This disclosure relates to tools (for example, systems, apparatuses, methodologies, computer programs, etc.) for performing an enterprise analysis of information technology provisions and/or costs, for an enterprise or another organization.
In the current information age, information technology (IT) tools are extensively used in enterprises and other organizations in order to facilitate communication and processing of information, documents, data, etc. Indeed, it is now rare to find a workflow in an enterprise that does not employ IT tools. The number of IT assets [such as software, computers, printers, scanners, multi-function devices (MFDs), other network-connected or standalone devices, etc.] is generally increasing and, as a result, managing and tracking IT expenditures is becoming a daunting task.
While the market for IT assets is expanding, the number of options when one looks for IT tools is also typically increasing. Accordingly, suppliers of IT tools generally find that they must offer competitive pricing and relevant information, on demand. Thus, even suppliers are commonly looking for improved tools that enable them to be competitive in the relevant market.
One approach for a vendor to make an educated and intriguing sales pitch to a customer or prospective customer is to present a proposal along with an analysis of the current IT expenditures of the customer or prospective customer. Thus, the vendor needs to be able to determine the current IT assets of the customer or prospective customer and then collate cost information regarding such assets. For example, costs can vary based on any of various aspects such as, but not limited to, acquisition type (i.e. lease/purchase), acquisition cost, depreciation of product, service cost, and in the case of printing products/services, consumables (e.g., paper, ink, toner, etc.) cost. Further, the vendor needs to be able to analyze the needs of the customer or prospective customer in order to be able to offer a package of products and/or services that is attractive to the customer or prospective customer.
The aforementioned analysis may be difficult to perform, by the vendor as well as by the customer or prospective customer, particularly when the customer or prospective customer is, or is a part of, a multi-national enterprise (i.e. having facilities at multiple sites and in multiple countries).
There exists a need for improved tools for determining, tracking and/or otherwise managing costs, expenditures, pricing, etc., in connection with information technology devices and other IT assets.
Various tools (e.g., systems, apparatuses, methodologies, computer program products, application software, etc.) can be provided to enable an analysis and/or overview of costs for an enterprise or another organization.
In an aspect of this disclosure, an enterprise analysis application (that is, one or more computer programs including instructions executable by a processor of a terminal) is provided to collect device data (including device cost or price data) for devices employed in the enterprise which includes plural sites. The enterprise analysis application can be configured to include a device data module to maintain plural device price tables to register the collected device price data. Such plural device price tables express the collected device price data in plural currencies. Further, the device price table may be configured to indicate device configuration corresponding to a device model, and indicate prices of device options, device accessory and/or device consumables. Thus, the enterprise analysis application can perform an enterprise analysis based on data retrieved from the device price tables, and output an enterprise analysis report reflecting the enterprise analysis. Such enterprise analysis enables a comparison between the cost of devices within the enterprise and devices available on the market which may be introduced into the fleet of IT assets employed by the enterprise.
The device price table may be currency-based. For example, the device price data registered by the device data module in a device price table may be limited to a single currency associated with that table. That is, device price data for a device model may be reflected in multiple device price tables in the respective currencies corresponding to the tables.
As another example, the application user interface may be configured to output price data to a user of the application user interface in a single currency associated with the user. That is, the application may associate the user (such as based on location, organization, user date, etc.) with a corresponding currency and/or corresponding device price table (and thus price data output to the user is obtained from the particular device price table to which the user is associated).
In another aspect, the application user interface may register data associating each organization with a corresponding currency and associating the organization with one or more of the device price tables, and register data associating a user with an organization amongst the registered organizations. In addition or alternatively, the application user interface may register data associating each organization with one or more of the device price tables to which users associated with the organization have access.
In another aspect of this disclosure, the enterprise analysis application may be adapted for an enterprise including plural sites disposed over plural countries. In such instance, the device data module maintains plural device price tables to register the collected device price data, and the plural device price tables express the collected device price data in plural currencies corresponding to the plural countries. Further, a site analysis table associates each site with a corresponding device price table and a corresponding currency and indicates a conversion rate to convert prices in the device price table associated with the site to a currency associated with the enterprise (that is, an enterprise analysis may be associated with a predetermined or selected currency). An analysis module retrieves the device price data in the plural device price tables, performs an enterprise analysis based on the retrieved device price data, and outputs an enterprise analysis report reflecting the enterprise analysis.
