lighting. No one needs another pretty booth with nothing behind the curtain.

Still, this article gives the copier channel a useful reminder.

A legacy name can still move, but only when the company gives the market a fresh reason to care.

Xerox is trying to do that at 200 miles an hour.

Most dealers will have to do it one hallway, one invoice stack, one service call, and one better customer conversation at a time.

Log line: Xerox’s Aston Martin F1 partnership offers the copier channel a grounded lesson in brand recovery: recognition opens the door, but proof from the customer’s own building earns the next meeting.

From Tripoli to Hormuz: Tribute Returns

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:28:00 -0500

The Strait of Hormuz has the same hard smell history always carries at sea: diesel, salt, hot metal, and fear moving quietly across a bridge wing at night. A captain does not need a lecture on geopolitics when mines may be in the water and armed boats are somewhere beyond the radar glow. He needs passage. He needs law to mean something. He needs the world’s navies to remember their original job.

That job began for the United States in the Mediterranean.

The Barbary powers made commerce conditional. Pay tribute, buy peace, ransom your crews, or watch your ships disappear into North African ports. The Pasha of Tripoli pushed the young republic into the open when he demanded more and declared war in 1801. The United States had tried diplomacy. Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson all understood the system. The lesson was unpleasant but plain: a treaty without force behind it becomes expensive stationery.

The early U.S. Navy came out of that lesson. The six original frigates, designed by Joshua Humphreys, were built because American commerce needed more than signatures and hope. The Marine Corps’ legend found its first lasting overseas shape at Derna in 1805, where Presley O’Bannon and a small Marine force helped take the fight onto the shore. Decatur’s raid into Tripoli harbor to burn the captured Philadelphia gave the Navy its working temperament: deny the enemy advantage, strike where needed, and make tribute a losing business.

Iran is attempting a modern form of the same condition in Hormuz.

The tools have changed. Fast boats replaced corsairs. Mines, drones, missiles, seizures, and legal theater replaced the old tribute chest. The demand remains familiar: accept our power over passage, absorb the risk, or pay in money, policy, insurance, time, and fear. In March 2026, the International Maritime Organization condemned attacks on shipping and the purported closure of the Strait. In April, the IMO warned there was no safe transit through Hormuz, with thousands of seafarers trapped and mines suspected in the water. That is tribute by pressure, even if nobody calls it tribute.

This is where Islam enters the analysis with precision. The Barbary rulers were Muslim political authorities who used religious language to justify maritime predation. Iran is an Islamic Republic using ideological state power to pressure a global sea lane. The war is not against ordinary Muslims or private belief. The recurring conflict is with Islamic political regimes when they turn the sea into a toll road guarded by guns.

The Barbary Wars taught America that free commerce survives when naval power makes extortion fail. Hormuz is testing whether the world still remembers.

From Copiers to Robots - PUDU & The Continuum

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 8 May 2026 14:08:00 -0500

A practical dealer conversation about service robots, PUDU, and the next connected machine category in office technology

The copier channel has always been built around machines that live inside real businesses.

Not theory. Not hype. Real machines. Machines with serial numbers, service histories, lease paperwork, parts, training, customer expectations, and somebody’s name attached to the account when the thing stops behaving.

That is what makes From Copiers to Robots an interesting webinar. It is not treating robotics like a moonshot. It is treating robotics like a new equipment category moving toward a channel that already understands connected hardware, local support, recurring agreements, and customer trust.

The conversation brings together Patricia Ames as moderator, Keith Garratt from PUDU Robotics, and Greg Walters, Art Post, and Kevin Neal from The Crickets Continuum. The focus is practical: where robots fit in the office technology sector, how support expectations are changing, and what the dealer path might look like as print gives up more of the spotlight.

That last part is the real tension in the room.

Every dealer knows the old categories are not throwing off the same kind of growth they once did. Print still has a place. Managed services still has a place. Software still has a place. But the channel keeps looking for another physical machine category with legs, service attachment, financing logic, and clear customer pain behind it.
Robotics belongs in that conversation.

PUDU gives the topic something concrete to stand on. The company’s lineup covers commercial cleaning, indoor delivery, industrial delivery, hospitality, retail, healthcare, manufacturing, education, and other commercial environments. Its product family includes delivery robots such as BellaBot Pro and KettyBot Pro, building delivery platforms such as FlashBot Max, industrial robots such as T300, and cleaning systems such as CC1 Pro, MT1, and BG1. That range changes the conversation from “robots are coming” to “which customer problem gets solved first?”

For the office technology channel, that question feels familiar.

A restaurant may look at delivery. A hotel may look at guest service or back-of-house transport. A school may look at cleaning. A warehouse may look at internal movement. A large office building may look at labor gaps, repeatable routes, and the cost of work that never quite disappears from the budget.

The machine is new. The business conversation is recognizable.

