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C’PRO was founded in 1991 by Mr. Pieric Brenier. We historically provide printing solutions but have expanded into IT and telephony. While we initially developed solely in the Rhône Alpes region, the C’PRO group decided to internationalise its offer a few years ago. The group has 1500 employees and our main brands are Canon, Toshiba, Kyocera and HP.

For our printing solutions, our strategy is to use several manufacturers, which meant that for a printing system management solution it would have been too complicated to use several brand manufactured tools. Therefore, we looked to a multi-brand compatible product like KPAX. Bluemega also had the added advantage of being a highly responsive software publisher, attentive to our needs. Our initial aim was to automate meter readings, to integrate them automatically into our ERP to facilitate invoicing and to save our customers from having to do it, while ensuring better service by automatizing handling as much as possible.

We quickly began to use KPAX to improve the management of consumables, with the constant aim of relieving our customers of the restocking tasks and optimising stock management. The issue is to deliver the ink cartridge at the right time to our end customers, without them needing to have stocks. Therefore, we relieved our customers of this task which enables us to have better control over the flow of consumables. Stocks were reduced by 20% in the first year.

The data collected by KPAX is used by the sales team. It enables them to provide dynamic monitoring of the volumes used by our customers on each device. These volumes enable us to refine our offer when renewing the fleet to be as close as possible to the users’ real needs.

To date, we have 40,000 devices connected to KPAX Manage, 23,000 of these are in the Rhône-Alpes region. But the solution is being extended to new regions. Depending on the specific context of each customer, the devices are connected either by the KPAX software agent or through the KPAX Liberty device. This hardware agent, launched by Bluemega in 2016 is a great help to us, enabling us to sidestep the problems of unstable environments (no server) which generate numerous disconnections, or specific environments (Mac environment) which were impossible to connect.

As well as generalising KPAX Manage in all our regions, we have a lot of other ideas for this software. To start with we’d like to be able to implement more requests on the data collected by KPAX Manage to refine our analyses and to provide a better service for our customers. Then we hope to implement the means of reducing the intervention times and on-site visits of our technicians with remote maintenance. Today, KPAX is highly integrated in our internal tools, we have very high hopes for the new version which is due to launch this year.

Created in Martinique in 1989, the SMB Group has now been active for nearly 20 years in the West Indies, French Guiana, Reunion Island and Mayotte. With a workforce of 120 employees, SMB is a major player in the office automation and IT market. It works with professionals (SMBs), key accounts and public stakeholders (local authorities, administrations, hospitals, etc.). Its installed base exceeds 10,000 machines, mainly Toshiba and Lexmark brands. The Group internalises the entire value chain, from marketing to fleet maintenance. In order to optimise maintenance operational flows, SMB wished to integrate more software solutions.

The initial need to find an effective fleet management solution came from a desire to respond ever more quickly to our customers’ expectations. This results in uninterrupted communication between the Group and its machine fleet. This permanent connection makes it possible to have: (I) feedback on toner levels and trigger automatic deliveries without risk of shortages at the customer’s premises, (II) feedback on breakdowns to considerably reduce repair times, (III) more recurrent invoicing… The choice of Bluemega’s KPAX solution came naturally as it met all these expectations while bringing together manufacturer solutions which are often very different.

As far as configuration is concerned, the counters are retrieved by KPAX and uploaded directly into our ERP. This connection optimises toner deliveries (without risk of shortages) based on customer consumption habits. This reduces stocks and spending at the end of the chain. Technical alerts are used to better classify breakdowns during customer calls, ensuring the success of our technicians’ interventions.

The implementation required a number of extensive tests on several solutions. We chose Bluemega, based on their offer of a complete solution, a good price, very positive feedback on their efficiency as well as the availability and flexibility of the Bluemega team. High quality support is an essential element in the success of such a software. The “made in France” element also played in its favour. We started deploying KPAX in September 2018. Nine months later, over 30% of our fleet is managed through the solution. KPAX is easy to deploy, aided by emails sent to customers to explain the installation process, which facilitates the work of SMB teams. Creating user profiles, tree view structures and associated rights is simple. Data integration into the ERP is done easily using import files. The calculated fields allow you to customise data and individualise answers according to customer needs. Support is key and I have to say that we were well supported by the Bluemega team and the Bluemega Academy portal which centralises all the necessary documents.

We are now looking forward to the new version of KPAX and hoping that it can help us to better manage consumable buffer stocks, that it will allow access from mobile devices and that Toshiba departmental counters can be collected. The Liberty box, alternative equipment for structures with insufficient infrastructure to carry the KPAX collection agent, is interesting, we hope that the new version of this box will be less expensive.