In another aspect, the analysis module may be configured to generate and output, for each site, a site analysis report, and the site analysis report for a specified site shows prices in the currency associated by the site analysis table with the site.
In another aspect, in a case that the retrieved device price data for a particular site is in a local currency different than the currency associated with the enterprise, the analysis module can convert the device price data in the local currency to price data in the currency associated with the enterprise by employing the conversion rate registered for the particular site in the site analysis table.
In another aspect, a method for performing an enterprise analysis of devices in an enterprise may include one or more of the following aspects:
The aforementioned and other aspects, features and advantages can be more readily understood from the following detailed description with reference to the accompanying drawings wherein:
This patent specification describes tools (in the form of methods, apparatuses, systems, computer program products, application software, etc.) for performing an enterprise analysis and/or a site analysis of information technology (IT) provisions and/or costs, for an enterprise or another organization. Such tools may be useful to an information technology (IT) administrator or manager, and/or another person who has responsibility for purchasing IT tools and/or tracking or managing IT costs, for an enterprise.
On the other hand, such tools may also be configured to be useful to sales and marketing personnel for a supplier of IT equipment, devices, tools, etc. In order for a salesperson to make a sales pitch that would be attractive to a customer or prospective customer, the salesperson would prefer to have at their disposal the relevant information for establishing competitive pricing. Pricing can vary based on any of various factors, such as, but not limited to, acquisition type (i.e. lease/purchase), acquisition cost, depreciation of product costs, and in the case of printing products/services, costs of consumables (e.g., paper, ink, toner, etc.).
The tools can be configured to employ a combination of device data compiled from data obtained from one or more (third party or internal) databases, data entered by a user, or data derived from user-entered data or data obtained from another source. That is, in many instances, the volume of relevant data (e.g., device specifications, product options and consumables, price and cost data, etc.) requires large amounts of time and effort, if to be entered by a user. On the other hand, third party data is typically not complete and is supplemented by additional data entry and processing. For example, the typical third party database is based on data collected in a single country (e.g., the United States) and does not consider the circumstance that the target audience is multi-national.
In describing exemplary embodiments illustrated in the drawings, specific terminology is employed for the sake of clarity. However, the subject matter of this patent specification is not intended to be limited to the specific terminology so selected and it is to be understood that each specific element includes all technical equivalents that operate in a similar manner.
The drawings show examples of implementations of the subject matter of this patent disclosure in several computing environments. However, it should be understood that the subject matter of this disclosure can be utilized by any computing device including but not limited to PDAs, cell phones, personal, notebook and workstation computers, kiosks, other information terminals, etc. In addition, the subject matter of this disclosure might be provided as services in a modular fashion by other devices connected by a communication network.
Referring now to the drawings, wherein like reference numerals designate identical or corresponding parts throughout the several views, there is described tools (systems, apparatuses, methodologies, computer program products, etc.) for gathering and analyzing enterprise data based on the parameters set by the user.
The device data module 101A is configured to register and store device data for various IT devices that may be employed in an enterprise, such as, but not limited to, printers, scanners, fax machines etc. The device information includes device information, such as, for example, standard retail price (SRP), color capabilities, speed, duplex printing etc., such as shown in
The analysis module 101B is configured to format (or reformat) data retrieved from storage or received from another source, in order to portray enterprise analysis. Importantly, as discussed in more detail infra, the enterprise analysis application allows the user to define the parameters based on which to analyze enterprise expenditures. The analysis module 101B retrieves the information regarding said parameters from the device data module 101A and formats them into graphs, tables, etc. in order to visually show the expenditures of an enterprise. The parameters of these graphs may be changed at any point and, in addition, may be further broken down in order to analyze specific aspects of expenditures including, but not limited to, office and device.