That is why this webinar has value. It gives the channel a way to think about robots without drowning in buzzwords. It puts the manufacturer view and the dealer view in the same room. It asks the useful questions first: who sells it, who installs it, who supports it, who trains the customer, who owns the renewal, and who answers the phone after the demo glow wears off?

Robotics will not arrive as a clean replacement for print. It will arrive account by account, use case by use case, building by building. From Copiers to Robots is a good place to start mapping that shift.

Xerox: King Lear or The Odyssey

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 8 May 2026 14:02:00 -0500

By Robert G. Jordan | greg report Ai

Xerox has the old-king problem.

A once-commanding name gave away too much authority, got stripped down by market weather, watched its kingdom fracture, and now stands in the storm asking what power remains when ceremony, size, and reputation no longer protect you. That is Lear on the heath. The crown still means something, but only after the storm reveals what was real and what was theater.

For Xerox, the “storm” is the decline of print, the stock price, activist pressure, leadership turnover, the Fujifilm break, the Icahn years, and the Lexmark integration. The old court is gone. The robe is wet. The old script no longer works.

Xerox carries the weather of King Lear: an old power stripped by the storm, asking whether the name still means anything after the market has taken away the throne.

Lear ends in ruin. Xerox still has a journey structure.

The company is trying to get home under a different name, in a different body, after years of wandering through hostile waters: Icahn, HP, Fujifilm, Lexmark, Nasdaq pressure, dealer skepticism, and the market’s general habit of treating old companies like furniture left at the curb.

Read the rest, here.

Xerox and Blade Runner - By Robert G. Jordan | greg report Ai

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 6 May 2026 11:25:00 -0500

Xerox and Blade Runner share the same uneasy question: what remains human, useful, and valuable after the original world has moved on?

In Blade Runner, the future is built from old architecture, neon, corporate towers, rain, decay, and machines that behave too much like people. It is a world where the past never really dies. It just gets rewired, renamed, and left humming in the dark.

That is Xerox.

The market sees an old machine company with a wounded stock price and a legacy business. But under the surface, Xerox still carries memory: the brand, the installed base, the dealer network, the enterprise relationships, the service contracts, the Lexmark platform, and the ghost of Icahn’s activist playbook. Like the replicants in Blade Runner, Xerox is being judged by where it came from, while the more interesting question is what it is becoming.

Read the rest, here.

OFFICE TECH & AI – Artificial Intelligence in Your World: No Experts, Just Opinions

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 5 May 2026 11:25:00 -0500

I felt a tingling sensation in my chest—the kind you get when you realize you’re witnessing a major historical event. It is not just a chatbot. It is a portal to a future where we no longer have to do the ‘boring’ work of thinking.” — Kevin Roose (The New York Times, December 5, 2022)

The fear of COVID had faded, but the power struggle between leadership and a remote workforce was in full swing. For the knowledge workers, the ones who used to stand in front of our photocopiers, the office was now a commute away. In this chaos, AI arrived. It wasn’t just fuel for the fire; for the salesperson, it was the most significant tool to arrive since Act! customer relationship management platform in 1987.

As a matter of fact, it is this writer’s opinion that the role best positioned to benefit the most from the large learning model (LLM) is the salesperson. Notice I didn’t say sales manager, team, or company. The LLM is perfect for the individual selling professional regardless of experience, product, or service.

The LLM is a type of AI that works best with language. Without getting too technical, something AI experts and consultants excel at doing, the LLM predicts words, understands context, and generates text.

Read the rest, here.

Xerox Is the Canary Now

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 1 May 2026 09:25:00 -0500

By Charlie G. Peterson IV | greg report 2027

The old dealer-floor joke had teeth: when HP caught a cold, everyone else got the Zombie Flu.

It worked because HP had mass. Shelves moved when HP sneezed. Toner pricing twitched. Buyers paused. Competitors suddenly found themselves explaining why their “strategic direction” looked suspiciously like a man sweating through his polo beside the demo unit.

That metaphor feels dated now.

Xerox has taken the perch.

Not because Xerox dominates the room. That crown wandered off years ago. Xerox matters because its numbers expose the weak boards underneath the old channel floor: print volume, equipment placements, post-sale revenue, managed print stickiness, debt, service economics, and the nasty question of what happens when a legacy print company buys scale because time has grown expensive.

The Q1 2026 earnings statement opens with a recovery story. Revenue hit $1.846 billion, up 26.7% year over year. Adjusted operating income reached $72 million. Adjusted operating margin climbed to 3.9%, up 240 basis points from last year. Xerox reaffirmed full-year guidance: revenue above $7.5 billion, adjusted operating income of $450 million to $500 million, and free cash flow around $250 million.

On the surface, the bird still sings.

The deeper numbers rasp.

