Things that don’t show up on bid response spreadsheets –

I get involved in a fair number of bid situations - bids that are let by local governmental bodies, such as Counties, Townships, Villages and Cities or libraries and senior centers. I always know that wining in those situations will be tough, because so many of the decisions are made off of some spreadsheet that somebody creates from the bid responses. Spreadsheets have their place in the decision making process, I suppose: however, they also lead to oversimplification of the analysis that should be taking place. The issue really is that spreadsheets have no way of accounting for some of the very real differences that add or subtract value from the solutions that were bid.

Most bids have a few criteria defined, such as copy/print speed, features like two-sided copy/print and scanning, perhaps faxing and maybe will ask for variations on pricing for different lease lengths. Few if any of the bids that I've seen have any real provision for differentiating between vendor offerings in several key categories. Those differences can be costly, but those cost are often hidden in the vendor responses, if they are mentioned at all. Most vendors follow a "don't ask - don't tell" policy. If the bid documents don't ask the question about something like the charges to take out the machine at the end of the lease, then don't tell. Not all things that can't be easily shown on a spreadsheet are cost items. Some are performance items caused by real differences in the design and engineering of the machines.

All modern multifunction machines tend to look pretty much alike and most vendors make many of the same claims about capabilities. Below are some areas that you might want to look further int, since they just don't show up on the normal evaluation spreadsheets.

Customer Benefits that come from Xerox hardware design –

Efficiency - Xerox multifunction devices are designed to be more efficient than our competitors, often as much as 30% more efficient in tests by Buyer’s Lab International.

Effectiveness - Xerox Smart Controllers support true multitasking operations which allow the devices to do more than one task at a time. Smart Controllers also support features such as smart paper trays, which identify the paper size in each tray and  print around which allows jobs may have stalled because of a lack of resources to be skipped.

Increased uptime – Xerox Smart Kits are user replaceable components that make it easy to replace the components that most often wear out in the devices. Xerox users can keep their devices up an running, rather than placing service calls.

Security - Xerox is the only manufacturer to certify their complete devices, to earn Common Criteria Recognition Agreement certification. Xerox devices support disk overwrite as well to insure that critical sensitive data is not left on the disk drive.

Earth Friendly - Xerox devices are EnergyStar™ rated, use earth friendly toner and produce less waste.

Customer benefits that come from how Xerox does business -

No Hidden Costs - Xerox does not charge extra for delivery and set-up of the device or for delivery of supplies. At lease end Xerox does not charge extra for removal of the device.

Xerox does not charge for insurance on leased devices.

Fixed operational cost - The Cost-per-Copy rate for Xerox maintenance can be fixed for the life of the lease.

No charge for scans - Scans on Xerox multifunction devices are free. Other vendors may charge for scans.

No double charges - Xerox charges only a single-page rate for copies/prints based upon 11 X 17 in paper. Other vendors may charge double for those pages.

Award Winning Service - The Xerox service organization has won the coveted J D Power Service Excellence Award four years in a row

The Xerox Total Satisfaction Guarantee - Xerox offers the only guarantee offered by any vendor that allows the customer, not the vendor, to make the decision on when the device needs to be replaced because it just isn’t performing to the customer’s satisfaction.

Buy Local/Buy American - The Digital Document Store is a local business, based in Milford and Xerox is the only American manufacturer of office equipment.