The user interface 101C is generated by the apparatus for the ease of use for the salesperson or enterprise employee. As shown by way of example in
The terminal apparatus 100A may be configuration by an application, or another software component (such as part of the operating system or a device driver), of a terminal device. Such terminal preferably is configured to communicate through a data network to obtain content and data from an external source. However, it should be appreciated that the inventive aspects described herein can be employed even if the device is not configured to connect to such data network, and/or is not connected to the data network.
System 100C shown in
As an example, each of the Networks A and B respectively connected by the intranets 102A and 102B may represent a regional office of a global/national enterprise having multiple regional offices.
It should be appreciated that the network environment, in any of the examples of
The network 102 (as well as each of networks 102A and 102B) can be any data network, a local area network, a wide area network or any type of network such as an intranet, an extranet (for example, to provide controlled access to external users, for example through the Internet), a private or public cloud network, the Internet, etc., or a combination thereof. Further, other communications links (such as a virtual private network, a wireless link, etc.) may be used as well for the network 102. In addition, the network 102 preferably uses TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), but other protocols such as SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) and HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) can also be used. How devices can connect to and communicate over networks is well-known in the art and is discussed for example, in “How Networks Work”, by Frank J. Derfler, Jr. and Les Freed (Que Corporation 2000) and “How Computers Work”, by Ron White, (Que Corporation 1999), the entire contents of each of which are incorporated herein by reference.
The MFP 104A, 105A, the printer 104B, 105B, the scanner 104C, 105C-1 can be any device having a primary functionality of printing copying, scanning, fax, etc. without providing additional functionalities.
The enterprise manager apparatus can be any of the various device management tools (such as application software, etc.) that are available to IT administrators to assist the administrators to track, monitor and otherwise manage IT (information technology) devices connected to a network. Such device management tools retrieve device settings or other device information from the devices, or other device data sources, through a network, and register such device information and allow the IT administrators to manage the devices. Thus, in the example of
The third party server 107 can be configured to communicate with terminal 103, through the network 102, to provide an up-to-date register of device pricing and specification for office devices, such as the devices MFP 104A, 105A, the printer 104B, 105B, the scanner 104C, 105C-1, shown in
Application server 108 can be configured to communicate with terminal 103, through the network 102, to provide an application (such as an enterprise analysis application or apparatus) to the terminal 103 (or another device connected to the network 102), on demand.
The application server 108 can be configured as shown by way of example in
An example of a configuration of a user terminal (e.g., the terminal 103) is shown schematically in
The storage 203 can provide storage for program and data, and may include a combination of assorted conventional storage devices such as buffers, registers and memories [for example, read-only memory (ROM), programmable ROM (PROM), erasable PROM (EPROM), electrically erasable PROM (EEPROM), static random access memory (SRAM), dynamic random access memory (DRAM), non-volatile random access memory (NOVRAM), etc].
The network interface 206 provides a connection (for example, by way of an Ethernet connection or other network connection which supports any desired network protocol such as, but not limited to TCP/IP, IPX, IPX/SPX, or NetBEUI) to a network (e.g., network 102) to enable the terminal device to communicate with another device through the network.
Each of the terminal 103, enterprise manager apparatus 106 and third party server 107 is configured to communicate with each other through the network 102. Through the network, the terminal 103 requests enterprise device information from the enterprise manager apparatus, as shown by way of example in
Information retrieved from the third party server 107 may include, but not limited to, pricing, hardware costs, service costs, consumable costs, other costs, usage costs, hardware and supplies pricing, printer yields, and service pricing. Pricing may refer to pricing of devices based on different parameters, including, retail costs, manufacturer suggested retail price and/or rebates. Hardware costs depend on monthly maintenance of hardware analysis based on a specific amount of time. Service costs refer to costs that are included in warrantee service and time period, extended warrantee service and may also include toner inclusive service in the case of printing products. Consumable costs calculate price of consumables based on the yield of a device. Other costs refers to costs relating to inefficiencies of a product (i.e. finishing, duplex, etc.). Usage costs calculates costs by proportionately increasing/decreasing volume of use over all devices, wherein the time frame may be adjusted to calculate cost. Hardware and supplies pricing collects printer hardware and street pricing from main internet vendors. Printer yields collects consumable yield information direct from each manufacturer at time of device introduction. Service pricing is represented as a manufacturer-branded extended warranty pack in increments of 1 to 5 years.