On a pro forma basis, revenue fell 3.7%. Equipment sales fell 2.3% pro forma. Post-sale revenue fell 3.8% pro forma. IT Solutions revenue dropped 5.5%. Xerox grew because Lexmark joined the house. Strip out that acquisition effect, and the older engine still coughs like a color unit dragged out of a school district after nine bad winters.

Lexmark now carries serious weight. Xerox reaffirmed at least $300 million in integration synergies. Production installs rose 31% year over year, helped partly by the Proficio launch. The print sales pipeline sits materially higher than last year. Those positives deserve space. A company in free fall rarely talks about pipeline quality with that kind of confidence.

Still, Xerox now tells the channel what the air feels like before everyone admits the room has changed.

The company posted a GAAP net loss of $105 million. Operating cash flow landed at negative $144 million. Free cash flow landed at negative $165 million. Management points to expected Q1 seasonality and expects stronger cash generation over the remaining three quarters. Fair. Seasonality has always haunted first quarters like a bad copier lease nobody remembers signing.

But negative cash flow in a leveraged, acquisition-integrating, secularly pressured print company deserves more than a shrug. That is a lunch pail sliding off a bench deep in the shaft.

The balance sheet adds pressure. Xerox ended the quarter with $585 million in cash and equivalents. It also carried $4.281 billion in long-term debt, plus $165 million in short-term debt and current long-term debt. The company raised $450 million through an IP joint venture with TPG Angelo Gordon and repurchased $101 million face value of 2028 senior notes.

That helped liquidity. It also tells you liquidity needed help.

This earnings release reaches beyond Xerox because dealers have lived for decades on installed-base gravity. Boxes go in. Service follows. Supplies follow. Lease renewals come around like weather. The field tech knows the route, the receptionist, the breakroom smell, the customer who insists the machine “has always made that noise.” The whole model carries toner dust, rubber rollers, old carpet, and coffee burned down to tar on a warmer.

That world still pays bills. It just creaks louder now.

Post-sale revenue deserves the closest look. That line includes supplies, service, maintenance, rentals, financing, and related revenue. Xerox reported $1.314 billion in post-sale revenue, up on an actual basis because Lexmark came aboard, yet down 3.8% pro forma. Excluding Lexmark, post-sale revenue declined 5.2%, mainly from lower equipment service revenue and managed print services, along with intentional cuts to non-strategic revenue.

That cuts close to the dealer bone.

Equipment revenue gets the headlines because hardware feels tangible. A new placement has a serial number and a delivery ticket. Post-sale tells the deeper story. If post-sale keeps leaking, the old math loses its dependable rhythm. Clicks soften. Service calls thin out. Supplies shipments lose frequency. The customer relationship cools from managed infrastructure into occasional procurement, and that room gets cold fast.

Xerox also reported total equipment installations up 98%, including Lexmark. Legacy Xerox installations declined, especially in entry and mid-range color equipment. Excluding Lexmark, equipment sales declined 4.9% in actual currency.

That is the bird fluttering hard.

The acquisition changed the profile. The inherited Xerox base still shows weakness in categories that touch dealer motion every day.

No panic read here. Panic burns cash and makes people stupid.

Discipline fits better.

Xerox shows how consolidation improves the income statement faster than it repairs demand. It gives vendors scale, cost savings, broader product coverage, and procurement muscle. It also lets executives claim progress while the field feels thinner traffic, softer clicks, and customers asking why the contract still looks like 2016.

That is why Xerox replaces HP in the old metaphor.

HP once moved through the channel like weather. Xerox now reads more like an instrument panel bolted to the mine wall: oxygen, dust, heat, pressure, strain.

Right now, the bird lives. It also looks nervous.

The quarter carries good news. Margin improved. Liquidity improved. Guidance held. Lexmark gives Xerox a thicker print portfolio and more room to maneuver. The logic behind the deal remains clear enough: combine two print icons, deepen managed print reach, widen the global base, and give the company more surface area in a shrinking category.

The harder fact sits underneath it. Xerox needed Lexmark because the old Xerox line kept losing altitude.

For dealers, this report lands with a practical thud.

Scale still matters, but debt puts a meter on the dashboard. Post-sale revenue now deserves more attention than box placements. The installed base has always been the quiet engine. When that engine coughs, everyone hears it: dispatch, leasing, supplies, service, sales.

The channel’s health no longer shows up through one dominant vendor catching a cold. It shows up through stressed combinations. Legacy print paired with acquisition debt. Margin improvement sitting beside revenue leakage. Stronger liquidity sitting beside ugly Q1 cash flow. A better pipeline sitting beside weak core installations.

That is the new warning system.

The copier channel knows ugly weather. It has survived bad leases, bad OEM programs, bad acquisitions, bad software launches, and customers who treat a twelve-year-old MFP like a family heirloom with a paper tray. Xerox’s Q1 report does not say the mine collapses tomorrow.

It says the air has changed.

The canary keeps shifting on the perch.

Everybody else hears it.