Every facet of technology is a product of intellect and out of box thinking. With these exceptional skills inventors, Antonio Sanchez Navarro, and Juan José San Martin Mazzuconi came together with a vision to provide a solution that would efficiently and remotely manage, the millions of printing devices installed worldwide. Nubeprint is a pioneer in the MPS business on multiple things. The company has been the first to incorporate artificial intelligence to improve the data collected and to ensure the quality of the monitoring-based services and they continue to lead the market with this capability.
Nubeprint has seen a phenomenal growth rate since its inception and has a remarkable plinth in their journey of success. Like every other business, they too faced challenges that were a learning lesson to stimulate the development of the company. As the founder and CEO of the company, Antonio shares with us his viewpoint of success and how important it is to stay motivated, focused, and passionate about your vision.
The Inception of an Innovative Thought
Back in 2010 Antonio and his team realized that there was a lot of confusion among the dealers of the printing industry, that were offering cost per page contracts and who were not controlling their costs. This created room for opportunity to monitor tools that would not only collect the counters from the printers, but also identify the needs of consumables and track the consumption. They came to the market with the first MPS tool to incorporate an AI module that manages the costs associated to the printers and copiers. Nubeprint’s value proposition has been to streamline the recurrent processes associated to the cost per page contracts, by automating them and by identifying any waste associated with each step when providing the service. Indeed, Nubeprint used lean management techniques to reduce costs, by reducing the waste of the supplies used.
The IT printing channel was conditioned to transactional business. The channel had no experience in long term contracts where the costs had to be managed very carefully. Educating them about this has been Nubeprint’s major challenge, and still is. Nubeprint dedicates a significant effort in educating through webinars, articles, and events. Simultaneously, they have been eliminating the technical complexity of setting up a contract and in managing it. Nubeprint has done it by creating a unique ecosystem of data collectors so that anyone with no technical knowledge can start monitoring the printers of their customers, no matter what size. Additionally, both the dashboard and the back-end system are very intuitive, and no human intervention is required, except if the parameters must be changed.
With extensive product knowledge, efficient use of resources and great ideas of innovation, Nubeprint has evolved over the years as they expected.
The Products and Services of Nubeprint
Nubeprint has the widest catalog of MPS products, that is all cloud based, freeing the customer from any system maintenance. Enterprise is the MPS solution for large service providers with more than 1000 devices needing to be monitored and managed. Platform is the MPS solution for those companies that would like to facilitate an MPS solution to their channel. The distributors use it to provide their dealers with a powerful engine, easy to use, MPS solution. The distributor can build their own MPS program due to the Platform’s flexibility which allows them to choose those features they need. By doing this, they can create and differentiate themselves with a unique product from other MPS products in the market.
Zero is Nubeprint’s basic MPS solution designed to be used without any need for training. For eCommerce Nubeprint is partnering with PowerMPS whereby an end-customer can acquire a cartridge with automatic replenishment. The solution is fully automated: the customer activates his replenishment subscription from his cell phone and gets a new cartridge every time Nubeprint detects the need. All Nubeprint solutions are compatible with the ecosystem of data collectors that Nubeprint offers. Therefore, there is always a DCA that adapts to the type of customer that needs to be monitored. For example, a remote worker with a printer can activate the data collector using their own smartphone by downloading the Nubeprint app from AppStore or from PlayStore. At home one can use their smartTV to activate a subscription-based monitoring service.
Innovation is the Key Distinguishing Factor at Nubeprint
Innovation is a part of Nubeprint’s DNA. The company has multiple patents and has substantially impacted and moved their industry from simply monitoring devices to embracing business process management solutions. “Indeed, thanks to A.I. which then evolved to M.L. (machine learning), we have been able to incorporate some features that make us unique.”, says, Antonio. Some of these capacities are to trigger the alerts for consumables based on days remaining (instead of just percentage remaining), the capacity to group shipments, whereby the dealer decides which day of the week he wants to ship to a customer and then the system groups the alerts on that day, or the capacity to know the precise performance of the references being used compared to the expected yield.
In the wake of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Nubeprint has swiftly and efficiently adapted to teleworking to continue the business as usual. At Nubeprint, a teleworker is regarded as an employee that has moved from the office to home and that must still accomplish the same job. In the home location, the teleworker misses the support they used to enjoy while in the office. Therefore, for Nubeprint there is both a challenge and an opportunity to provide the teleworker the same level of services found in the office.
Over the years Nubeprint has built a library of DCA’s that now conform to an exclusive data collector ecosystem. The employee working from home just needs a license number and his cell phone to activate a monitoring service for their printers. Alternatively, he can do it from his smart TV, a TV box or his Chromebook. The collector activates instantly and does not require any maintenance from the user nor from the service provider. Not only does the cell phone of the teleworker become the data collector, it also becomes a monitoring dashboard from where the teleworker can view the printer status, delivery status which seamlessly connects to the teleworkers MPS company and they can even request technical assistance.
Nubeprint is distinguished by such innovative initiatives that make them the pioneers in the industry.
The Perspective of a Self-Motivated Leader
Antonio Sanchez Navarro worked for an IT manufacturer for 12 years before venturing out on his entrepreneurial journey. When he left the company in 2000, he started his own company whose purpose was to provide cost per page services for printers (not for copiers) without having to read the counters manually. Later that year they patented the first DCA ever. In the year 2010, Antonio decided to focus on the technology and sell monitoring solutions to dealers and other companies doing MPS. Together with a group of engineers they set up Nubeprint and worked hard to develop a solution that had to be intelligent, complete, accurate and easy to use. Since then their effort has been to keep Nubeprint on the cutting edge and a leading technology. As the CEO of Nubeprint Antonio’s role in the company is to coordinate the resources. He ensures that each task has the resources it needs to be accomplished, and that the information flows smoothly and efficiently.
Integrity is a vital part of Nubeprint’s values, and each member of the company is strongly motivated by their values. They believe in being transparent with the customer even if it takes to say no to the customer at times. Nubeprint has one of the best reputations in the industry, and the reason is, their goal to develop and nurture a long-term relationship with their customers.
Antonio believes that motivation is the best driver for all things in life. To be motivated one needs very few things: love what one does, have a good environment, and to feel that one is a part of a team where all the members are equally important. “I may say that my main motivation are the customers. I love feeling like we are helping them to be successful, because their success it also our success.”, Antonio proudly shares.
Expanding the Exceptional Services of Nubeprint
Nubeprint technology comprises of 2 elements: the data collector and the server. The data collector is an ecosystem of data collectors. Their customers can choose which collector best fits their needs. For example, if they have an MPS contract signed with a large company, they will use the CPM agent and install it in the server (Windows or Linus) of the end-customer. But when the goal is to manage the printer of the dentist, the easiest is to give the dentist a license number and ask him to activate the DCA from his cell phone. The ecosystem of DCAs makes Nubeprint unique as it can monitor the printers of any kind of customer, including the printers at home.
Nubeprint has developed an exceptional monitoring technology. They have ensured that the technology is incredibly open. Indeed, they have taken great efforts to make monitoring universal so that anyone can use it to provide services, and anyone can take advantage of it and enjoy the services. Nubeprint’s ecosystem of DCA is one part. The other part is represented by the server backend that is integrated into the ecosystem of the most open ERP (Odoo) and integrates with any other ERP or legacy system.
Nubeprint will keep expanding its monitoring capacities. They are currently monitoring laser printers, ink printers, multi-functional printers, large format printers, label printers, ribbon printers, 3D printers. “But we will keep expanding to whatever other devices require consumables to work.”, Antonio, adds.