Additional information supplied by the third party server 107 may include energy impact, typical electricity consumption (TEC), CO2 emission, paper impact and CO2 offset. Energy impact calculates the energy consumption of devices based on data published the Environmental Protection Agency. TEC value is derived from measuring each model's electricity consumption in a lab that is setup to represent the “average office” environment and thus does not reflect actual electricity consumption, however, provides a valuable and consistent method of measuring equipment energy consumption performance. CO2 emission is calculated from the TEC of the device based on average carbon emissions for electricity generation. Paper impact refers to the production and distribution of paper that in turn produces carbon emission. CO2 offset refers to the amount of trees that can absorb carbon emissions from electricity and paper consumption.
Additionally, the terminal 103 may wish to receive up-to-date information regarding the enterprise devices to provide accurate enterprise analysis. That is, if the information stored within the terminal 103 is outdated, then the terminal 103 may refresh this data. Also, many printing devices offer progress reports on their status and condition. That is, the printer may send a report describing its degradation, if any, status, malfunctions, efficiency etc. The terminal 103 requests the real-time device information from the enterprise manager apparatus 106 to provide an additional parameter to generate an enterprise analysis report.
Up-to-date information received from the enterprise manager apparatus 106 may supplement and/or substitute the information retrieved from the third party server 107. For example, the third party server 107 may not contain necessary information regarding the devices being analyzed for an enterprise analysis. Therefore, the enterprise analysis application 101 may send a price table template to the enterprise manager apparatus 106. The enterprise manager apparatus 106 then fill outs the information in the template. This information may include, but not limited to, price, maintenance, costs, etc. of the device models being used in that enterprise. This information can be stored in a database (such as 109 depicted in
These price tables may be prepared by different enterprises within different regions and countries, using different currencies. This information may then be accessed by any user utilizing the enterprise analysis application 101, regardless of default region or currency associated with the user.
A process by which the enterprise analysis application 101 collects and formats data to generate an enterprise analysis report is discussed infra with reference to
The enterprise analysis apparatus 101 determines (in S404) based on the given parameters whether it is necessary to request up-to-date device information from the third party server 107. If so (S404. Yes), the enterprise analysis apparatus 101 retrieves such data (S405). The enterprise analysis apparatus 101 may also employ real-time device information in the cost analysis of an enterprise. The enterprise analysis determines whether real-time device information is available (S406) and if so (S406, Yes) retrieves the real-time device information from the enterprise manager apparatus 106 (S407).
Based on the given parameters set by the user, the enterprise analysis apparatus 101 generates an enterprise analysis report (S409). As discussed infra, the enterprise analysis report may be output as, but not limited to, a PDF file, Excel worksheet, Word document, etc.
The steps S402, S404 and S406, in
In addition to access to specific organizations, the user may be limited to specific device tables and prices corresponding to the region with which the user is associated. For example, a user in Europe may be limited to the device price tables (discussed infra in connection with
In the table of
The organization data table is an example of information regarding sites within an enterprise. In the exemplary embodiment shown in
An exemplary embodiment of a top-level user interface is shown in
The enterprise analysis application, through this UI (
As shown in the exemplary embodiment, enterprise A has options in which a user may generate reports, look at detailed analysis of the enterprise and propose new device layout of the enterprise and generate these reports into file types such as, but not limited to, Excel sheets, PDFS and Word documents, as discussed infra. A detailed analysis of an enterprise may include, but is not limited to, the device fleet of the enterprise, the cost of office supplies (e.g. paper, stationary, etc.), utility costs and CO2 emission cost. A device fleet analysis may include a list of all printing devices (e.g. printers, scanners, fax machines, MFP) listed with the cost of each device. In order to calculate the cost of each device, the enterprise analysis apparatus 101 may take into account the overall cost of the machine (e.g. SRP or street price), electricity cost in kWh, TCPP, CO2 emission cost and maintenance cost. The cost analysis is not limited to these parameters and may be customized by the user. For example, the enterprise analysis application may allow the user to choose a time period for which this cost analysis is made and calculated. With this option, the enterprise analysis application allows the user to analyze the performance of devices in an enterprise for a specific time frame. Also, by employing information or data of previous trends, the enterprise analysis application may allow the user to obtain an analysis report for the future cost of the devices. A cost report based on the given parameters may be generated by the enterprise analysis apparatus 101. The costs reports may be saved and later recalled.
