People in the Office Equipment Industry have been mentioning the apparently marvellous facilities that some systems have that enable the linkage to other systems and devices. Anyone could be forgiven for thinking that this is some new revolutionary set of tools, APIs or whatever from the fuss being made by those promoting their software solutions.
Wrong. Rather like the blurb reference Konica Minolta’s use of a mobile field service application, this has been around for a long time for users of VALE software.
It came about for four reasons:
- One, VALE recognised that no system can be best at all the functions a business requires and so started linking to software that specialised in areas where the VALE application was not as capable, such as with Payroll and HR, CRM and Sales systems and some key Financials.
- Secondly the typical VALE user tended to be more successful in the industry and started acquiring other companies. Those other companies had systems in place and so VALE would enable those systems to talk to the VALE applications that were running the buyer business. Eventually those lesser systems would be replaced by VALE but that could be done at the optimum time without interfering with the smooth running of the acquired business.
- Thirdly from a very early stage VALE started taking or sending information from and to intelligent devices and networks which contained such devices. The first instances of this go back to the 90s with proof of capability tests for the enlightened manufacturers. VALE would request meter readings automatically when billing is due, raise toner orders as the machine usage projected a forthcoming run out date, raise service calls, in particular for planned maintenance amongst a number of other things. This was years ahead of the proliferation of such passing of information typified by products such as One Stop and Print Audit.
- Finally as VALE users tended to be the larger ones in the business there was a requirement to link to the internal IT systems of major accounts so that internal applications of the customer which raised internal requests could pass those requests to VALE automatically and receive back service call progress information.
The message is simple, if a salesman impresses upon you the benefits of his system in having “Connectors” or some similar term have a chat with us and you will undoubtedly find that we are way ahead of the game.