In addition to generating a detailed analysis of the enterprise, the enterprise analysis application may be configured to provide options focusing on individual sites within the enterprise. In this exemplary embodiment, enterprise A includes three sites, and previous or current analysis reports may be accessed through the user interface. The user may also generate reports for the expenditures and costs of each individual site in order to further analyze the expenditures of the enterprise as a whole. In addition, the enterprise analysis application may provide the user with a graphical view of the layout of a site, as shown in
The basic analysis 801 provides a simple analysis to assess the current situation and generate a new proposal. The user can manually input and/or import data to the system, and the analysis is performed based on user preference. Such basic analysis may employ the default currency of the enterprise.
Enterprise analysis 802 maps and analyzes an enterprise using a collaborative analyst effort. That is, for example, the enterprise analysis apparatus 101 may retrieve all the additional information that may go into the analysis of an enterprise as previously described in
The enterprise analysis 802 provides a more detailed analysis compared to the basic analysis 801 by providing an Enterprise/Site Level analysis and a floor map, with examples depicted in
Other options depicted in
Another analysis type depicted in the present embodiment is volume migration 804. Volume migration 704 analyzes the volume of printing done within an enterprise and moving that volume to specific printing devices. For example, during a month an enterprise may print over 1000 sheets to five separate devices. The volume migration 804 analysis may depict the costs if the printing of those 1000 sheets was limited to two devices. If printing is limited to efficient high-volume printing devices, the overall price per month on printing expenses may drop.
Another option depicted in the current embodiment is an update 805 of the current product fleet of an enterprise and/or site. Over time devices degrade and prices fluctuate. By providing updated information, the enterprise analysis application allows the user to see the cost of maintaining a product in its current state. Maintenance cost for an older product may increase more prominently over time, and therefore the enterprise analysis application may be configured to provide the user with the most up-to-date information regarding future expenditures. For example, as a product ages, the production for maintenance of said product may cease and therefore maintenance costs would rise. In addition, as a product ages it may no longer use ink/toner efficiently, therefore increasing the monthly cost of ink/toner.
Each site has information regarding its primary currency. In this embodiment, the primary currency of the enterprise is listed as USD, however as shown, the primary currency of the sites may vary. Also listed in this embodiment, is the exchange rate of currencies. This exchange rate may be a real-time exchange rate or a rate specified by the user.
The enterprise analysis application may allow the user to customize the user interface in order to have a clear overall visual mapping of an enterprise and its sites. Additional information displayed in this embodiment includes the last updated date of the analyses, creation date of the analyses and current state statistics of the enterprise. The enterprise analysis application may provide current state statistics to provide an overall view for the user as to the costs of each site. The current state statistics may include fields such as, but not limited to, the amount of products, monthly volume and total cost of operation per length of time.
An exemplary embodiment of an outline of a comparable cost analysis UI is shown in
An exemplary embodiment of a device data table is shown in
For a specific user, the device table may be limited to the region that the specific user is associated with. For example in the exemplary embodiment of
For example,
The factors that contribute to the price difference between regions as well as additional price factors may be edited by the user, as shown in
Once a user chooses a device to add to the enterprise analysis, the user may choose to edit the volume and cost factors to provide a more detailed cost analysis. For example, as shown in
Another exemplary embodiment of a UI used to propose new device layouts for an enterprise or site is shown in
This type of analysis allows the user to create maps easily in customer sites. The analysis integrates all the types of analysis, as discussed previously, including but not limited to, device pricing, maintenance costs, idle costs, stationary costs, etc.
The enterprise analysis report may be formed in additional formats such as, but not limited to, PDF, Excel worksheet and/or Word document. For example, raw data in table form might be constructed from the raw data, however, for the sake of visualization the current embodiment includes graphs and tables.
Another example in which the enterprise is a multi-national organization having facilities at plural sites disposed over plural countries will now be discussed. The tools described herein can be particularly useful in the circumstance that available device models and their configurations, options and prices are different in various regions, countries and sales companies. Further, even if some models are commonly available in different countries, the price and configuration maybe different.
In such example, a tool (referenced herein as “TCO FV”) may be configured to include the features described herein to perform an analysis for such a global enterprise (e.g., user's customer or employer) which has many branches or sites all over the world, in which each branch or site has local device models and currency, and have the analysis show a summary of all branches or sites with one currency.
In such example of a multi-national organization, device price table data for each region, country or sales company may be obtained and registered (e.g.,
The device price data can be, as discussed above, compiled from data obtained from one or more (third party or internal) databases, data entered by a user, or data derived from user-entered data or data obtained from another source. In this example, all of the devices shown in Table 1 were obtained from a vendor “Ricoh”, and the device price data may have been provided by Ricoh's sales company, Ricoh's regional head quarter, and/or a third party database. Such data may be imported into the system manually, or programmatically with periodic updates.
The system may automatically determine a device price table to be used for a user based on login credentials. If the device price data displayed through the user interface employs a mix of currencies, or employs a currency that is other than the currency that the user normally uses, the user may sometimes be confused (or at least be inconvenienced). For example, if a user is Japanese, it can be very confusing to that user if the device price data is represented in dollars, euros or francs.
Thus, the following Table 3 (user data), Table 4 (organization data) and Table 5 (device table data) are an example of a structure for capturing the relationship between users, organizations and device tables.
When a user logins to the system, the system determines based on Table 3 the user's organization and by using the organization ID (Org ID) to cross reference Table 5, determines the device table that is appropriate for the user (e.g., Kenji Hagiwara is associated with Org ID 2, and with Ricoh Japan Devices). In such example, the user may be limited to access to the devices and data from the device table associated with the organization to which the user is associated.
In this example of a multi-national organization, the user also has the option of performing an enterprise analysis and multiple site analyses in connection with the enterprise analysis. In an enterprise analysis, an enterprise analysis report may be generated as a summary of the analyses of all sites registered with the enterprise. On the other hand, in a site analysis, device information for devices employed at the site is summarized in a site analysis report for the site.
In such analyses, and more specifically, in an enterprise analysis for a multi-national enterprise, each site is associated with a currency and may be associated with different device models, as shown schematically in
On the other hand, Japan site analysis (in JPY) and France site analysis (in EUR, i.e. euros) have different currencies from the enterprise analysis (in USD). In order to conduct the analyses and generate reports with USD, the system is configured to include a currency converter between USD and JPY, USD and EUR, and even optionally between JPY and EUR (to allow enterprise analysis in JPY or EUR). For example, the following Table 6 (enterprise analysis data), Table 7 (site analysis data) and Table 8 (device table data) represent an example of a structure that may be employed.
The system may allow the user to modify the currency exchange rate or may obtain an updated rate from an external source in real time.
In a site creation process, a user may be permitted to select any device price table. On the other hand, in some instances, some access restriction may need to be placed on at least some device price tables. For example, one sales partner company may not wish users associated with another sales company to view and use their Device Price Table data. Accordingly, the system may set visibility restrictions on some (or all) of the device price data.
In the example encompassed by Table 9 (device table data), Table 10 (organization data) and Table 11 (device table to organization relationship), Device Table ID1 (i.e. Ricoh US Device Table) is accessible by Ricoh US and Ricoh Japan, Device Table ID2 (i.e. Ricoh Japan Devices) is accessible only by Ricoh Japan, and Device Table ID3 (i.e. Ricoh French Table) is accessible by Ricoh US, Ricoh Japan and Ricoh France.
While such example employs access control based on e relationship between device tables and organizations, the access control may also (or alternatively be based on user access level.
The aforementioned specific embodiments are illustrative, and many variations can be introduced on these embodiments without departing from the spirit of the disclosure or from the scope of the appended claims. For example, elements and/or features of different examples and illustrative embodiments may be combined with each other and/or substituted for each other within the scope of this disclosure and appended claims.
For example, the order in which the steps are performed in the aforementioned methods is not limited to those shown in the examples of